Spacecraft, telescopes, and rovers are our eyes all through the Photo voltaic System. Because of them, the Cosmos has by no means felt nearer.
In 2022, we revisited acquainted vistas with a brand new lens and noticed phenomena beforehand thought-about science fiction. This 12 months, the James Webb Area Telescope (JWST) started to “unfold the Universe” as promised, peering billions of years again into the guts of distant galaxies. Juno, Perseverance, BepiColombo, and different missions continued to beam again photographs of the worlds inside our cosmic neighborhood, sparking new concepts and questions on them.
NASA’s DART mission was a first-of-its-kind planetary protection effort that ground- and space-based telescopes — in addition to a lone CubeSat — had been in a position to seize in beautiful element. These footage enable us to protect that historic second during which a spacecraft deliberately collided with an asteroid’s moon.
Although there are such a lot of outstanding area photographs from which to decide on this 12 months, we’ve chosen just a few of our very favorites. They’re a lot greater than fairly footage; they’re a testomony to what’s doable when folks work to appreciate a dream collectively — a steadfast reminder of what Carl Sagan referred to as the “star stuff” that binds us to 1 one other.
