It was a big year in our part of the cosmos. We’ve invited our friends at @nasa to recap all the stunning scientific advances that gave us a deeper glimpse into the galaxy around us this year.
JWST Showed Us Space with New Eyes
In July 2022, we saw the first full-color images and data from the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made: the James Webb Space Telescope. This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” is speckled with glittering stars, and called the Cosmic Cliffs. It’s the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but the infrared Webb can peer through cosmic dust thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Artemis I Flew Us Beyond the Moon
NASA’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), lifted off for the first time on November 16, 2022, launching the Orion spacecraft on a journey around the Moon. Orion has now traveled farther from Earth than any other spacecraft designed to carry humans to deep space and safely return them to Earth. The Artemis I mission is the first part of a new era of deep space exploration. The program is designed to take astronauts back to the Moon and eventually on to Mars.
This One’s for the Dinosaurs
NASA’s DART mission successfully redirected an asteroid—the first time humanity has ever changed the orbit of a celestial object in space. On Sept. 26, 2022, the vending-machine-size spacecraft slammed into the stadium-size asteroid Dimorphos, slightly shortening its orbit around its much larger companion asteroid Didymos. Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth before or after the test. The objective was to test this “planetary defense” technique, should an asteroid ever pose a threat. Note: there are no known asteroid threats to Earth for at least the next 100 years, but NASA is keeping an eye on the skies, just in case.
Be sure to follow @nasa for more!
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