Many scientific initiatives had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic that has been with us for many months now. They couldn’t be completed during 2020, so 2021 has a host of events waiting to materialize . Today we will review the most outstanding ones that, hopefully, there is no problem for them to see the light in this 2021 that now begins.
Although we have had a few notable events, such as the incredible planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in December 2020 , the successful launch of the Crew Dragon capsule by Space X and NASA or even the launch of the Perseverance rover within the Mars 2020 mission, which is scheduled to land on Mars in February 2021 in Jezero crater. Our next Martian rover has many interesting instruments such as PIXL, which will measure the chemical composition of rocks, Moxie which will generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide, SHERLOCK, mounted on Perseverance’s robotic arm, which will detect minerals, organic molecules and possible biosignals thanks to its spectrometer, a laser and a camera and, of course, the SuperCam, which will seek to identify the chemical and molecular composition of the rocks and the reddish Martian soil and the masCam-Z Color, which will take panoramic, full-color, three-dimensional images of both the surface and atmosphere of Mars.
2021 has great things in store for us. Overcoming the coronavirus pandemic that plagues the entire planet is one of them, but although the memory of 2020 is clouded by the memory of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 augurs great challenges and reasons to move forward. One of the most anticipated projects in the field of astronomy is the launch of the James Webb space telescope, which will replace, with its advanced technology, the Spitzer telescopes and the historic Hubble, which has already been in operation for 30 years. The release of the SDSS-IV Sloan Digital Sky Survey is also planned, with which we will learn new data from the Milky Way, from nearby galaxies and also from the distant universe.
But this is not all. Let’s see what 2021 has in store for us.
