---
title: "2010s in science and technology"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_in_science_and_technology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:38:08.831866+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Drones became increasingly popular, especially in the assistance of making deliveries, aerial photography, and drone racing.
Electric and hybrid vehicles became popular in many countries in the Western world during the decade. Notable electric vehicles include the Chevrolet Volt, which became the world's top selling plug-in hybrid of all time with over 100,000 units sold in 2015. Other hybrid vehicles have also been noted such as the Porsche Panamera and BMW i3.
Self-driving cars, while still in their infancy, were widely tested throughout the 2010s with significant progress. Google developed Waymo, the world's first self-driving car, to be licensed for use on public roads in 2011. In 2018, a woman in Tempe, Arizona became the first recorded casualty of an accident involving an autonomous vehicle.
Automaker Volkswagen is alleged to have been involved in worldwide rigging of diesel emissions tests in 2015, affecting an estimated 11 million vehicles globally.
The trend of shared mobility grew significantly during the decade. Carsharing, bike-sharing, and scooter-sharing services saw substantial growth as multiple economic, social and technological factors such as developments in "last mile" transportation helped changed the way people think about modern transportation, particularly in the Western world.
The world's first 100% low-floor tram with articulated bogies, Škoda 15 T, began operations in Riga, Latvia.

== Space ==

Spaceflight became increasingly privatized, including crewed spaceflight. SpaceX captures a significant share of the commercial launch market with Falcon 9. Falcon 9 became the first rocket to land its booster propulsively for reuse, in 2019 most flights reused boosters. Several other companies started working on partially reusable rockets while SpaceX started development of a fully reusable rocket, Starship. Towards the end of the decade around 100 companies were developing rockets for the small satellite market, some have made test flights and Rocketlab's Electron made multiple commercial flights. The Space Shuttle was retired in 2011. SpaceX and Boeing developed commercial crewed spacecraft for orbital flights (SpaceX Dragon 2, Starliner), Dragon 2 made its first crewed flights in 2020. Blue Origin develops the crewed New Shepard for suborbital flights. Virgin Galactic develops a spacecraft for suborbital flights and performs first crewed flights. NASA Dawn probe was the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies, the first spacecraft to visit either Vesta or Ceres, and the first to orbit a dwarf planet, arriving at Ceres in March 2015, a few months before New Horizons flew by Pluto in July 2015.
Other notable developments in astronomy and spaceflight over the decade included:

2011: NASA announced that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons.
2011: The United States' Space Shuttle program officially ended following its last mission, STS-135, flown by Space Shuttle Atlantis.
2012: SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft became the first private commercial spacecraft to attach to the International Space Station, the first commercial spacecraft to rendezvous with another spacecraft.
2012: NASA landed the Curiosity rover in Gale crater on Mars.
2013: The Chinese Chang'e 3 landed on the Moon, the first Lunar landing in 37 years.
2014: The Philae probe from the Rosetta spacecraft landed on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
2014: The Orion spacecraft completed its first test flight, an unmanned orbital and reentry flight.
2015: NASA's Dawn probe entered orbit around Ceres, becoming the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet.
2015: NASA announced that liquid water had been found on Mars.
2015: NASA's New Horizons probe became the first spacecraft to reach Pluto, completing its main mission.
2015: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed after a launch, making it the first rocket to successfully return and perform a vertical landing.
2016: The ESA and Roscosmos launched the joint ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter on a mission to Mars.
2016: SpaceX lands the first reusable rocket, a CRS-8 rocket on a droning platform at sea.
2016: NASA's Juno spacecraft enters orbit around Jupiter and begins a 20-month survey of the planet.
2016: Solar Impulse 2 becomes the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the Earth.
2016: Proxima Centauri b is discovered as closest exoplanet to Earth that may be habitable.
2016: NASA launches OSIRIS-REx, its first asteroid sample return mission. The probe will visit Bennu and is expected to return with samples in 2023.
2016: The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, the largest radio telescope in the world, built in Guizhou, China, makes its first light.
2018: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket successfully performs its first flight. As of its launch it was the most powerful rocket in operation.
2018: NASA's Kepler mission ends after the spacecraft runs out of fuel.
2018: NASA's Dawn mission concludes after it runs out of hydrazine fuel.
2019: Chinese probe Chang'e 4 becomes the first human-made object to land on the far side of the Moon.
2019: NASA concludes the 15-year Opportunity rover mission after being unable to wake the rover from hibernation.
2019: The first image of the supermassive black hole inside galaxy Messier 87 was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope.