Satellite News

11 of the biggest stories about the smallest particles from 2023.

Arriving in orbit on Christmas Day, Japan’s lunar lander SLIM has beamed images of the lunar surface home ahead of its planned touchdown on the moon on Jan. 19.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander was stacked on the rocket that will launch it to space, with final checks and fueling now completed.

For decades, measurements of the universe’s expansion have suggested a disparity, which threatens to break cosmology as we know it. The James Webb Space Telescope is looking at it.

The first commercial rocket to launch astronauts has met its end after being destroyed during its latest post-flight recovery. The SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage tipped over after a record 19th flight.

The final full moon of 2023, the Cold Moon, rose on Dec. 26. Skywatchers around the globe were primed and ready to capture some fantastic images of the fully illuminated lunar face.

About 3,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, brickmakers imprinted the names of their kings into clay bricks. Now, an analysis of the metal grains in those bricks has confirmed a mysterious anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field.

The subsurface oceans of the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter remain our best bet for finding life elsewhere in the solar system. NASA is developing a roadmap for cryobots that could investigate these ocean worlds.