Recently there has been a lot going on in the world scientifically. Multiple new discoveries and breakthroughs on old ones have been happening in the past months and they all are very important to the industry and the world as a whole. Many discoveries have gone mostly unrecognized due to the majority of the news being focused on Covid-19 and Covid-19 breakthroughs. But today I will recognize the most prolific and important scientific discoveries of the past year. 

Popular Science magazine this year named NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope the Innovation of the Year. This Webb telescope is camped hundreds of thousands of miles farther out, sitting in Earth’s shadow, where it is permanently blocked from sunlight. Its view is even further protected by a multi-layer sun-shield. Popular Science spoke about the telescope and said, “It can see deep into fields of forming stars. It can peer 13 billion years back in time to ancient galaxies, still in their nursery.” Compared to this telescope, the Hubble Telescope can only see a slight glimpse of space. 

This summer, a group of Yale scientists succeeded in reviving cells in the hearts, liver, kidneys, and brains of pigs that had been dead in a lab for over an hour. They accomplished this by using a device similar to a heart-lung machine to pump a solution they created themselves, named OrganEx, into the pigs’ bodies. The pigs’ hearts started beating as the solution was sent through their veins. The pigs weren’t able to be brought back alive, but their organs started to function again. This breakthrough will hopefully help increase the supply of human organs available for transplant for patients in need. 

This past year, NASA proved with its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission that it has the ability to deflect a giant space rock off course so it doesn’t collide with our planet. This means movies like Armageddon will very fortunately never come true. “All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said Bill Nelson, NASA Administration. “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us.”

These are just a few of the very important discoveries of this past year and all of them will change the science industry forever. These will help the course of space exploration, health, and so much more.