While Russia failed to land on the moon this year, India succeeded in doing so through the Shutterstock series of missions.

2023 seems to have been a busy year for space exploration, from distant space missions to determining the times of solar storms, to the entry of artificial intelligence systems to discover life in the probes of the deep universe.

Below are the most prominent discoveries in cosmology and space sciences that took place this year.

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Exploring the Sun

This year there were many missions to study the sun, the first of which was for the European Space Agency, where the Euclid satellite was launched towards a point between the sun and Earth called "L2" by a Falcon 9 rocket on July <>. The satellite monitors the sun and distant galaxies to study dark matter and dark energy.

On September 2, the Indian Space Agency launched the Aditya probe, which aims to study solar corona dynamics, coronal mass emission and corona evolution.

India launches Aditya probe to study solar corona dynamics, coronal mass emission and solar corona evolution (Shutterstock)

On September 6, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the X-ray Space Telescope (X-Rezme), whose mission is to study the sun and the composition of the structure of the universe, outflows from galaxy cores, and dark matter.

Researchers from India's Centre of Excellence for Space Science have discovered a new relationship between the sun's magnetic field and the sunspot cycle, and the discovery could help predict when solar activity will peak up.

Our star "the Sun" is made up of a hot ionized gas known as plasma, and huge plasma fluxes and heat combine to form magnetic fields within the Sun that appear on the surface as dark spots.

Sometimes solar magnetic fields cause violent events that give birth to solar storms, emit high-energy radiation and spew huge amounts of magnetized plasma into outer space.

These storms can cause serious damage to satellites, electric power grids and communications as they head to Earth, and the discovery opens a new window to predict the timing and intensity of peak solar cycles and how much weather fluctuations they cause.

Study of the moon

Russia has not sent a probe to the moon since Luna 24 in 1976. In August, Russia launched the Luna 25 lander aboard a Soyuz-2 rocket from the Russian Far Eastern Vostochny cosport.

Luna 25's mission was to land near Bogoslavski Crater in the moon's Antarctic region to study the composition of the outer shell of the polar moon, but once the spacecraft exited orbit, it crashed after a technical glitch.

While Russia failed to land on the moon, India did so via the Vikram lander, India's mission, dubbed Chandrayaan 3, is part of a series of lunar exploration missions developed by the Indian Space Research Organization.

Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan 3 landed near the south pole of the moon (Shutterstock)

The launch of Chandrayaan 3 came from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on July 14, 2023, and the spacecraft entered lunar orbit on August 5, landing near the moon's south pole.

On Sept. 6, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the Ladder lunar lander, a lunar exploration smart lander with a small rover and a space telescope.

Space flights and space tourism

In human spaceflight, two records for the number of people in space and in orbit were broken simultaneously. On May 25 of this year, 20 people were in space simultaneously, 11 aboard the International Space Station, 3 on China's Tiangong Station, and 6 on Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity vehicle.

Five days later, on May 30, he broke the record for the number of people in orbit at one time, with 17 people in orbit at once; 6 on China's Tiangong station, 7 on the International Space Station, and 4 Axiom 2 crew also on the ISS.

The Axiom 2 flight is operated by AxiomSpace in cooperation with the Saudi Space Commission, and was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and its mission was to investigate cancer, cloud seeding and microgravity in space. The mission included the first Saudi female astronaut to reach the International Space Station.

Space Research

  • Dark matter and dark energy:

The existence of dark matter is a long-standing mystery in our world, as dark matter makes up about a quarter of the universe, and its existence has been confirmed by a series of astrophysical and cosmic observations. The existence of dark matter was the question that high-energy scientists and astrophysicists around the world have been investigating for decades.

The Dutch astronomer Jan Oort first assumed the existence of this material in 1932, but the study of dark matter began in the seventies and eighties of the last century. The most recent of these studies was based on stunning recent images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

This year, in July, the European Space Agency launched a satellite called Euclid to study dark matter and dark energy in the universe.

  • Laser reaches the Earth from the depths of space:

NASA's Psyche probe has launched the first experiment to send data back to Earth via lasers. The probe, which was heading to study an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, sent its data to Earth via a laser beam from a distance of 16 million kilometers and reached the Hill telescope at the Palomar Observatory of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

The laser can send data at 10 to 100 times faster than conventional radio wave systems used by NASA for other missions.

If fully successful within the next two years, the experiment could be the future basis for the technology used to communicate with humans exploring Mars.

NASA called the experiment "First Light," and said in a statement, "The realization of first light is one of many important milestones in the coming months, paving the way towards higher data transfer rate communications capable of transmitting scientific information, high-definition images, and video streaming to support humanity's next giant leap."

  • Discovery of pulsars:

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, in collaboration with Fermi International Giant Telescopes, announced the discovery of nearly 300 gamma-ray pulsars. The breakthrough comes after 15 years of Fermi telescopes observing the universe.

Pulsars form when massive stars burn through their own fuel supply and are unable to resist the internal drag of their gravity, resulting in the star collapsing into a densely magnetized neutron star.

The rotating magnetic fields of these stars emit beams of gamma rays, the most active form of light. According to Fermi's specialists, our understanding of these strange stars enables us to use them as cosmic clocks.

  • Exploring Jupiter and the return of Bennu samples:

In April 2023, the European Space Agency sent the Explorer of Jupiter's icy moons or JUICE to Jupiter.

Mission Gus will reach Jupiter in 2031 and its moon Ganymede in 2034 (ESA)

The probe will reach orbit around Jupiter in 2031, and will then make detailed observations of the gas giant's three large ocean-carrying moons, and these observations will allow astronomers to study the three moons as well as Jupiter's environment in unprecedented detail, and this will be the first time that a spacecraft orbits another moon in the solar system other than ours.

NASA's Osiris Rex spacecraft returned to Earth after collecting rock samples from Bennu. The spacecraft was launched in 2016 and arrived at Bennu in October 2020, returning with samples in September 2023.

Bennu is a small asteroid compared to other asteroids in the solar system, about 500 meters wide, but its approximate age that prompted scientists to study it is estimated at more than 4.5 billion years.

Source : Al Jazeera + Agencies