Marvel at the breathtaking images the spacecraft took this year

NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew just 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) above the volcanic world Io this year. The otherworldly views, including a view of the most powerful volcano known to mankind, did not disappoint.

“It’s absolutely stunning, stunning imagery,” Ashley Davies, a planetary scientist at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Mashable.

Other space missions have captured interesting views of Mars, the Moon and beyond. Here are many of the impressive space scenes from 2024 so far.

NASA spacecraft takes close-up pictures of a volcano-covered world

After flying past Jupiter’s tortured moon on February 3, NASA’s Juno probe sent back some of the closest images of this unique world. The agency’s deep space probe came within just 930 miles of Io after a similar flyby in December. Planetary scientists hope these anticipated flybys will answer fundamental questions about the mysterious lava-spewing moon.

“The dual flybys are designed to provide new insights into how Io’s volcanic engine works and whether a global magma ocean exists beneath Io’s rocky, mountainous surface,” mission operators wrote after the first images came back.

Io contains hundreds of volcanoes, many of which are active and hot enough for Juno to detect their heat on the moon’s surface.

Unprecedented photos of the largest volcano in our solar system

NASA has captured a sweeping view of the largest volcano known to mankind.

The space agency used its 23-year-old Mars Odyssey orbiter to capture a never-before-seen view of Olympus Mons — a view similar to how astronauts on a hypothetical orbital space station might view the monster mountain. It is 373 miles (600 kilometers) wide — about the size of Arizona — and 17 miles (27 kilometers) high. That’s more than twice as many as commercial airplanes fly.

“Normally, we see Olympus Mons from above in narrow strips, but by turning the spacecraft toward the horizon, we can see just how big it looms over the landscape in a single image,” NASA Odyssey Project Scientist Jeffrey Plaut said in a statement. “Not only is the image spectacular, but it also provides us with unique scientific data.”

As you can see, it is not a mountain with sharp peaks, but a gradually sloping “shield volcano”, similar to Hawaiian volcanoes. It was formed by successive lava flows as the thick flowing lava layered over earlier lava flows.

The tweet may have been deleted

A spacecraft is approaching a metallic object that is zooming around the Earth, taking pictures

The spacecraft zoomed in cautiously and imaged a large chunk of metal orbiting Earth in April — a step in solving humanity’s growing woes with space debris.

A delicate space mission by Japanese satellite technology company Astroscale used its ADRAS-J satellite to travel within a few hundred meters of an abandoned section of a non-communicating, derelict rocket, demonstrating that it can safely observe at such close proximity.

The tweet may have been deleted

The mission is part of the “Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration” project by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, which is Japan’s counterpart to NASA), which is looking for a proven way to remove problematic space debris from Earth’s orbit. The collision of a large object can create thousands of additional fragments, triggering a domino effect of future impacts.

Mashable Light Speed

A US spacecraft captured images of the auroras surrounding the Earth

In May 2024, Earth was hit by a parade of intense solar storms – the strongest since Halloween more than 20 years earlier.

While these bursts from an active sun can pose a serious threat to our power grid and communications systems, they also fuel spectacular events in our polar skies, commonly called aurora borealis or aurora borealis. In particular, our medium-sized star has recently emitted a series of coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which are ejections of super-hot gas (plasma). “It’s like picking up a piece of the sun and throwing it into space,” Mark Miesch, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, previously told Mashable.

When they collide with Earth, solar particles can be captured by our planet’s magnetic field, travel to the poles, and collide with molecules and particles in our atmosphere. Then these atmospheric particles heat up and glow. Three US weather satellites captured this dramatic event from above the North Pole on May 11, showing a glowing ring around places that don’t usually witness the dancing lights.

“Multiple coronal mass ejections from the Sun last week triggered an extreme geomagnetic storm around Earth that produced stunning auroras, even in places where auroras are rarely seen,” explained NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) . released the image above. “The Southern Hemisphere also reported remarkable auroras from the storm.”

A lunar spacecraft lands on its head

Japan landed its SLIM spacecraft – short for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon – on January 19. About a week later, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) released a picture of the robotic lander (taken by the baseball-sized robot launched before landing). , revealing why his solar panels failed to produce electricity.

It landed upside down.

One of SLIM’s thrusters failed 50 meters (about 50 yards) above the lunar surface, leading to the disaster. Even so, the craft still performed an unprecedented “precision landing” in which it came within 100 meters (about 110 yards) of its intended target.

“The precision landing was estimated to be about 10m or less, possibly about 3-4m,” JAXA said in a statement.

A NASA rover found a damaged helicopter in the middle of the Martian desert

After this year’s rough landing, the damaged Ingenuity helicopter cannot fly again. In early February 2024, NASA’s nearby Perseverance rover spotted a grounded alien helicopter sitting alone in a valley on Mars.

The NASA image below, processed and enhanced by geovisual designer Simeon Schmauß, highlights the devastation of a deeply arid Mars, a desert planet that has largely lost its insulating atmosphere and is 1000 times drier than the driest desert on Earth.

Both the Perseverance rover and its former space probe Ingenuity were looking for the best places to look for past evidence of life on Mars – if any existed. Now the car-sized rover will hunt on its own.

Before the accident, Ingenuity’s craftsmanship had made history. The experimental robot was the first craft ever to perform powered, controlled flight on another planet. And then it flew on. Ingenuity has flown to Mars a whopping 72 times—engineers originally hoped it could fly five times, if at all. It flew distances of up to 2,315 feet.

And it overcame a tough aerial challenge. The atmosphere of Mars is relatively thin, its volume is about one percent of Earth’s. This makes it difficult to generate the lift needed for flight. To get airborne, Ingenuity spun its four-foot rotor blades at 2,400 revolutions per minute.

U.S. rough robotic moon landing

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander broke its leg when it landed on the moon in February 2024. The dusty landing was captured by an on-board camera.

While the Odyssey landing wasn’t perfect, NASA, which provided $118 million for the commercial mission, called the challenging Feb. 22 landing a success. Even in its compromised state, the lander beamed back science data from all of NASA’s facilities, which included research into space weather and interactions between the spacecraft’s plume and the lunar chalk surface.

The mission is part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which selects companies to deliver NASA missions to the moon. This frees the agency, already burdened by an ambitious timetable for returning astronauts to the moon under the Artemis program, from having to fully plan and fund missions leading to human landings. Such a manned mission will not take place until 2026.

The shadow of a lunar eclipse crossing the Earth

On April 8, 2024, millions of people in North America witnessed a rare total solar eclipse – when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, casting a shadow on our planet.

For those in the relatively narrow path of totality, this is an experience that cannot be overstated. “On a scale of one to 10, a partial eclipse is a seven,” Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut who experienced his first total eclipse (from below Earth) in 2017, told Mashable. “And a total eclipse is a million.” (A partial eclipse is when only part of the Sun is blocked by the Moon—an interesting experience, but nothing like totality.)

This is what a touching event from space looked like, captured by an American scientific satellite.

The tweet may have been deleted