2021 has been a challenging year across the globe. Unfortunately, the pandemic is still
dominating many of our lives. But, the year wasn't all doom and gloom. There were still
stories of success and greatness, stories that helped distract our minds from the unpleasant
news coverage that we have become so familiar with these last couple of years.
Even though the pandemic has made life a lot harder in recent times, the urge for knowledge
beyond our planet persevered. Many of you may think of 2021 as a year to forget, but
before you do, let's look at some of the high points, the moments when human ambition pushed
the boundaries. Let's look at some of the most significant space discoveries and breakthroughs
of 2021.
2021 was a busy year for our red neighbour, Mars. Three landmark robotic missions arrived
at the planet, the first being the United Arab Emirates Hope orbiter. Hope will look
at changes in the planets weather patterns over days, months and years, and build the
first-ever global map of the Martian atmosphere.
Then we saw China's Tianwen-1 mission arrive at Mars, which successfully landed the Zhurong
rover. The mission was uniquely ambitious, as no other nation had ever tried to send
an orbiter and rover to Mars on their first attempt. But China succeeded, marking a historic
moment in space exploration.
The biggest Martian story, however, came from NASA, when they successfully landed the Perseverance
Rover in a region called the Jezero crater, the site of a dried-up lake bed and river
delta. The rover is designed to study rock and sediment, aiding in the search for ancient
microbial life.
Perseverance has already achieved a lot during its short time on Mars, such as successfully
converting carbon dioxide to oxygen using a device called MOXIE, collecting the first-ever
rock samples from the red planets dusty surface and releasing Ingenuity, an ultra-lightweight
helicopter that has now flown over a dozen times in the thin Martian atmosphere, marking
the first-ever flight on another planet.
It wasn't just planets that we explored during 2021, we also explored a star when NASA's
Parker solar probe made history by becoming the first spacecraft to touch the Sun.
The scorched probe flew through the Corona, the blazing upper atmosphere that surrounds
the Sun and gathered data on its hostile environment. It has currently dipped in and out of the
Corona at least three times and collected atmospheric particles in a special instrument,
an achievement that some scientists have said is as big as when we landed on the moon.
Incredibly we also got to see a time-lapse revealing Parkers view as it swooped past
the Sun. The footage is made up of individual images captured during the probes closest
approach, showing us zooming streaks of electrically charged gas and plasma called coronal streamers.
In the background, if you look carefully, you can see the cloudy band of the Milky Way
Galaxy, along with Mars, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Jupiter. But the Parker solar probe hasn't
finished yet, because it still has four more years of data to collect. So we can expect
to see many more spectacular images of our star in the future.
Throughout 2021 over 500 new exoplanets were also announced, bringing the total to 4884
confirmed worlds beyond our solar system, and many of them are truly alien.
Take GJ367b, for example. This distant planet may essentially be a glowing orb of half molten
iron three quarters the size of Earth. The newfound alien world orbits a small, dim red
dwarf star extremely close and completes one orbit every 7.7 hours. That means that one
year on this planet is only 7.7 hours long.
Another strange exoplanet confirmed in 2021 is labelled 2M0437B and is one of the youngest
worlds discovered so far. This amazing image reveals the baby planet, which is just a few
million years old, shining in the reflected light of its parent star.
Astronomers may have also detected a planet outside of our galaxy, making it the first
extragalactic world potentially ever to be observed. Named M51-ULS-1b, the giant extragalactic
exoplanet lies 28 million light-years away in the magnificent whirlpool Galaxy, called
Messier 51. If confirmed, this discovery could open up a whole new search window, revealing
many more exoplanets outside of the Milky Way.
But it's not just hellish, uninhabitable exoplanets that have been discovered in 2021 because
astronomers have identified a new class of world, called Hycean planets.
These worlds could be habitable but are not rocky like the Earth, instead, they are covered
in oceans and hydrogen-rich atmospheres. Researchers have singled out one particular exoplanet
called K2-18b, which could be the most promising Hycean planet discovered so far and will potentially
be investigated by the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope.
Which brings me perfectly to Christmas Day, when after decades of work and billions of
dollars, the world witnessed the successful launch of the James Webb space telescope.
The most complex telescope ever sent into space.
With 100 times more sensitivity than Hubble, Webb can detect infrared light coming from
galaxies as they formed 13.5 billion years ago in the aftermath of the Big Bang. It will
peer further into the universe than ever before, revealing the first galaxies, the birth of
stars and exoplanets and possible even help in the search for life beyond Earth.
Webb will be able to observe these ancient cosmic structures because of its enormous
gold mirror, which intercepts red and infrared light as it travels through space. The giant
tennis court-sized sun shield is designed to keep Webb extremely cold, blocking the
Sun's Ray's and allowing the telescope to observe very faint signals from distant objects.
Although Webb successfully launched into space, there is still a risky journey ahead. Over
the next month, it will travel nearly 1 million miles away, which is 1.5 million kilometres
away, slowly unfolding and reshaping as it approaches its final location, known as the
second Lagrange point or L2. Then around half a year from now, the James Webb Space telescope
will start its routine science observations and begin sending data to Earth, including
beautiful, never seen before images of the universe.
Many other space discoveries and breakthroughs occurred in 2021, such as the giant leap forward
in space tourism, which saw Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX each fly their first
tourist-focused missions. We even got to see William Shatner boldly go where no other 90-year-old
has gone before.
Scientists revealed for the first time the presence of magnetic fields around a black
hole, and we saw a new mission launched that is designed to test technologies that prevent
asteroids from colliding with Earth, and that's to mention just a few. 2021 once again didn't
disappoint when it comes to space exploration, and I, for one, cannot wait to find out what
we will discover in 2022.