Scope in 2020: Many reasons to celebrate in an otherwise terrible year

Life on Earth’s surface was in trouble in 2020, to say the least, but the whole outer space above and outside this rock remains where a few very interesting and exciting things happened.

When humanity began to wait for him Nationwide epidemic of Covid-19 And enduring a constant stream of economic, political, environmental and social conflicts, SpaceX, NASA and many others were sending all kinds of space into space, including astronauts.

In late May, NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnekan became the first humans to take off. In orbit U.S. Of clay from almost a decade when they A SpaceX crew rides a dragon On the International Space Station as part of the Demo-2 mission. The touchscreen-complete, fully modern spacecraft was also the first new vehicle certified by NASA to transport astronauts, as the space shuttle was introduced almost four decades ago.

The mission was technically a demonstration, but its success by November The first operational crew dragon flight
, Four astronauts to ISS Were taken along.

Robotic space explorers have also been busy for years. July presented the best time to determine the course of Mars for the next few years, so NASA took advantage of the opportunity, sending a Perseverance Rover on its way to the Red Planet, where it would detect possible life signs and even deploy one. A small helicopter to explore the area slightly ahead. The UAE launched its Hop Probe towards Mars and China’s Tianwan-1 is carrying an orbiter, lander and rover in one direction.

In addition to going into new space as angels of the world in Lockdown, a few older ones brought samples for us beyond Earth. Of Japan Hibusa 2 air-drop bits It was collected after a special copper bullet was fired at the planet Rayugu. A capsule with the resulting dust and gravel arrived in Australia in December, after which the sample was taken to Japan.

While NASA also charged a planet this year Osiris-Rex spacecraft A kind of cosmic pickpocketing of potentially dangerous asteroid Bennu. That model is expected to make it to Earth in 2023.

Of China Good 5 missions During a period of less than a month in November and December, by launching, landing on the moon, collecting a sample and returning some lunar rocks and clay, it swag its own space.

These missions were all set in motion years ago and were a success in 2020. Others were struck by another epidemic.

The beginning of NASA’s next pay generation The James Webb Web Space Telescope was pushed back Commercial space companies such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin made steady progress, but have yet to start sending tourists on microgravity joyrides.

Oneweb, which aims to provide broadband access from low-Earth orbit, has been hit hard by the economic downturn and has gone bankrupt as the epidemic spreads globally. The company emerged In the second half of the year with the British government as the owner of the new part and began to restart the satellites to reach SpaceX, which is already. Beta began testing its broadband star, Starlink.

SpaceX and Elon Musk set more goals in 2020 than achieving human spaceflight and deploying hundreds of orbiting routers. The company launched 26 Falcon 9 rockets, some of which have now made seven flights. On the side, its the latest The Starship prototype finally built a high-itude flight, Which ended with a spectacular and explosive hard landing.

Don’t forget Starman, After a blast over the Falcon Heavy in early 2018, the dummy that drove Musk’s Red Telsa finally passed close to Mars this year.

Eyes on the sky

When humans and our robots weren’t really traveling in space, we were too busy to keep an eye on it with more enthusiasm than to get another zoom meeting or webinar.

In early 2020, that’s hard to believe Unusual behavior of giant star battalions And maybe it made our list to worry about it going supernova. It turned out later that BattleJues was just working nicely – and we simply forgot about paying attention to sanitizing groceries and searching the planet for toilet paper.

But when our horrible and disgusting new normal was pulled, heaven became a popular distraction. Multiple new comets were discovered And promised to put on a show. Fixed a few, but Comet Neoiz delivered the goods
In July, a demonstration also made the naked eye skycars visible to themselves, the best in decades. Annual meteor showers Like Perseids, Taurids and Leonids also impressed in 2020. Lucky people in parts of Africa and Asia got a chance to take the “ring of fire” in June, and others, in a relatively small part of South America, got a glimpse of Total solar eclipse In December.

But it was probably the biggest display Jupiter and Saturn’s winter solstice great connection Which made itself easily visible for the first time in eight centuries to the end of the year. The two largest planets in the solar system appeared as twins almost connected for one night, and even an amateur with the original backyard telescope could create many moons of Saturn’s rings and gas giants.

Peeping over the planets

Professional astronomers have always gone deeper into space, and made more exciting discoveries. Their evidence was found Water in new places on Mars, And our second home neighbor, Venus, took a surprising step into the valuable world rankings to find signs of life.

A team of what has since become a controversial claim Scientists report seeing phosphine, A byproduct of the ecosystem, in the surprisingly pleasant cloud decks of desolate hell on the surface of Venus.

Astronomers continue to show that we have a galaxy and beyond Planets fullIncluding some A potentially habitable earth-like world. There seems to be too Another planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. There was a new normalization for 2020 Civil scientists And also Artificial intelligence Make such discoveries.

In true 2020 style, however, they were not all dominant comets and new Earth Earth cousins. In a terrifying but kind of disturbing reminder of the violence present in the universe, scientists Distant black holes completely out of the star
It went very close with a little laughter but mostly horrible The process is called spaghettiification.

Yes, Virginia, in this universe you have no problem turning to pasta and having lunch.

And on a truly sad note, December began with some wild footage of the collapse of Puerto Rico’s iconic Iresibo Radio Observatory. For decades, a huge dish in the jungle helped us better understand and explore the universe.

Sorry to end up on the downer. It felt right for our year. But the space seen through the eyes of astronauts, scientists and simple fans like me is one of the brightest silver linings of the year, one that most hope to forget.

I dare not be tempted to say 2021 will be better, but I will note that the next meteor shower is already here, a quarter will be at its peak on January 2, while February Drata lands on Mars.

Keep going forward and to the sky and wishing a Happy New Year.