2020 saw some exciting developments for astronomy
When reflecting on 2020, not all the news was bad! For astronomy, the past year held exciting developments, and 2021 should, too. While many of us were in lockdown, space exploration continued at a fast pace. Here are my top three picks.
First, the USA regained the ability to send astronauts directly from American soil to the International Space Station. We haven’t had that option since the space shuttle was scrapped in 2011. It’s possible now because of the partnership between the private company Spacex and NASA. Together they developed (and Spacex built) the Dragon capsule, which can now carry up to six crew members to the space station.
Another significant advance for space exploration in 2020 was NASA’S OSIRIS-REX mission, which collected a sample of rocks from the surface of an asteroid called Bennu. These rocks hold clues to the early history of our solar system, since there is no weathering to change the chemical composition of these rocks. Understanding the birth of our solar system is one of the pressing unanswered questions in astronomy.
For the first time since the Apollo missions (the last one was in 1972), moon rocks are being brought back to Earth, but not by NASA. In late 2020,
China’s Chang-e 5 mission landed a robotic probe on the surface of the moon, collected almost 4 pounds of rocks, then blasted off an ascent module that made a rendezvous with its orbiting service module, which returned to Earth. These rocks are thought to have been formed back when the Moon still had volcanic activity and will tell scientists a lot about the history of the Moon.
So, what does 2021 hold for us? The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to launch on Oct. 31. This advanced telescope is the successor to the Hubble and is likely the biggest single investment by NASA over the past few decades.
The JWST will have the ability to peer back to the earliest stages of the universe, when stars were first forming.
This will test theoretical predictions of what the universe was like at that time.
Some people say that we should already know all about the early universe from the Big Bang theory. But that’s just theory. We need observations with the JWST to put theory to the test.
Another big event for 2021 will be a flyby of the Moon, in NASA’S Artemis I mission. Scheduled for launch in November, this unmanned mission would be a precursor to a crewed moon flyby in 2023, with astronauts from both USA and Canada. If all goes well, NASA will have a crewed landing in 2024, with the possibility of a permanent Moon station some years later.
Kenneth Hicks is a professor of physics and astronomy at Ohio University in Athens.hicks@ohio.edu