Many new space records were set in 2021, most notably the first powered flight on another planet. NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter has traveled almost three kilometers over the Martian surface during its 18 flights and reached a top speed of over 20 knots. Other firsts include the first reuse of a crewed capsule and first flight of a reused capsule on a reused booster, on the SpaceX Crew 2 missions. Finally, the first orbital spaceflight with only private citizens onboard, Inspiration 4, launched in September.

2021 was the year of Martian arrivals as well. After a roughly six-month trip, three missions that launched in 2020 arrived at Mars.   These included NASA’s Perseverance Rover, the United Arab Emirates Hope orbiter, and China’s first successful Mars orbiter,  Tianwen-1 with a lander/rover combo called Zhurong.  NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers both drove about three kilometers over the Martian surface during the year. Perseverance, the newer of the two rovers set a record for the longest drive on a Martian day and the fastest rover on Mars. So far, it has collected six samples of rock and atmosphere during its first ten months on Mars.

2021 was also the year of the space station, with Russia launching two new modules to the International Space Station: Nauka and Prichal. Nauka’s arrival was exciting — and not in a good way. After it docked with the ISS, the thrusters did not shut off which spun the entire station five hundred and forty degrees on its long axis. Before it could get much worse, the thrusters ran out of propellant and stopped firing. No astronauts or cosmonauts were harmed during the joy ride.

The arrival of the Prichal node module was much less stressful. It simply launched and docked without any trouble

In order to make room for Nauka, the  Pirs module was retired. It was un-docked from the station on July 26th and deorbited by a Progress spacecraft to burn up in the atmosphere. This was the first retirement of a permanent ISS module.

China launched the first module of their new space station. The launch of Tianhe left the Long March 5B rocket’s core stage in orbit to decay uncontrolled. After a few days it burnt up over the Indian Ocean — fortunately not hitting anyone or anything.

Since launch the station has been visited by six astronauts in two crewed spacecraft, Shenzhou 12 and 13. It has also hosted two uncrewed resupply spacecraft: Tianzhou 2 and 3. Shenzhou 12 tripled the amount of time a Chinese crew spent in space on a single mission with a 90 day flight. Shenzhou 13, currently in orbit, is expected to double to 180 days in space.