2021 in spaceflight

The year 2021 broke the record for the most orbital launch attempts till then and most humans in space concurrently despite the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.

Overview

Astronomy and astrophysics

The IXPE telescope was launched on a Falcon 9 on 9 December 2021. The long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope, the largest optical space telescope ever built, was launched to the Sun–Earth point by a European Ariane 5 rocket on 25 December 2021.

Planetary science

Spacecraft from three Mars exploration programs from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States arrived at Mars in February.
The Perseverance rover landed on 18 February. As part of the Mars 2020 mission, the Ingenuity solar-powered drone performed the first powered aircraft flight on another planet in human history. It has a communications link with the Perseverance rover and used autonomous control during its short scripted flights.
The Tianwen-1 lander and Zhurong rover landed on 14 May, after conducting a geological survey of the landing site from orbit. Zhurong was deployed on the Martian surface on 22 May, making China the second country in history to successfully deploy a rover on Mars. The rover then dropped a remotely controlled camera on the ground, which took a group photo of the lander and rover on 1 June.
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. Trojans are asteroids which share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test was launched on 24 November. It was a space probe that visited the double asteroid Didymos and demonstrated the kinetic effects of crashing an impactor spacecraft into an asteroid moon for planetary defense purposes. The mission was intended to test whether a spacecraft impact could successfully deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
The Juno probe continues its exploration of Jupiter. Originally, its mission was intended to conclude on 31 July by burning up in Jupiter's atmosphere following its 35th perijove. However, on 8 January 2021, NASA announced that the probe was granted a second mission extension through September 2025, which could include future flybys of Europa and Io.
Lastly the Tianwen-1 orbiter released another
deployable camera in Mars orbit on 31 December 2021, to image itself and Northern Mars Ice Cap from Mars orbit.

Lunar exploration

China's Chang'e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover reached 1000-days milestone on the far side of the Moon while still being operational.

Earth science satellites

The Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite was launched 27 September.

Human spaceflight

The first feature-length fiction film to be filmed in space by professional film-makers, the Russian film The Challenge was filmed onboard ISS in October 2021 by Russian director Klim Shipenko with actress Yulia Peresild starring.
A new record was set for the largest number of humans in orbit on 16 September 2021, and a new record for the largest number of humans in space at one time was set on 11 December 2021.

Space Stations

China began construction of the Tiangong space station with the launch of the Tianhe core module on 29 April 2021. A Tianzhou cargo delivery mission was launched on 29 May 2021, and the Shenzhou 12 crewed mission on 17 June 2021. Shenzhou 13 has launched a second crew on 15 October and conducted their first EVA on 7 November, making Wang Yaping the first Chinese female astronaut to perform a spacewalk.
The ISS saw one module being permanently removed from the orbiting complex and two new modules being added. Pirs became the first habitable element of the station to be decommissioned, undocked, and deorbited on 26 July 2021 to make room for Nauka, the first new module in the Russian Orbital Segment of ISS in years. The Russian made Nauka module was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 21 July 2021. Nauka carried the European Robotic Arm along with it to the station. The ISS was also joined by a new Russian node module Prichal, launched 24 November 2021.

Space tourism

In the United States, Virgin Galactic conducted the first suborbital human spaceflight from New Mexico on 22 May 2021 with SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity. Two astronauts were on board, Frederick Sturckow and David Mackay. The flight was also the first suborbital human spaceflight from Spaceport America. A second flight, carrying company founder Richard Branson and three other passengers, was conducted on 11 July 2021.
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 2021. Blue Origin's second crewed suborbital flight of New Shepard occurred 13 October 2021, this time not including Bezos but the actor William Shatner and 3 others. The third flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard, again a suborbital flight, took place 11 December 2021. This was the first flight with six passengers on board, the full number of passengers the New Shepard is designed for.
On 16 September 2021 SpaceX launched the Inspiration4 mission. The mission successfully completed the first orbital spaceflight with only private citizens aboard. The mission was privately financed by Jared Isaacman who participated in the flight with 3 other passengers. The mission orbited the Earth at high orbit and splashed down in the Atlantic, lasting almost three days.
On 8 December 2021 the Russian Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft began a 12-day space tourism mission to ISS, resuming space tourism activity in the ISS after over a decade; the previous space tourist to visit the station was the Canadian Guy Laliberté in 2009. The 2021 space tourist mission took two tourists, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant Yozo Hirano, to the station.

Rocket innovation

The trend towards cost reduction in access to orbit continued with the continued development of smaller rockets by multiple commercial launch providers and larger next-generation vehicles by more established players.
While multiple high-profile next-generation rockets were originally planned to make their maiden orbital flights in 2021, all were ultimately shifted to 2022 and beyond due to development delays. These included the maiden flight of Vulcan Centaur, designed to gradually replace Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy at lower costs, which was postponed in June 2021; the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries's H3 launch vehicle, planned to cost less than half that of its predecessor H-IIA; the maiden launch of NASA's Space Launch System super heavy-lift rocket on the Artemis 1, which was postponed mid-year to early 2022; and the first orbital test flight of a prototype of the SpaceX Starship.
The latter rocket's development continued through 2021 at SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas, with a suborbital testing campaign continuing from the previous year. Starship prototype SN15 was the first testbed of the future rocket family to survive a launch and soft touchdown on 5 May 2021. The first-ever full-stack fit check of Starship prototype SN20 with the booster stage followed in August.

