The Public Domain is a credit.
The launch of the James Webb telescope, the first powered flight on another world, and the Mars Ingenuity helicopter's first powered flight were just a few of the big events of the year.
billionaires battled to reach the final frontier first, an all-civilian crew went into space, and Star Trek's William Shatner spoke about what it meant to see the Earth from the universe.
Here are some highlights.
Red Planet robot duo.
NASA's Perseverance Rover survived seven minutes of terror, when it relied on its automated systems for descent and landing, to land on Mars' Jezero Crater.
Since then, the car-sized robot has been taking photos and drilling for samples for its mission, which is to determine if the Red Planet hosted ancient life forms.
A rock sample return mission is in the works.
The helicopter is affectionately known as "Percy" and it can zap Martian rock and analyze the vapor.
Ingenuity, a four-pound (two kilogram) rotorcraft that in April succeeded in the first powered flight on another heavenly body, just over a century after the Wright brothers' achieved the same feat here on Earth, has performed many more.
Jonathan McDowall, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Agence France-Presse thatPerseverance is the flagship mission.
"Ingenuity is one of these cute, small, cheap little technology demos that NASA can do so well," he said.
The insights gained from Ingenuity could help scientists find signs of life on the moon in the future.
Private spaceflight begins.
In 2001 an American millionaire became the world's first space tourist, but it took 20 more years for private space flight to become a reality.
In July, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos went head to head to see who would be the first non- professional to complete a suborbital spaceflight.
Blue Origin launched three more flights with paying customers and celebrity guests after the British tycoon won that battle.
In September, Musk's SpaceX launched a three-day mission around the Earth with an all-civilian crew.
"After so long this stuff is finally happening and I'm really excited," said Laura Seward Forczyk, author of the forthcoming book "Becoming Off-Worldly."
William Shatner, who played the swashbuckling Captain Kirk on the 1960s TV series "Star Trek," stole the show with a moving account of his experience.
He told reporters that Mother Earth needs protecting.
A Russian crew shot the first feature film in space in 2021, and Japanese tourists made their own visit there on a Russian rocket.
There were a record 19 humans in space when Blue Origin carried out its third crewed mission, the Japanese team were on the International Space Station along with its normal crew, and Chinese taikonauts were in position on their station.
The sight of wealthy elites in the universe has not been universally welcomed, and the space tourism sector has caused a backlash from some who said there were more pressing issues to face.
Globalization of space.
The United States and the Soviet Union dominated space during the Cold War.
China, India, and others are flexing their space flight muscles as a result of the explosion of the commercial sector.
China is the only country to have both a space station and a Mars rover in the same year.
McDowall said that since China decided to go big on space, they've been in catch up mode. "Now they're kind of there, and they're starting to do things that the US hasn't done."
The first Arab nation and fifth overall to reach the planet was the United Arab Emirates.
Russia launched a missile at one of its own satellites, becoming the fourth country to hit a spacecraft from the ground, in a move that renewed concerns about the growing space arms race.
Washington slammed Moscow for its reckless test, which generated over 1,500 pieces of large orbital debris, which were dangerous for low Earth orbit missions.
Coming soon...
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion wonder that will peer back 13 billion years in time, closed out the year.
"It's arguably the most expensive, single scientific platform ever created," said the chief advocate of the Planetary Society.
To push the boundaries of our knowledge about the universe, we had to build something that could access the past.
It will reach a space landmark a million miles from Earth in a matter of weeks, and start up and calibrate its systems around June.
The launch of Artemis 1 will precede the return of humans later this decade, when NASA's giant Space Launch System (SLS) will carry the Orion capsule to the Moon and back.
NASA wants to use lunar habitats and lessons learned there for future missions to Mars.
Observers are encouraged that the program launched by Donald Trump has continued under Joe Biden, even if he hasn't been as vocal in his support.
Sometime next fall, NASA's DART probe will smash into an asteroid to begin its course.
The proof-of-concept test is a dry run for the real thing, should humanity ever need to stop a giant space rock from wiping out life on Earth.
2021.
A year of space tourism, flights on Mars, China's rise, and more was retrieved fromphys.org on December 30, 2021.
The document is copyrighted. Any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research cannot be reproduced without written permission. The content is not intended to be used for anything other than information purposes.
