There are an insane amount of cool space things happening in 2021

Writing about the space industry kept me sane during the tumultuous and trying times of 2020. While the pandemic swept around the world and America dealt with extremely divisive social and political issues, the space industry more or less plugged along.

Three missions launched to Mars. NASA got back into the human spaceflight game, thanks to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touched an asteroid, while a Japanese vehicle returned with several grams of asteroid regolith, and China brought some Moon rocks back to Earth. In South Texas, some Starships lived, and some Starships died. All of it was glorious to watch.

As we look ahead to a new year, there is as much, if not more, space goodness to come. I asked readers for suggestions on Twitter about what they’re anticipating in the coming year and received more than 400 responses. This list is a distillation of those ideas, plus some of my own, to compile the space goodness we most have to look forward to in 2021. Spoiler alert: There’s a lot.

But first, a cautionary note: History has taught us not all of this will happen (see, for example, last year’s space preview). And if a rocket or other major technical program has a timeline culminating in a “Q4” flight next year this far out, it will very likely slip into the following year. Nevertheless, we’re making our best guess at what could happen this year in space.

The Mars fleet arrives

Three Mars missions launched from Earth during the summer of 2020, and all three are now approaching the red planet. The big question is, will all three make it safely there in February?

The United Arab Emirates’ first mission to the red planet, Mars Hope, is due to arrive on February 9. At this time, the spacecraft will make a challenging maneuver to slow down and enter orbit around Mars with an altitude above the planet as low as 1,000km. If all goes well, the spacecraft will spend a Martian year—687 Earth days—studying the planet’s atmosphere and better understanding its weather.

China has not said when, exactly, that its ambitious Tianwen-1 mission will arrive at Mars, but it’s expected in mid-February. After the spacecraft enters orbit, it will spend a couple of months preparing to descend to the surface, assessing the planned landing site in the Utopia Planitia region. Then, China will attempt to become only the second country to soft-land a spacecraft on Mars that survives for more than a handful of seconds. It will be a huge moment for the country’s space program.