Space Exploration - Rewind 2021

As most of the world slowed to a pandemic-induced halt this year, the space industry rocketed forward. The Perseverance rover landed on Martian surface on 18 February. Whereas Chinese Tianwen-1 lander and Zhurong rover landed on 14 May. Lucy, a NASA space probe, was launched on 16 October and began a 12-year journey to seven different asteroids, visiting six Jupiter trojans, and one Main Belt asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched on 24 November. It is a space probe that will visit the double asteroid Didymos and demonstrate the kinetic effects of crashing an impactor spacecraft into an asteroid moon for planetary defense purposes. The mission is intended to test whether a spacecraft impact could successfully deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The first crewed flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft successfully sent four civilians, including company founder Jeff Bezos, into space just above the Kármán line on 20 July 202