There’s nothing like a pandemic to give people time to contemplate the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Over the course of the year, uber-rich tourists, including a Star Trek legend, ventured into space. Government and privately owned space travel companies reached new milestones, and scientists continued to make discoveries.
After a Mars-bound spacecraft reached its destination 300 million miles from Earth earlier this year, NASA succeeded in its first flight of a robotic aircraft on another planet.
Ingenuity, a small 4-pound helicopter that hitched a ride with the spacecraft, lifted 10 feet above Mars for just over 39 seconds in the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet. MiMi Aung, Ingenuity’s project manager, called the April 19 achievement “our Wright brothers moment.”
Since then, Ingenuity has had more airtime, with over a dozen flights. In the future, flying robotic scouts may become regular sidekicks for rovers and astronauts.
“We don’t know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us,” acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a press statement. “But today’s results indicate the sky — at least on Mars — may not be the limit.”
Two months before the drone hovered over Mars for the first time, its ride, carrying the Perseverance rover, safely touched down. The journey took seven months at more than 12,000 mph. Perseverance is one of three Mars missions going on right now: The United Arab Emirates and China also arrived in February.
Perseverance, NASA’s ninth Mars rover, could be the key to answering some of the universe’s greatest questions. The mission is to search for evidence of former life on the desertlike planet, a reason why it landed on a narrow strip in an ancient river delta.
Over the next couple of years, the car-size rover will use a seven-foot arm to unearth (Or should we say “unmars?”) rock and soil samples that could contain signs of old microscopic life.
How old, you say? Oh, maybe 3-or-so billion years.