About a month after the new year on Earth began, three spacecraft pulled into the vicinity of Mars. These explorers, launched in July last year, are announcements of a busy year of space exploration, launches and astronomical events.
Following is a preview of some of the most important events in 2021. Private companies and the world’s space agencies are likely to make more known. The Times’ Space and Astronomy Calendar will help you keep up to date with these dates, and you can subscribe to them.
While China has landed spacecraft on the moon for the past seven years, NASA has not landed there since 1972, the last Apollo mission. That could change in 2021, deepening the commercial transformation of U.S. space efforts.
Over the past decade, NASA has relied on private companies to build and operate spacecraft that can transport cargo, and now humans, to the International Space Station. It tries a similar approach with Commercial Lunar Payload Services. The program has contracted with a number of private companies to build robotic lunar landers that will transport cargo from NASA and other customers to the lunar surface.
The first company, Astrobotic, from Pittsburgh, will send its Peregrine lander to the moon in June. This could be followed in October by Nova-C, a spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines of Houston.
NASA has also set its sights on returning astronauts to the moon this decade. The first step is an unmanned test flight of the massive space launch system built for future US space launches. The rocket has experienced numerous delays and balloon experience charges, but NASA is still planning a trip in 2021, known as Artemis-1. It will send Orion, a capsule for astronauts, around the moon and back to earth. The test is tentatively scheduled for November.
Deeper into the deep space
A second mission, Lucy, will be launched in October, and it will drive much further and make airplanes through Jupiter’s orbit. There, the Trojans will be studied – asteroids traveling in the same orbit as Jupiter, but hundreds of millions of kilometers in front or behind, trapped there by the gravity of the giant planet. Scientists believe that these spacecraft may conceal secrets about how the solar system’s outer planets were formed.
Odysseys to spin
Human spaceflight was transformed in 2020 when SpaceX successfully launched some crew members to the space station. The company is likely to send more astronauts around the orbit in 2021, and not all of them may be working for NASA and other government space agencies. Several companies are working with SpaceX to launch paying customers on the Crew Dragon capsule. One of them, Axiom Space, could send its first private tourists to the space station late in the year.
When NASA chose SpaceX to build transport for its astronauts, it also hired Boeing to do the same. During an unmanned rotational test in December 2019, a series of errors almost led to the catastrophic loss of the Boeing-Starliner capsule. To make up for the unsuccessful flight, Boeing will already perform a second test flight in March.
Other human journeys to space are also beckoning this year. Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin could send paying customers on short trips to the edge of space and back in 2021. China could also start launching pieces of its next-generation space station during the year, setting it on a course to make a regular human presence in low earth orbit in the coming years.
Solar system display time
If 2020 people learned anything, it was to expect the unexpected. While Covid-19 obscured the world as he traveled through the sun, mankind was surprised in the summer months by the view of Comet NEOWISE and enchanted with the cooperation of Jupiter and Saturn during the winter solstice. It’s a huge universe, and there’s so much of it to see from our small part of it.
A lunar eclipse on May 26 will overlap with a period when the moon is closer to Earth than usual, which some call a ‘super blood moon’. People in Australia and the Pacific Islands as well as in the western United States will get the best view of the appearance, and some of the opportunities will be visible in other parts of America as well as East and South Asia.
Most people in North America will have to wait until 2024 to experience the next total solar eclipse, such as that in August 2017. But on June 10, some North Americans will get a taste of what will come in three years when an annular solar eclipse darkens. some airspace.
It is also known as a “darkening ring”, and it happens when the moon is too far from the earth to completely obstruct the sun, leaving a ray of sunlight around its edges. This unusual eclipse will move across the North Pole as it travels, and only people in small parts of Canada and Russia will have the full effect. But those willing to wake up early enough to parts of the East Coast and wear their safety goggles will see a partial eclipse in the morning.