2020 in space: so many reasons to celebrate in an otherwise terrible year

Life on the surface of planet Earth in 2020 was troubling to say the least, but above and beyond this rock is a lot of space where quite a few interesting and exciting things took place.

While humanity squatted for the Covid-19 pandemic and enduring a steady stream of economic, political, environmental, and social struggles, SpaceX, NASA, and a host of others sent all kinds of stuff to space, including astronauts.

In late May, NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken became the first people to take off revolve from American soil in nearly a decade when they rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon to the International Space Station as part of the Demo-2 mission. The fully modern spacecraft, complete with touchscreens, was also the first new vehicle certified by NASA to carry astronauts since the space shuttle was introduced nearly four decades ago.

The mission was technically a demonstration, but its success was followed in November by the first operational Crew Dragon flight
, with four astronauts to the ISS.

Robot space explorers also had a busy year. July was the best time to set course for Mars for years to come, so NASA took the opportunity by sending the Perseverance rover on its way to the red planet, where it will look for signs of potential life and also a small helicopter to explore a little further afield. The UAE launched its Hope probe towards Mars, and China’s Tianwen-1 is heading an orbiter, lander and rover in the same direction.

In addition to new missions that went to space as envoys from a closed world, a few older monsters brought to us from outside the Earth. Japanese Hayabusa2 bits fallen through the air it had gathered after firing a special copper bullet on the asteroid Ryugu. A capsule containing the resulting dust and pebbles landed in Australia in December, after which the sample was shipped to Japan.

NASA also attacked an asteroid this year when the Osiris-Rex spacecraft performed a kind of cosmic pickpocketing of the potentially dangerous asteroid Bennu. That monster is expected to reach Earth in 2023.

China’s Chang’e 5 mission made its own space swag by launching, landing on the moon, collecting a monster and returning some moon rocks and earth, all over the course of less than a month in November and December.

These missions were all launched years ago and were successful in 2020. Others were thwarted by the pandemic.

The launch of the next generation of NASA James Webb Space Telescope was pushed back again, until 2021. Commercial aerospace companies such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin continued to make progress but failed to send tourists on microgravity joyrides.

OneWeb, which aims to provide broadband access from low Earth orbit, felt the bite of the economic recession and filed for bankruptcy as the pandemic raged worldwide. The company was born in the second half of the year with the UK government as the new part owner and resumed launch of satellites to catch up with SpaceX, already has begun beta testing its broadband constellation, Starlink.

SpaceX and Elon Musk will have reached more milestones in 2020 than achieving manned space flights and deploying hundreds of routers in orbit. The company launched 26 Falcon 9 missiles, some of which have now made seven flights each. On the side, his latest The spaceship prototype finally took flight at high altitude, which ended with a spectacular and explosive hard landing.

Not to mention, Star man, the dummy that has piloted Musk’s red Telsa since being fired atop Falcon Heavy in early 2018, finally made a brief passage through Mars this year.

Eyes on the sky

When humans and our robots weren’t actually traveling to space, we were busy monitoring it with far more zeal than we could muster for yet another Zoom meeting or webinar.

It’s hard to believe that in early 2020, the unusual behavior of the giant star Betelgeuse and the possibility that it would go supernova made our list of things to worry about. It later turned out that Betelgeuse is doing just fine – and was easily forgotten when we turned our attention to sanitizing groceries and searching for toilet paper on the planet.

But as our dreaded and much-derided new normal dragged on, Heaven became a popular distraction like several new comets have been discovered and promised to put on a show. A few were buzzing, but Comet Neowise delivered the goods
in July, making it visible to skywatchers even with the naked eye in a display that was the best in decades. Annual meteor shower like the Perseids, Taurids and Leonids also made an impression in 2020. Happy people in parts of Africa and Asia had the chance to experience a ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse in June, and others, in a relatively small part of South America, got a glimpse of one total solar eclipse in December.

But perhaps the biggest screen was the winter solstice Great combination of Jupiter and Saturn which made itself clearly visible for the first time in eight centuries to close the year. The two largest planets in the solar system appeared as near-merged twins overnight, and even amateurs with simple backyard telescopes could see the rings of Saturn and several moons of the gas giants.

Peeking at planets

Professional astronomers, as always, peered into space and made more exciting discoveries. They saw evidence of it water in new locations on Mars, and our other neighbor, Venus, made a surprising rise in the rankings of worlds worth seeking out for signs of life.

In what has since become a controversial claim, a team of scientists reported sighting of phosphine, a byproduct of living organisms, in the surprisingly pleasant cloud decks above the uninhabitable hellscape that is the surface of Venus.

Astronomers continued to show that our galaxy and the realms are beyond it full of planets, including some potentially habitable earth-like worlds. There seems to be one too second planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. New for 2020 was the standardization of citizen scientists even artificial intelligence make such discoveries.

In true 2020 style, however, they weren’t all charismatic comets and Earth’s newfound cousins. In an awe-inspiring but kind of disturbing reminder of the violence that is present in the universe, scientists have started a distant black hole that absolutely removes a star
that came too close by a somewhat comical but above all terrifying process called spaghettiification.

Yes, Virginia, this universe has no problem turning you into pasta and eating you for lunch.

And on a really sad note, December kicked off with some wild footage of the collapse of Puerto Rico’s iconic Arecibo radio observatory. For decades, the huge dish in the jungle has helped us better understand and explore the universe.

Sorry to end on a downer. It just seems fitting for the year we’ve had. But space seen through the eyes of astronauts, scientists, and just fans like me, remains one of the brightest silver liners of a year that most would otherwise forget.

I wouldn’t dare tempt fate by saying that 2021 will be even better, but I will note that the next meteor shower is already here, with the peak of the Quadrantids on January 2, while February will see Perseverance makes its landing on Mars.

Keep looking forward and heavenward, and have a happy New Year.