2020 in spaceflight

This article documents notable spaceflight events during the year 2020.

The GECAM A and B satellites were launched on 9 December. They were built for research in electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational waves.

Three missions to Mars were launched in 2020, including two rovers, two orbiters, and a lander. NASA has launched the Mars 2020 mission, which includes the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, and will cache samples for eventual return to Earth. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has launched its Tianwen-1 mission, which includes an orbiter, a lander, a small rover and a group of deployable and remote cameras; it is China's first mission to another planet using its own delivery vehicle. Finally, the United Arab Emirates, in partnership with American universities, has launched the Hope Mars Mission orbiter on a Japanese rocket.

In November, China launched Chang'e 5, the first sample-return mission to the Moon since Luna 24 in 1976. Chang'e 5 used the recently developed Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket. The mission performed the first-ever robotic lunar orbit rendezvous and returned 1.7 kg (3.7 lb) of lunar soil and rock samples on 16 December.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission landed on asteroid 101955 Bennu in October to obtain a surface sample for return to Earth. JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission returned samples of 162173 Ryugu to Earth on 5 December 2020, with its re-entry vehicle recovered in Woomera, Australia.

One solar mission was launched: ESA's Solar Orbiter, on 10 February 2020, intended to study the Sun's heliosphere. Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, decreased its minimal distance to the Sun further to 14.2 million km.

ESA's Sentinel-6 ocean topography measuring satellite was launched on 21 November.

The launch of the TARANIS satellite, planned to study transient events in the Earths atmosphere, failed on 17 November.