Astronomy and Space

2020s

The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties" or "two thousand (and) twenties") is the current decade of the Gregorian and Julian calendars that began on 1 January 2020 and will end on 31 December 2029. The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath marked the early 2020s, which triggered a global economic recession, sustained rise in global inflation, supply chain crisis, and autocratisation. Governments worldwide issued stay-at-home orders during the early pandemic, leading to a widespread use of teleconferencing, online learning, e-commerce, and food delivery services. In terms of politics, the 2020s has seen a rise in populist and anti-establishment movements across the world on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum, along with anti-government demonstrations and revolts, including the Gen Z protests. The decade saw an escalation of military conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022, the Gaza war and genocide since 2023, the 2025 Twelve-Day War, and the 2026 Iran war. By the middle of the decade, multiple journalists, economists, and political scientists had increasingly begun to refer to China as a superpower due to its enormous influence in the fields of geopolitics, technology, manufacturing, economics and culture. Technology has continued to evolve in the 2020s. Throughout the decade, generative artificial intelligence-based applications, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, became widespread, allowing users to instantly generate sophisticated texts, images, and media. The growth of cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence has led to the cryptocurrency bubble and AI spring. India and China expanded their space exploration programs,, with China assembling its space station Tiangong in 2022. The United States has led space exploration, including with the Artemis II crewed lunar flyby in 2026. Both the U.S. and China have vowed to return humans to the lunar surface by 2030. During the early part of this decade, the world population grew from 7.7 billion people to ~8 billion people. In 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world. With multiple extreme weather events and ecological crises continuing to escalate, several world leaders have called the 2020s the "decisive decade" for climate action.

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See also

• ▸Association in Scotland to Research into Astronautics
• ▸Blue Mosque, Istanbul
• ▸41 G. Arae

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