These are our favorite science photos of 2021

A volcano revealed, a lung x-rayed, a rocket launched: National Geographic editors selected these 23 fascinating images of science and technology in action.

A person in a silver space suit collects samples among the rocky ground.
Pitchfork in hand, Armando Salazar clambers across sizzling black rock, a precious hunk of lava held in his farm tool’s tines. Strange though the scene may be, it’s another day on the job for Salazar, a Spanish sergeant helping with the emergency response to the La Palma volcanic eruption. Thanks to Salazar and others, scientists are getting fresh samples of the volcano’s rock, which will help them understand the current eruption. (From “Dramatic photos show La Palma volcano’s ongoing eruption,” November 2021.)
Photograph by Arturo Rodríguez
Photos curated byEditors of National Geographic
Text byMichael Greshko
December 7, 2021
14 min read

When one of the volcanoes on La Palma in the Canary Islands began erupting in September, photographer Arturo Rodríguez heard the frantic news broadcasts while in the shower at his home on the neighboring island of Tenerife. He quickly booked a flight and arrived in La Palma a few hours later, where he has worked around the clock to document the volcano’s power and devastation. “I never dreamed about being so close to something like this,” he told National Geographic. “It’s so big, so powerful.”

Rodríguez’s remarkable photographs of this eruption are just some of 23 images selected by National Geographic’s photo editors as our favorite science and technology photos of 2021. 

This year saw photographers chronicle the power and beauty of our world in many ways. Drone photographers explored Iceland’s erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano from the air, watching as lava oozed across newly laid rock. Entrants in this year’s Nikon Small World competition used high-powered cameras and microscopes to reveal life’s marvels at tiny scales, from spiky pollen grains to a glittering wasp.

Several robotic photographers also left Earth’s surface this year to venture to space. NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down in Mars’s Jezero crater, beginning its search for past life while the agency’s experimental helicopter Ingenuity took flight on the red planet. The Lucy spacecraft, launched in October, will power its journey through the Jupiter Trojan asteroid swarms on two massive, fan-like solar arrays, which were captured during testing by Lockheed Martin photographer Patrick Corkery. 

Meanwhile, engineers pushed the boundaries of launching people toward the heavens. On the coast of South Texas, SpaceX’s ambitious Starship rocket launched miles into the sky and then attempted to land upright as the company races to build the biggest rocket ever. And over the deserts of Texas and New Mexico, billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson briefly crossed the threshold of space in vehicles built by companies they had founded.

On the ground, medical workers continued to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, confronting a virus that keeps on mutating as it spreads from person to person. Photographer Dar Yasin captured the extreme difficulty of vaccinating people in the world’s remotest regions, while Raisan Al Farisi bore witness to the exhaustion of a major COVID-19 wave—and the magnitude of the losses that accompanied it. 

Photography has allowed us to see the effects of this disease around the world, and it has even proven a vital tool in the fight against the virus. Paul Tafforeau of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and his colleagues took groundbreaking x-ray scans of human organs this year, including ones that demystified the virus’s devastating effects on our airways. 

From La Palma’s glowing lava to Mars’s dusty hillsides, these striking images showcase the power of photography to document, enlighten, and inspire.

Searching for the solar system's small wonders

Picture of two persons in white lab coats and face masks under golden umbrella.
A solar array for NASA’s Lucy spacecraft unfurls for tests at a Lockheed Martin facility in Colorado. Set to launch in October, Lucy will need two of these arrays to generate power during its 12-year mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. These ancient space rocks, which orbit the sun alongside the giant planet, may hold clues to the solar system’s original layout. (From “The small wonders unlocking secrets of the solar system,” September 2021.)
Photograph by PATRICK H. CORKERY, LOCKHEED MARTIN

When lava becomes a tourist attraction

an aerial view of tourists watching lava flow from the volcano
Rivulets of lava from Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano lurch toward a crowd of onlookers, as seen from the drone of photographer Chris Burkard. Earlier this year, the dazzling eruption drew many thrill-seeking tourists to the island country. (From “Volcano tourism is booming, but is it too risky?” April 2021.)
Photograph by Chris Burkard, National Geographic

