Things that Happened in 2021
What a year 2021 has been. Online school is over (hopefully forever), Marvel movies are starting to come out again (still have to watch Spiderman), and I started to learn to drive. But 2021 has not only been a memorable year for people, but it has been a memorable year for space as well. So many different things have happened: new discoveries, tons of missions, and lots of setup for the future. And not everyone happened on schedule. There were still many delayed missions and failures, but many more successes. I will divide this up into multiple lists, but here is a 2021 recap.
Mars:
2021 was a big year for Mars missions and exploration because we had a clean launch window during the summer. In total, there were three Mars missions that occurred, which will help us learn more about our neighbor, Mars. They all arrived on Mars in February.
Perseverance + Ingenuity
This was NASA’s rover rotorcraft combo and launched last year. Since then, Perseverance has already started collecting samples that will be brought back to Earth in a future mission for further analysis and Ingenuity has already performed flights. This dynamic duo has already achieved many milestones and will achieve many more as they continue to explore Mars.
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| Ingenuity on Mars |
Tianwen 1
This is China’s lander rover combo that is hunting for buried water ice, mapping out Mars’ magnetic fields, and analyzing the composition of rocks on Mars’s surface.
Hope Mission
This is the UAE’s Martian orbiter that will analyze the weather patterns, dust content, and ozone in the air on Mars.
Life:
Yes, I know that we didn’t find life anywhere in the universe this year, but new discoveries led to new theories. I am just having fun with this section, but it is pretty interesting, and who knows, it may be true a few years down the line.
Enceladus
Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth-largest moon and may support life. In 2005, NASA discovered that geysers on the surface were launching multiple compounds such as dihydrogen, methane, and a variety of carbon-containing organic compounds. A new study shows that there is evidence that these compounds can be formed by microbes.
Oumuamua
In January, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb published a finding that a strange object called Oumuamua discovered in 2017 maybe a piece of alien technology that was accidentally jettisoned here.
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| Oumuamua |
Exoplanets:
Exoplanets are always exciting because we one day may just find the next Earth. But exoplanets also help us understand our place in the universe and the formation of the universe.
Exoplanet in Whirlpool Galaxy
In October, scientists discovered the first exoplanet outside of our galaxy using the transit method. The name of the exoplanet is M51-ULS-1b and was observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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| Baby Pluto |
Baby Pluto
Exoplanet 2M0437b is a tiny exoplanet that was finally confirmed to exist in 2021 and is around 417 light-years away from Earth. It is very small.
Ring Light Planet
A primordial ring was discovered around a Jupiter-like exoplanet called PDS 70c. This ring was a Moon-forming disk, and the first one to ever be discovered around a planet outside our solar system.
Neptune-like Exoplanet
Located 90 light-years, TOI-1231 b is a similar-sized planet to Neptune and it may contain clouds of water. The gas planet is 3.5 times larger than Earth and may have a dense water-vapor atmosphere.
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| Ring Light Exoplanet |
Space Structures:
Sometimes, telescopes capture the strangest-looking galaxies or planets on telescopes. Often, they have unique shapes, sizes, or look very different. Here are a few of them.
Star Eating Pac Man
Yes, you can see this iconic 80s retro gaming character in the sky. The object is known as N 63A and is the product of a star that collapsed under its own weight. It is located 163,000 light-years ago and you can see younger, smaller stars close to it that almost look like “power pellets” from the game.
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| PAC MAN! |
Ghostly Jellyfish
On March 17, the Astrophysical Journal reported a large jellyfish seen in space. Well, this “jellyfish” is actually thousands of galaxy clusters in the sky. This certain cluster is called Abell 2877 and is located 300 million light-years away.
The Cavity in the Milky Way
New 3D maps of a molecular cluster between the constellation Taurus and Perseus discovered that there is a 500 light-year wide gap instead of being two large clusters.
Hut on the Moon
China’s Yutu 2 rover spotted a weird cube-shaped anomaly on the Moon on October 29th. It is currently making its way there to see what it is.
ISS:
The ISS is one of the most important, if not the most important satellite of all time. With it, we have been able to discover tons of new things, not only about space but about people as well. And the White House just today gave the ISS a six-year extension to 2030. But without further ado, here are some things that we learned from the ISS this year.
Spaceflight Improves Stem Cell Regeneration
Stem Cells are seen as the future of medicine because of their capability to regenerate. A recent experiment onboard the ISS found that the weightless environment helps stem cells from the human heart to regenerate quicker.
Space Workouts = Better Bones
Microgravity is not a good environment for the human body because no muscles are being used due to the lack of mechanical loading. Hence, astronauts abroad in the ISS have to work out for more than 3 hours a day. A new study found that astronauts who just returned from space had more bone strength than they did before they left. Maybe we are all just working out wrong.
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| Astronaut Working Out Onboard ISS |
Microbes Mining
A recent experiment aboard the ISS conducted by the ESA found that microbes are extremely efficient at extracting valuable metals from lunar and martian rocks, and are even more efficient in space.
New Materials for Radiation Exposure
JAXA recently tested a new material to shield astronauts from dangerous space radiation called colemanite. It is a boron-rich mineral of borax that forms as a deposit during the evaporation of alkaline water. In the future, it could be used to treat satellites, space station exteriors, and high-altitude planes.
Spaceflight:
Last, but certainly not least is space flight. 2021 had the most rocket launches ever since the launch of the Sputnik during the Cold War. This is due to multiple factors, including new competition, more countries heading to space, and they want to go back into space. Here are some of the missions that happened in 2021.
SpaceX’s Crewed Missions
In 2021, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon carried 4 different crews of astronauts to the ISS and 14 astronauts. There is also Starship, SpaceX’s first interplanetary rocket, with many failures at first, but was finally able to land some of their prototypes. Check out my blog for more articles about SpaceX.
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| Retrieval of Crew Dragon Capsule |
DART
DART or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test was launched in November of this year and will make contact with an asteroid pair to move them off course. To learn more about this mission, click here.
Lucy
Lucy is an asteroid-hunting mission that will observe rocky asteroid fossils left from the formation of the solar system. It launched in October of 2021.
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| Launch of Lucy |
Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic
In 2021, both Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin sent their founders past the boundary of space this year. To learn more about their initial flights, click here.
Parker Space Probe
The Parker Space Probe recently entered the Sun’s atmosphere, becoming the first manmade object to do so. Click here to learn more about it.
The James Webb Space Telescope
One of the last launches that happened this year was the James Webb Space Telescope, or the JWST. It finally launched this year and will allow us to learn about or origins of the solar system. Click here to learn more about it.
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| JWST in Space |
One final note before I end. I want to thank everyone who reads this blog. In a little over a year, this blog has hit 25,000 views all-time and I wanted to thank you all for it. Have a great new year and see you next year!
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