2021: The year science saved us and promised to save us again

Landing on Mars and a life-saving vaccination programme ... examples if they were needed of the power of science and our ongoing need for new discoveries, explains Steven Cutts

Nasa’s Perseverance team reacts to news of the spacecraft’s touch-down on Mars (Getty)

From a tech point of view, 2021 started with a spectacular landing on Mars by the latest Nasa rover. Using off-the-shelf digital cameras, the scientists managed to film the whole spectacular process and play it back in glorious colour. An event that might only have appealed to astronomy geeks had the feel of an action movie.

But there was more good news to follow. We’re taking it for granted now but the arrival of the vaccination programme was about as good an advert as any for the benefits of modern technology. For once the British seemed to be ahead of the competition, rolling the stuff out in record time.

The fact that the government didn’t really have a lot of follow-up data didn’t seem to bother anybody, neither did the fact that the government ordered several different products. (Let’s face it, one batch of government ordered PPE turned out to be a dead duck and there was every reason to believe that some of the vaccine manufacturers might let us down in the same way.)