Orbital and suborbital launches

Deep-space rendezvous

Extravehicular activities (EVAs)

Start date/time	Duration	End time	Spacecraft	Crew	Remarks
11:28	6 hours	18:24	ISS Quest	Victor J. Glover	Installation of the exposed platform Airbus Bartolomeo
1 February 12:57	5 hours	18:17	ISS Quest	Victor J. Glover	Install a new lithium-ion battery on the P-4 truss, where an earlier lithium replacement blew a fuse in April 2019. Upgrade high definition video and camera gear on ISS exterior.
28 February 11:12	7 hours	18:16	ISS Quest	Victor J. Glover	Install modification kit to prepare Station for new solar array installation.
5 March 11:37	6 hours 56 minutes	18:33	ISS Quest	Soichi Noguchi	Additional upgrades and Kibo module platform work
13 March 13:14	6 hours 47 minutes	20:01	ISS Quest	Victor Glover	P6 fixes and installations
2 June 05:53	7 hours 19 minutes	13:12	Poisk Airlock		Second in a series of spacewalks to decommission the Pirs Airlock which is scheduled to be replaced by Nauka in the summer of 2021. Task involve installing a flow control valve on Zarya, removing docking antennas and their cables on Pirs, removing EVA gap spanners from Pirs, transferring experiments over to Poisk, installing Test containers on the hatches, and relocating a Strela crane over to Poisk. Getahead task involve cleaning the windows on the Russian segment, and doing an inspection of Zvezda and plugging any leaks they find.
16 June 12:11	7 hours 15 minutes	19:26	ISS Quest	Thomas Pesquet	First in a series of spacewalks to install the iROSA solar arrays on the P6 Truss. While working on releasing the arrays from their launch carrier, Kimbrough's spacesuit experienced issues with its Display and Control Module, so he was sent back to the airlock to connect to station umbilicals to restart it. The restart was successful, although it delayed the EVA. Additionally, an issue was discovered with his suit's sublimator, which threatened to end the EVA prematurely; this was determined to be a false reading, allowing work to resume. Following this, the astronauts successfully released the solar arrays and installed them on the P6 mounting bracket. A subsequent attempt to unfold the two rolled arrays, which were folded side by side during launch, failed due to interference from a structure near the mounting area. As the EVA was then past the six-hour mark, ground controllers instructed the astronauts to finish securing the array structure to the station, photograph the work site, and return to the airlock. The next steps of unfolding the array pair, making electrical connections, and unfurling the rolled arrays were postponed to a future EVA pending ground analysis of the interference issue
20 June 11:42	6 hours 28 minutes	18:10	ISS Quest	Thomas Pesquet	Second in a series of spacewalks that will install the iROSA solar arrays on the P6 Truss. The spacewalkers managed to connect iROSA with a little elbow grease and at 16:40 hours deployed it and it is receiving power.
25 June 11:52	6 hours 45 minutes	18:37	ISS Quest	Thomas Pesquet	Third in a series of spacewalks that will install the ROSA solar arrays on the P6 Truss. If time allows the astronauts will also route cables to the Russian segment and install a WiFi router on the truss.
4 July 00:11	6 hours 46 minutes	06:57	TSS Tianhe	Tang Hongbo	First Chinese spacewalk since Shenzhou 7 in 2008. Installation work was done on the exterior of the Tiangong space station.
20 August 00:38	5 hours 55 minutes	06:33	TSS Tianhe	Liu Boming	Second EVA of Shenzhou 12 crew to install foot stops and a workbench on the station's large robotic arm, a pump set for its thermal control system, and additional work on the panoramic camera.
3 September 14:35	7 hours 54 minutes	22:35	Poisk Airlock	Pyotr Dubrov	First in a series of spacewalks to outfit Nauka. The cosmonauts will route cables which were recently temp stowed on PMA 1 along Zarya to the Zvezda transfer compartment where they will be mated to Nauka. The spacewalk will conclude with the installation of handrails and the first experiments on the new module. If time allows the cosmonauts will change Biorisk containers and will retrieve and replace two exposure experiments from Poisk and bring them inside.
9 September 15:00	7 hours 25 minutes	22:16	Poisk Airlock	Pyotr Dubrov	Second in a series of spacewalks to outfit Nauka. The cosmonauts continued where they left off from EVA 5, finishing Ethernet cable connections and installing four EVA handrails on Nauka. They subsequently connected cable bundles between Nauka and Zvezda, providing Ethernet links between those modules as well as links for Nauka's TV cameras and docking navigation antennas. They then mounted three Biorisk microorganism exposure experiment modules on the exterior of the Poisk airlock module. Additionally, the cosmonauts took survey photos of the exterior of the Russian segment of the station, including the Kurs docking antennas of the Progress MS-17 cargo vehicle and external sensors on Nauka; they also realigned a thruster plume measurement unit on Poisk. Finally, the cosmonauts tied together and jettisoned a junk cable reel cover along with some leftover insulation from the Biorisk experiments.
12 September 12:30	6 hours 54 minutes	19:09	ISS Quest	Thomas Pesquet	Install the 3B modification kit on the P4 Truss for the arrival of SpaceX CRS-24 with the final portside IROSA solar arrays. Install a wifi router on the truss, and route and mate cables on the US side of PMA 1 to power up the Nauka module. Replace a Floating Point Measuring Unit and a Static Charge Micrometer external component on the S1 Truss to prepare the port side for it long term configuration.
7 November 10:51	6 hours 25 minutes	17:16	TSS Tianhe	Wang Yaping	They first installed foot stoppers and a working platform to the robotic arm before they set to work together to install a suspension device and transfer connectors to the robotic arm. Wang now becomes the first female Chinese astronaut to conduct extravehicular activities.
2 December 11:15	6 hours 32 minutes	17:45	ISS Quest	Kayla Barron	Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron conducted an EVA mainly to replace the Port 1 Truss S-Band Communications Antenna
26 December 10:44	6 hours 11 minutes	16:55	TSS Tianhe	Ye Guangfu	The astronauts deployed an external camera, installed a foot restraint platform, and tested various methods of translation of objects outside the station.