2020s in science and technology

This article is a summary of the 2020s in science and technology.

Biology and medicine

• DeepMind used artificial intelligence for the first time to predict protein folding.^[1]
• Singapore became the first jurisdiction to approve the sale of cultured meat.^[2]
• The vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna against Coronavirus disease 2019 became the first vaccines developed using messenger RNA^[3] and mark the fastest vaccine development and approval, taking only 10 months.^[4]
• Oregon became the first jurisdiction to legalize the medicinal use of psilocybin for mental health treatment.^[5]

Energy

• QuantumScape revealed that it had created the first functioning prototype of a solid-state battery, promising to massively increase battery capacity.^[6]
• The Chinese Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak was turned on for the first time.^[7] The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor is being planned for commissioning later in the decade.
• Group14 Technologies has patented SCC55, a silicon-carbon composite, leading to 50% more in fully lithiated volumetric energy density than graphite used in conventional lithium-ion battery anodes.^[8][9]

Environmental sciences

• The United Nations has designated the 2020s as the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.^[10]

Space

• NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which includes the Perseverance rover, was successfully launched on 30 July 2020 to study the habitability of Mars in preparation for future human missions.^[11]
• The Chang'e 5 successfully landed on the surface of the Moon in 2020.^[12]
• 16 September 2021, SpaceX launched Inspiration4. It was the first orbital launch of an all-private crew, including the first person with a prosthesis who was also the youngest person in space (aged 29).
• NASA's Artemis 1 mission to the Moon launched on 16 November 2022 to test the Space Launch System rocket.
• The James Webb Space Telescope was successfully launched on 25 December 2021. On 12 July 2022, the first full-color images captured were released to the public which included Webb's First Deep Field and others.^[13]
• India hopes to conduct its first human spaceflight, Gaganyaan in late 2024.^[14]
• The first component of the Lunar Gateway, a proposed inhabitable space station to be implemented by multiple international space agencies on the Moon, the Power and Propulsion Element, is set to be delivered by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy in November 2024.^[15]
• ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer was launched on 14 April 2023.^[16]
• SpaceX founder and entrepreneur Elon Musk plans to send the first Starship to Mars in 2029, paving the way to the colonization of the planet.^[17]
• NASA plans to send "the first woman and the next man" to the Lunar south pole region via Artemis 3 in 2025.
• The European Space Agency plans to begin mining the Moon for natural resources by 2025.^[18]

Transport

Air

• In 2021, United Airlines revealed plans to purchase 15 supersonic Boom Overture aircraft by the end of the decade.^[19]

Land

• Waymo became the first company to offer self-driving car services to the general public without a human supervisor in Chandler, Arizona.^[20]
• Autonomous delivery vehicles began transporting food to customers in Texas in 2021.^[21]

Computing and artificial intelligence

• Artificial intelligence-assisted coding began to emerge in the early 2020s.^[22]
• El Salvador passed Bitcoin law to become the first country to give cryptocurrency and bitcoin the status of legal tender.

Robotics and machine learning

Physics

• In January 2020, Physicists discovered a unique metal with billions of quantum entangled electrons.^[23]
• The Large Hadron Collider will once again begin operation in early 2021;^{[24][25][26][27]} the collider was shut down in December 2018 "to enable major upgrade and renovation works."^[24]

Paleontology

Archaeology

See also

• History of science and technology
• List of science and technology articles by continent
• List of years in science
  • 2024 in science
• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on science and technology
• History of technology by type
• List of science timelines

References

This page was last edited on 8 May 2024, at 05:21