As the year 2024 draws to a close, the Earth will once again orbit the sun. So scientific american We’re celebrating with nine of our favorite space-related images of the year. In case you’re lost, 2024 was full of exploration milestones, breakthrough science, and amazing sky displays that are worth revisiting. Here are some of this year’s highlights in space.
pursue perfection
The composite image shows the Sun eclipsed by up to 87 percent on April 8, 2024, as seen from Washington, DC.
Alison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
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In April of this year, North Americans were treated to an incredible sight as a total solar eclipse occurred in parts of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Most of the rest of North America also saw a partial solar eclipse. scientific american Of course, staff members were also among the excited viewers on the road to perfection, reporting incredible experiences even when uncooperative clouds blocked their view of the phenomenon.
For all of us, the excitement was a reminder that we live in a solar system, governed by a geometry that causes a total solar eclipse somewhere on Earth approximately every 18 months . And for scientists, it was a perfect opportunity to glimpse the Sun in a way they couldn’t without the help of the Moon.
But skywatchers in the lower 48 states will have to wait 20 years for a similar opportunity. The next total solar eclipse that will be visible to millions of people in the continental United States will not occur until 2045.
Cluttered stars seen by Hubble
Image of the binary star R Aquarius taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, Matthias Stute, Margarita Karowska, Davide de Martin (ESA/Hubble), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
NASA’s beloved Hubble Space Telescope captured this amazing image of a binary star called R Aquarius, about 700 light-years from Earth. This binary star regularly spews gas into its surroundings in an astonishing spectacle of light. The host star of this binary star is a red giant star, more than 400 times larger than the Sun, and its brightness increases and decreases approximately every 390 days. Its companion star is a small, dense white dwarf that steals gas from the star and periodically causes explosions that spew delicate filaments of glowing gas into space.
Farewell, Ingenuity!
A photo taken by NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on January 18, 2024 shows the shadow of a broken rotor.
When NASA launched its Perseverance rover to Mars in 2020, it carried a small passenger, a 4-pound helicopter called Ingenuity. This small helicopter was a technology demonstration project whose sole purpose was to test whether engineers had developed an aircraft capable of flying in the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere. However, Ingenuity far exceeded the expected five sorties. The helicopter completed 72 successful flights, lasting a total of more than two hours and covering more than 16 miles of Mars.
Earlier this year, Ingenuity reported that its navigation system was unable to track the terrain well enough to properly gauge the helicopter’s landing, resulting in the helicopter falling onto the tips of its rotors and breaking one of their rotors. Flights were suspended in .
A new kind of extravehicular activity
Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk as part of a spaceflight. Polaris Dawn Mission for September 12, 2024.
In September, a crew of four civilian astronauts suited up and opened SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to all the dangers of space, far above the altitude of the International Space Station. Two people made history by stepping off the ship. The resulting spacewalk marked a significant milestone for commercial spaceflight missions, which until now had remained firmly within the safety of sealed hatches.
a mission called dawn of polaris, Watch Jared Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur and now chosen by President-elect Donald Trump to be NASA administrator, and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis take on a bold view of Earth. Ta. “We all have a lot of work to do when we get home,” Isaacman said while out and about. “But from here, Earth certainly looks like a perfect world.”
sniff for signs of life
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 14, 2024.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo
Among the NASA science missions launched this year was Europa Clipper, bound for Jupiter’s icy moons. Scientists believe that the moon, called Europa, may harbor a habitable environment hidden beneath its shell in Earth’s oceans, making it one of the most fascinating moons in the solar system. It has become one of the most popular destinations.
The spacecraft faces a six-year journey, during which it will approach the moon nearly 50 times and navigate Jupiter’s brutal radiation belts to discover tiny icy worlds and whether they are really suitable for life. We are planning to start investigating whether this is the case. . “This is a move toward exploring a whole new class of objects, the ocean world, that we didn’t know existed a few decades ago,” said J.D., project scientist for Europa Clipper at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Robert Pappalardo said in an interview. and scientific american. “And we will thoroughly explore what this kind of world would be like, the kind of world that could be the most common habitat for life not just in our solar system but in our galaxy. intend to.”
Stars shine in dark matter telescope images
A close-up of star-forming region M78 from a large image taken by the European Space Agency’s Euclid Telescope.
Image processing by ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, J.-C Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
Last year, the European Space Agency launched a new space telescope, Euclid, designed to study dark matter and dark energy. This summer, Euclid unveiled its first fully calibrated scientific image, an astonishing look at the universe around us.
This particular image shows a star-forming region known as Messier 78 or M78. Located about 1,300 light-years from Earth, M78 is filled with warm hydrogen (In this image, it is pinkish purple.) and dust (reddish brown). Images like this could help scientists decipher how stars grow and affect the space around them, and Euclid is expected to collect observations for at least another five years. Masu.
Aurora lights up the sky
A spectacular aurora borealis was seen outside of Las Vegas on May 11, 2024.
David Becker/ZUMA Press Wire/Alamy Stock Photo
Northern lights, as their name suggests, are usually confined to latitudes near the North Pole. (Similarly, the Southern Lights typically occur near the South Pole.) But this year, the Sun is especially rambunctious as it enters the maximum period of its 11-year activity cycle. Our star has sent countless bursts of radiation and charged plasma into space. Some of these explosions reached Earth, producing amazing aurora borealis as far away as Florida and India.
The year’s best display was seen in May, after the sun triggered some 82 “remarkable” solar flares and more than six plasma explosions, or coronal mass ejections, in the days before the aurora borealis. Ta. Scientists expect increased levels of solar activity to continue into the new year, so 2025 could see similarly spectacular solar shine.
The most exciting rock on Mars
A close-up image of Cheyava Falls, a rock formation on Mars, captured by the Perseverance rover on July 18, 2024.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has had another busy year exploring Mars. One of this year’s most interesting discoveries is an unusual rock that mission scientists have dubbed Cheyava Falls, located in a long, dry river valley in Mars’ Jezero Crater. This is an area that has been under investigation since the landing.
Cheyava Falls is a striped rock about the size of a coffee table whose reddish stripes are decorated with dark-edged and brightly colored “leopard spot” spots. NASA scientists say the dark edges may contain iron phosphate, a mineral that microbes can use as food, and that the entire rock contains organic molecules, or carbon-based molecules. I’m thinking. Overall, this is interesting evidence for the possibility of ancient microscopic life. “Cheyaba Falls is the most mysterious, complex, and potentially important rock ever studied by Perseverance,” said Ken Farley, Caltech Perseverance project scientist, announcing the discovery. This was stated in a NASA statement on July 25th.
Perseverance will collect samples of this rock that scientists hope a future mission can bring back to Earth for more detailed analysis.
James Webb Space Telescope spotlights young stars
James Webb Space Telescope image of star-forming region NGC 604.
NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope has also been hard at work throughout 2024. One surprising result is the image above, taken from the spacecraft’s near-infrared camera. It shows a star-forming region known as NGC 604, part of a triangular galaxy about 2.73 million light-years from Earth. In the image, carbon-rich polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons appear bright orange. The cold hydrogen molecules that drive star formation are shown in dark red, and ionized hydrogen is shown in white and blue.
