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

Biology and medicine

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was List of mergers and acquisitions by Google, acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsid ...

used artificial intelligence for the first time to predict

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reproduci ...

. *Singapore became the first jurisdiction to approve the sale of cultured meat. *The vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and

Moderna Moderna, Inc. ( ) is an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines. These vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to produ ...

against

Coronavirus disease 2019 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

became the first vaccines developed using

Messenger RNA In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein. mRNA is created during the p ...

and mark the fastest vaccine development and approval, taking only 10 months. *

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

became the first jurisdiction to legalize the medicinal use of psilocybin for mental health treatment.

Energy

QuantumScape QuantumScape is an American company that develops solid state lithium metal batteries for electric cars. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California and employs around 400 people. Investors include Bill Gates and Volkswagen. History Q ...

revealed that it had created the first functioning prototype of a solid-state battery, promising to massively increase battery capacity. * The Chinese

Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), internal designation HT-7U (Hefei Tokamak 7 Upgrade), is an experimental superconducting tokamak magnetic fusion energy reactor in Hefei, China. The Hefei Institutes of Physical Scien ...

was turned on for the first time. The

China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor The China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (中国聚变工程实验堆, CFETR) is a proposed tokamak fusion reactor, which uses a magnetic field in order to confine plasma and generate energy. Presently, tokamak devices are leading candidates fo ...

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.

Environmental sciences

* The

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

has designated the 2020s as the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Space

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Mars 2020 Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover ''Perseverance'', the small robotic, coaxial helicopter '' Ingenuity'', and associated delivery vehicles. Mars 2020 was launched from Ear ...

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. *The Chang'e 5 successfully landed on the surface of the moon in 2020. * 16 September 2021,

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

launched

Inspiration4 Inspiration4 (stylized as Inspirati④n) was a 2021 human spaceflight operated by SpaceX on behalf of Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. The mission launched the Crew Dragon ''Resilience'' on 16 September 2021 at 00:02:56 UTC from Kennedy Sp ...

. It was the first orbital launch of an all-private crew, including first person with a prosthesis who was also the youngest

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...

in space (aged 29). *

Artemis 1 Artemis 1, officially Artemis I and formerly Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), was an uncrewed Moon-orbiting mission. As the first major spaceflight of NASA's Artemis program, Artemis 1 marked the return of the agency to lunar exploration original ...

mission to the Moon launched on 16 November 2022 to test the

Space Launch System The Space Launch System (SLS) is an American super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle developed by NASA. As of 2022, SLS has the highest payload capacity of any rocket in operational service, as well as the greatest liftoff thrust of any r ...

rocket. * The

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope which conducts infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its high resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Spa ...

was successfully launched on 25 December 2021. On 12 July 2022, the first full-color images captured was released to the public which included ''

Webb's First Deep Field Webb's First Deep Field is the first operational image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The deep-field photograph, which covers a tiny area of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is centered on SMACS 0723, a galaxy clus ...

and others''. *

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

hopes to conduct its first

human spaceflight Human spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be ...

Gaganyaan Gaganyaan (Sanskrit IAST: ''gagan-yāna'', ) is an Indian crewed orbital spacecraft intended to be the formative spacecraft of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme. The spacecraft is being designed to carry three people, and a planned upgrad ...

in late 2024. * ESA's ExoMars Rover launches in 2022. * The first component of the Lunar Gateway, a proposed inhabitable space station to be implemented by multiple international space agencies on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, the Power and Propulsion Element, is set to be delivered by an undetermined commercial launch vehicle in 2022. *

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer is scheduled to be launched in 2022. *

founder and entrepreneur

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...

plans to send the first

Starship A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for interstellar travel, traveling between planetary systems. The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 188 ...

to Mars in 2022, paving the way to the colonization of the planet. * NASA plans to send "the first woman and the next man" to the Lunar south pole region via

Artemis 3 Artemis 3 (officially Artemis III) is planned as the first crewed Moon landing mission of the Artemis program and the first crewed flight of the Starship HLS lander. Scheduled for launch in 2025, Artemis 3 is planned to be the second crewed Ar ...

in 2024. * The

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

plans to begin mining the

moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

for natural resources by 2025.

Transport

Air

* In 2021,

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

revealed plans to purchase 15 supersonic

Boom Overture The Boom Overture is a proposed , 65–88 passenger supersonic airliner with of range, which is planned to be introduced in 2029 by Boom Technology. The company claims that with 500 viable routes, there could be a market for 1,000 supersonic ai ...

aircraft by the end of the decade.

Land

* Waymo became the first company to offer self-driving car services to the general public without a human supervisor in

Chandler, Arizona Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). It is bordered to the north and west by Tempe, to the north by Mesa, to the west by Phoenix, to the ...

. *Autonomous delivery vehicles began transporting food to customers in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

in 2021.

Computing and artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

-assisted coding began to emerge in the early 2020s. *

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

passed Bitcoin law to become the first country to give

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...

and

bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

the status of legal tender.

Robotics and machine learning

Physics

* In January 2020, Physicists discovered a unique metal with billions of quantum entangled

electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...

s. *The

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...

will once again begin operation in early 2021; the collider was shut down in December 2018 "to enable major upgrade and renovation works."

Paleontology

Archaeology

References

{{2020s, state=expanded 21st century in science Science and technology by decade 2020s-related lists 2020s decade overviews