Perseverance begins studying rocks on Mars The mission has been working hard to find traces of ancient Martian life since it reached the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021. Engineers have equipped Perseverance with powerful cameras to help the mission team decide what rocks are worth investigating. Parker Solar Probe travels through the sun's atmosphere This year, NASA's sun-kissing spacecraft swam within a structure that's only visible during total solar eclipses and was able to measure exactly where the star's "point of no return" is located. Earth's second 'moon' flies off into space An object dropped into Earth's orbit like a second moon, and this year, it made its final close approach of our planet. Scientists spot the closest-known black hole to Earth Just 1,500 light-years from Earth lies the closest-known black hole to Earth, now called "The Unicorn." Event Horizon Telescope takes high-resolution image of black hole jet The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global collaboration of eight observatories that work together to create one Earth-sized telescope. The end result is a resolution that is 16 times sharper and an image that is 10 times more accurate than what was possible before. James Webb Space Telescope flies into space NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency are collaborating on the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a project more than three decades in the making. Space telescopes take a long time to plan and assemble The sun is reawakening The sun has had very little activity in recent years, but the star's surface is now erupting in powerful events that spew out charged particles towards Earth NASA will return to Venus this decade Mars is a popular target for space agencies, but Earth's other neighbor has been garnering more attention recently. Amateur astronomer discovers a new moon around Jupiter A previously-unknown moon has been detected around the largest planet in the solar system. Discovery of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein Graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli was looking through Dark Energy Survey data to find objects that live beyond Neptune's orbit when he noticed an object significantly farther from the sun than the objects he planned to study. He asked his advisor, cosmologist Gary Bernstein, to have a look.