A sleeping beauty—with wings and an exoskeleton

Microscopic image of a sleeping cukoo wasp
As imaged by photographer Thorben Danke, a sleeping cuckoo wasp looks like a sparkling jewel. But ruthlessness lies within this curled-up creature: This wasp species lays its eggs in other insects’ nests, and the larvae either eat or starve out their nest-mates. (From “Revel in the tiny marvels seen through a microscope,” September 2021.)
Thorben Danke, Nikon Small World Contest

A volcano’s heavy burden

A green house covered in black volcanic ash in the Las Manchas neighborhood.
Volcanic ash made of shards of rock and glass blankets a house in La Palma’s Las Manchas neighborhood. Ash can build up on homes to the point that roofs collapse—forcing many island residents to prop up their houses with extra wooden pillars. (From “Dramatic photos show La Palma volcano’s ongoing eruption,” November 2021.)
Photograph by Arturo Rodríguez

Burned and nearly buried

A view of skirt of Cumbre Vieja (Old Summit) volcano from Las Manchas village with burned pine trees because the acid rain and SO2.
In some parts of La Palma, gases from the Cumbre Vieja eruption have acidified the falling rain, burning patches of vegetation such as these denuded pine trees. (From “Dramatic photos show La Palma volcano’s ongoing eruption,” November 2021.)
Photograph by Arturo Rodríguez

The seeds that feed the world

Sunflower seed and pollen
Researchers interested in exploring the virtues of sunflowers recently formed a global team to examine the plants’ genetic library. They found that the flower’s genome is 20 percent larger than the human genome and has about twice the number of genes, a vast genetic canvas that has given us 70 species of sunflower. (From “The hidden beauty of the plants that feed the world,” September 2021.)
Scanning Electron Microscope photograph by Robert Dash
SEM of a blueberry seed
At 300-times magnification, a tiny blueberry seed seems coated with scales. Seasonal shifts that bring new pests, extreme weather, and fewer pollinators are affecting blueberries around the world. Wild blueberries are also on the move: As with so many plants in the Northern Hemisphere, the blueberries’ range is moving to higher latitudes, and Quebec now rivals Maine as a source of wild berries. (From “The hidden beauty of the plants that feed the world,” September 2021.)
Scanning Electron Microscope photograph by Robert Dash

Getting vaccines to the world’s remotest places

Healthcare worker looks out from a hill
With a cooler of COVID-19 vaccines in hand, health-care worker Nazir Ahmed looks for shepherds and nomadic herders in the meadows of Tosamaidan, southwest of Srinagar in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In the race to vaccinate people against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, health-care workers have gone to extreme lengths to ensure that remote communities have access to lifesaving inoculations. (From “How COVID-19 vaccines are getting to the world’s remotest places,” August 2021.)
Photograph by Dar Yasin, AP Photo

New variants, new waves of COVID-19

resting workers
In this image taken on June 15, workers wearing protective suits rest after burying a COVID-19 victim in Bandung, the capital of Indonesia’s West Java Province. (From “How dangerous is the new Delta Plus variant? Here’s what we know,” July 2021.)
Photograph by Antara Foto, Raisan Al Farisi, via REUTERS

How COVID-19 affects the lungs’ airways

Left lung of a patient who died of COVID-19.
The lung of a 54-year-old man who died of COVID-19 reveals its internal structure under the brilliant x-ray gleam of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France. These high-resolution scans can pick up blood clotting within the lung’s smallest airways.
Human Organ Atlas

An ancient ocean’s glowing, rocky remnants

Sterling Hill Fluorescent Rock Panel
This wall-size panel of rock, sourced from Sterling Hill in New Jersey, glows in shades of red, orange, and green under an ultraviolet light in a newly renovated exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The rock formed in a now-vanished ocean some 1.2 billion years ago. (From “Earth has lost and gained many oceans. Here's where a new one might appear next,” June 2021.)
Photograph by D. Finnin/©AMNH

Pollen’s whimsical balancing act

Microscopic image of a hibiscus anther
As captured by photographer Guillermo López López under 10-times magnification, these hibiscus pollen grains seem precariously balanced atop an anther, the structure of a flower that makes and disperses pollen. (From “Revel in the tiny marvels seen through a microscope,” September 2021.)
Guillermo López López-Nikon Small World Contest Press Kit Media Contact Kristina Corso 908-278-6225 kcorso@hotpaperlantern.com

