CAPA CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – Astronauts burst into orbit from the United States for the first time in nearly a decade, three countries sent spacecraft to Mars and robotic explorers grabbed rocks from the moon and gravel of an asteroid to return to Earth. .
The space provided moments of hope and glory in a stressful year, on the other hand.
It promises to do the same in 2021, with the February landings on Mars and the planned launch next fall of the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope.
Boeing hopes to catch up with SpaceX in the astronaut launch department, while space tourism may end up getting started.
“2021 promises to be a bright spot for space exploration, perhaps even more so,” said Scott Hubbard, a former NASA “Mars Czar” who now teaches at Stanford University.
Although the coronavirus pandemic complicated space operations around the world in 2020, most high-priority missions remained on track, led by the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates in a stampede in March to July.
The first interplanetary spacecraft in the United Arab Emirates, an orbiter, will examine the Martian atmosphere. NASA’s Perseverance rover is scheduled to land on Feb. 18 in an old river delta and lake bed, where microscopic life may have blossomed. The rover will pierce the dry crust and collect samples for a possible return to Earth.
The Chinese orbiter-rover duo Tianwen-1, which seeks the heavenly truth, will also look for signs of past life.
European and Russian space agencies skipped the March 2020 launch window, and their life-sniffing Mars rover was set until 2022 due to technical issues and COVID-19 restrictions.
China also fixed on the moon in 2020, landing and then launching itself on the lunar surface in December with the first lunar rocks collected to return to Earth since the 1970s.
Japan returned pieces of Ryugu asteroid, its second batch of asteroids in a decade. There are more asteroid samples on the way: NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft aspirated steps from the asteroid Bennu in October to return them in 2023.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was boiling in 2020. In May it became the first private company to put people into orbit, a success that had previously only been claimed by three world superpowers. The two test pilots were the first NASA astronauts to fly a brand new spacecraft in nearly 40 years and the first to explode from Florida since the launch launch program ended in 2011.
In November, four more astronauts mounted a SpaceX dragon capsule to the International Space Station. Three weeks later, SpaceX launched its largest payload to the space station for NASA.
“This is an impressive achievement that Americans should be proud of,” said Sen. Mark Kelly-turned-astronaut about the Dragon’s double-headed capsule.
Until SpaceX flights, three-person Soyuz capsules from Russia were the only way to get astronauts to the space station once NASA launchers were closed.
The other crew carrier hired by NASA, Boeing, is struggling to recover its Starliner capsule after a failed test flight by the software in December 2019. Recovery (again without anyone on board) is planned for spring. If the repairs work and the capsule finally reaches the space station, the first Starliner astronauts could be flying in the summer.
Musk ended the year with a stratospheric test flight of Starship, the rocket he is building to take people to the moon and Mars. The December 9 demonstration went better than anyone imagined until a blast of fire on the touchdown. Still, Musk was ecstatic.
At the same time, SpaceX is expanding its clientele with dragons. Late next year, SpaceX expects to launch the first privately funded Dragon flight in a Houston-based Axiom Space deal.
Michael Lopez-Alegria of Axiom, a former NASA astronaut and former president of the Federation of Commercial Spaceflight, will accompany Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe and two other paying customers to the space station. Stibbe, a former fighter pilot, was a close friend of the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who died aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 2003.
Will Tom Cruise join? The actor was in talks with NASA this year about shooting a movie on the space station.
“This is the true beginning of private space flight and will make the ball go into multiple private missions into orbit per year,” Lopez-Alegria said in an email. “I’ve been preaching for almost a decade that human space commercial flight is the next giant leap.”
Two other space travel companies, Blue Origin by Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic by Richard Branson, are still conducting test flights and have yet to set firm dates to launch customers on short flights to the edge of space and back.
NASA is still aiming for the launch in November of its new moon rocket, the Space Launch System, with an Orion capsule that will launch unmanned. The Trump administration had set a deadline for 2024 for the first landing on the moon by astronauts since NASA’s Apollo program half a century ago. Just this month, NASA unveiled the 18 astronauts who will train for the lunar program named after Artemis, the mythological twin sister of Apollo.
It remains to be seen how President-elect Joe Biden could alter the lunar landing program.
“Anything else that can be said about the four years of the Trump administration has been positive for the U.S. civilian space program,” noted John Logsdon, professor emeritus at the George Washington University Institute for Space Policy. “The previous major programs were not canceled, a clear direction was given to the human exploration program and funding for existing programs was increased.”
“This is a legacy that the Biden administration can build, so that in the coming years there can be a series of continued successes.”
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.