Image Credit to NASA

What a great year for space exploration and discovery! In honor of 2022 coming to a close, we’re sharing our top space events and moments from the past year. Make sure to stay tuned because we’ll be updating this post and adding new highlights every week of December!

Tune in every week of December to see the most monumental space moments revealed!

1. On January 24th of this year, NASA’s James Webb telescope reached its destination over a million miles away from Earth! The first images would then be shared months later, on July 12th, like this image taken of the Carina Nebula.

Image Credit to NASA

2. Of course, we can’t forget NASA’s DART mission from October, 2022, which successfully changed the trajectory of an actual asteroid! This proved that if we ever need to save the planet from an incoming space object, we may now have the technology to do it! 

4. On October 5, 2022, NASA released this new image of Jupiter’s moon Europa obtained in a flyby mission. NASA believes there to be a liquid ocean beneath Europa’s icy crust and is planning future missions to determine whether life may be viable on Europa!

The Juno mission’s spacecraft passed only 256 miles above Europa and is thought to be the clearest image of the moon ever captured!

Image Credit to NASA

5. As cool as 2022 has been, we’re not sure anything can top the Artemis I mission launch in November!

After months of planning and delays, the Orion spacecraft finally launched on November 16. Though this flight was unmanned, it marked the first time a spacecraft designed to carry humans blasted off to the moon since 1972.

Image Credit to NASA