False cat, real fossil

Picture of hands in blue medical gloves holding animal skull.
The skull of a false saber-toothed cat, an extinct type of feline-like carnivore, is cradled by head conservator Xènia Aymerich of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont. The specimen is one of more than 70,000 fossils found at the Abocador de Can Mata, a landfill near Barcelona that’s become a paleontologists’ paradise. (From “See the fabulous fossils unearthed in a garbage dump,” June 2021.)
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAOLO VERZONE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Digging for bones in a garbage dump

Picture of persons in hardhats working with chisel and pick.
The soil at Can Mata holds fascinating fossils from about 12.5 to 11.2 million years ago, including species of ancient primates found nowhere else in the world. Paleontologists have been monitoring the dump’s expansion since 2002. (From “See the fabulous fossils unearthed in a garbage dump,” June 2021.)
PHOTOGRAPH BY PAOLO VERZONE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Climbing trees in pursuit of seeds

A tree climber leans over high branches to grab a pine cone.
Climber Robert Beauchamp prepares to collect cones from the top branches of a Ponderosa pine tree in California’s Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest. The seeds Beauchamp seeks will help restore forests scorched by wildfire and offset planet-warming carbon emissions. (From “To regrow forests, the U.S. needs billions of seeds—and many more 'seed hunters,’” November 2021.)
Photograph by Christie Hemm Klok, National Geographic

NASA’s biggest space telescope prepares for launch

The James Webb Space telescope recently unboxed.
After a 5,800-mile voyage by boat from the United States to French Guiana, the James Webb Space Telescope settles into its temporary clean-room home before launch. The elaborate infrared space telescope will provide amazing views of the universe’s earliest days—if it launches safely later this month and unfolds without a hitch. If an issue does arise, there’s no way to repair it: The telescope will be parked roughly a million miles from Earth.
Photograph by Chris Gunn, NASA

A new Mars rover touches down on the red planet

NASA's Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars
On February 18, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in Mars’s Jezero crater, lowered into place by a rocket-propelled “skycrane.” One of Perseverance’s main goals is to cache samples of Martian rock and dust for eventual return to Earth. If Martian microbes ever existed, Perseverance’s samples may contain their tiny fossils.
Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech

The first Mars helicopter takes flight

Ingenuity
The Ingenuity helicopter captured this image of its shadow as it hovered about 10 feet above the Martian surface during its first flight. The little helicopter has now conducted more than a dozen flights, helping to scout out the terrain that Perseverance will explore.
Photograph by NASA

Rubble from an asteroid, returned to Earth

Picture of person working on samples.
Ancient material from the asteroid Ryugu now resides at the Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center in Sagamihara, Japan, brought back to Earth by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft. Scientists hope the sample will help unlock secrets about early planet formation and perhaps even the origins of life on Earth. The spacecraft is now on an extended mission that will take it to another asteroid in 2031. (From “The small wonders unlocking secrets of the solar system,” September 2021.)
Photograph by NORIKO HAYASHI, National Geographic

Virgin Galactic’s biggest flight yet to the edge of space

Richard Branson floating during Unity 22 launch.
On July 11 billionaire Richard Branson, two pilots, and three fellow passengers flew more than 50 miles above Earth’s surface—the U.S. boundary for the edge of space—aboard a spaceplane operated by Branson’s company Virgin Galactic. The company is one of several jockeying to provide a few minutes of weightlessness to wealthy passengers and scientists.
Virgin Galactic

Blue Origin’s first crewed suborbital flight

Jeff Bezos and others celebrate in blue suits.
Nine days after Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos popped open some champagne to celebrate his own jaunt to the edge of space. He and three fellow passengers flew more than 62 miles above Earth’s surface aboard New Shepard, the suborbital rocket operated by Bezos’s company Blue Origin.
Blue Origin

SpaceX’s race to the future of spaceflight

Stacked progression image of the launch and explosive landing of Starship SN9 at SpaceX’s South Texas launch site.
On February 2 SpaceX launched its Starship Serial Number 9 (SN9) prototype rocket on a high-altitude test flight. Though SN9 met an explosive end during its landing attempt, SpaceX successfully landed a follow-on prototype in May. Starship will be the biggest rocket ever built, and it is designed to be fully reusable.
Composite by John Kraus

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