Several rockets saw their first flights in 2021, and other rockets made it to orbit successfully for the first time.

Astra’s Rocket 3 made two launch attempts in 2021. The first launch in August failed spectacularly when one of the engines shut off at liftoff, resulting in the rocket moving sideways until it had burned enough propellant that it was light enough to go upwards, only to fail later in the flight. The next attempt in November 2021 was successful.

The American aerospace company Firefly launched their Alpha rocket in early September. Sadly, it was doomed by an engine failure seconds after liftoff. The Alpha flew for a few minutes but lost control at Max-Q and was detonated by the range safety officer.

In October, South Korea launched their first domestically developed orbital rocket, the KSLV-II. Unfortunately, the third stage shut off early and it did not reach orbit.

Although it’s not an orbital launch, we can’t not talk about SpaceX’s Starship program. SpaceX continued its mid altitude demonstration program with several launches of vehicles SN9, 10, 11, and 15. Most of these attempts ended in a large explosion, but SN-15 landed in one piece and did not explode post landing. In August 2021, SpaceX stacked the SN-20 and Booster 4 vehicles on the Orbital Launch Mount, assembling for the first time what will become the world’s largest rocket. This was a proof of concept as neither stage was flight worthy. The vehicle was un-stacked the same day.

SpaceX still has lots of work to do to be ready for an orbital launch attempt of the Starship vehicle, including finishing the rocket, its launch complex, and getting approval from several US Government agencies to conduct the launch.

NASA’s Space Launch System was finally fully assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building after the completion of testing on the vehicle’s large Core Stage. Like Starship, SLS also has lots of work left to do before launch. It will send NASA’s Orion spacecraft out to an orbit around the Moon on a two-week uncrewed mission to demonstrate its fitness for humans. The first crewed launch is scheduled for later this decade.

2021 was also the year several long delayed space missions finally launched. The plan and some hardware for Nauka dates back to 1995.

On Christmas Day, the JWST finally left Earth onboard one of the last Ariane 5 rockets, much to the annoyance of scicommers everywhere, who had to wake up ridiculously early to cover the launch. However, it did make for a memorable Christmas morning.

The solar panel deployed a bit earlier than the public timeline suggested, but NASA explained that the observatory was able to stabilize its orientation sooner than expected after separation from the Ariane 5 second stage.

As of the posting of this blog, the spacecraft had completed the process of tensioning its five layer sunshield and deployed its secondary mirror. With the deployment of the sunshield layers completed, most of the single point of failure events are over with. The spacecraft is healthy and the primary mirror deployments will come next week. Once the mirrors are deployed, the 18 individual segments of the primary mirror will be carefully aligned with the secondary mirror. It will take about five months to finish calibrating the instruments before releasing images that make use of the telescope’s full potential. However, we will likely see some calibration images in a few weeks’ time. And when they’re released, you can learn all about them from us.

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JWST Launch Video