Feast your eyes on the stunning images of the spacecraft captured this year

NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew just 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) above the volcanic world Io this year. The extraterrestrial 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 intriguing views of Mars, the moon and beyond. Here are many of the impressive cosmic scenes from 2024, so far.

NASA spacecraft takes close-up images of volcano-covered world

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

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

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 photo of the largest volcano in our solar system

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

The space agency used its 23-year 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 see the giant mountain. It is 373 miles (600 kilometers) wide—about the size of Arizona—and 17 miles (27 kilometers) long. That’s twice as high as commercial jets fly.

“Normally, we see Olympus Mons in narrow strips from above, but by turning the spacecraft toward the horizon, we can see in a single image just how big it looks over the landscape,” Odyssey project scientist said in a statement. of NASA, Jeffrey Plaut. “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 a sharp peak, but a gradually sloping “shield volcano”, similar to Hawaiian volcanoes. It was formed by progressive lava flows, as thick flowing lava was layered over earlier lava flows.

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The spacecraft approaches the metallic object that magnifies the Earth, releases the images

A spacecraft carefully approached and imaged a large chunk of metal orbiting Earth in April — a step in tackling humanity’s growing problems with space debris.

The delicate space mission, undertaken by Japanese satellite technology company Astroscale, used its ADRAS-J satellite to travel within a few hundred meters of an abandoned section of an abandoned, non-communicating rocket, proving it could observe safe in such close proximity.

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

Mashable’s Speed ​​of Light

The US spacecraft has views of the auroras surrounding the Earth

A parade of powerful solar storms hit Earth in May 2024 – the strongest since Halloween over 20 years ago.

While these bursts from an active sun can pose serious threats to our power grid and communications systems, they also trigger brilliant events in our polar skies, commonly called auroras or northern lights. In particular, our medium-sized star recently emitted a number 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 with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, previously told Mashable.

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

“Multiple coronal mass explosions from the sun ignited an extreme geomagnetic storm around Earth last week, creating stunning auroras, even in places where the northern lights are rarely seen,” explained NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service ( NESDIS). has released the image above. “The Southern Hemisphere also reported extraordinary auroras from the storm.”

The lunar spacecraft lands on her head

Japan landed its SLIM spacecraft – short for Smart Lander for Lunar Investigation – on January 19. About a week later, the Japanese space agency (JAXA) released an image of the robotic lander (taken by a baseball-sized robot released before landing), revealing why its solar panels failed to generate electricity.

He sat upside down.

One of SLIM’s thrusters malfunctioned 50 meters (about 50 yards) above the lunar surface, resulting in the disaster. However, the craft still demonstrated an unprecedented “spicy landing” where it landed less than 100 meters (about 110 yards) from its intended target.

“The exact landing performance was estimated to be approximately 10 m or less, possibly around 3 – 4 m,” JAXA said in a statement.

NASA rover finds damaged helicopter in the middle of the Martian desert

After a rough landing this year, the damaged Ingenuity helicopter can no longer fly. NASA’s nearby Perseverance rover spotted the extraterrestrial lander sitting alone in a valley on Mars in early February 2024.

The NASA image below, processed and enhanced by geovisual designer Simeon Schmauß, highlights the desolation of profoundly arid Mars, a desolate 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 aerial scout, Ingenuity, had been searching for the best places to look for past evidence of Martian life – if it ever existed. Now the car-sized rover will shoot alone.

Before the accident, the ship Ingenuity made history. The experimental robot was the first spacecraft to ever make a powered, controlled flight to another planet. And then, it continued to fly. Intelligence flew to Mars 72 times – engineers originally hoped it might fly five times, if at all. It flew distances up to 2,315 feet.

And overcame a daunting flying challenge. The Martian atmosphere is quite thin, with a volume of about one percent that of Earth. This makes it difficult to generate the lift needed for flight. To get airborne, Ingenuity spun its four-legged rotor blades at a blazing 2,400 revolutions every minute.

Rough US robotic moon landing

Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander, Odysseus, snapped a leg during the lunar landing in February 2024. An onboard camera captured the dusty impact.

While Odysseus’ landing wasn’t perfect, NASA, which provided $118 million for the commercial mission, hailed the challenging feat on Feb. 22 as a success. Even in a compromised state, the spacecraft sent back science data from all of NASA’s instruments, which included research on space weather and interactions between the spacecraft’s plume and the lunar 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 tasked with an ambitious timeline to return astronauts to the Moon under the Artemis program, from having to fully plan and fund the missions leading up to human landings. Such a crewed mission will not happen before 2026.

The shadow of the lunar eclipse passes over 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 on the relatively narrow path of totality, it 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 (down to 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.)

Here’s how the touching event looked from space, captured by an American scientific satellite.

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