SPACE IN 2021

Sixty years ago, with Russia and the United States at each other’s throats, space exploration was a pawn in a wider campaign for geopolitical and ideological supremacy. When Yuri Gagarin travelled into Earth orbit in April 1961, the rockets of his day were little more than converted weapons of war.

Today, problems between nations remain fraught, but against many odds space exploration has thrived. Countries which once aimed rockets at each other now use the descendants of those rockets for peaceable ends. Former enemies work side by side on the International Space Station, sending missions to Mars seems almost commonplace and our tiny position in the cosmos has been revealed as never before. Having endured one of our worst years in recent memory, space exploration stands apart as a sphere where 2021 has a truly optimistic outlook.

HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

While NASA sets its eyes on returning people to the Moon, commercial spaceflight is looking set to take over low-Earth orbit

A rocket larger and more powerful than any in the world will open a new chapter in human spaceflight in 2021, as Florida reverberates under