NASA

After fears that it might require disassembly, Lockheed Martin has completed work on the Artemis I Orion spacecraft and has formally transferred possession to NASA's Exploration Ground Systems team at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA and DLR have officially called it quits on InSight's "mole." The instrument was designed to drill deep into the Martian soil, but soon hit a snag and has now been abandoned after almost two years of troubleshooting failed to resolve the issue.

How many galaxies are there in the observable universe? Not as many as we thought, according to a new study. NASA’s New Horizons probe has measured the blackness of the sky and found that there’s probably “only” a few hundred billion faint galaxies.

Space exploration in 2021 will see some major milestones to look forward to. From maiden flights to fiery endings, long-awaited launches to history-making first steps, here are some of the biggest upcoming events in space exploration this year.

The giant iceberg A-68A that is threatening the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic has split into three pieces and is thinning by one inch per day. If the bergs run aground they could cause considerable environmental damage.

A next-generation space observatory has inched closer to lift-off, with NASA unfolding the James Webb Space Telescope’s five-layer sunshield in the same way it expects it to after arriving in orbit, as part of successful testing here on Earth.

NASA has released a collection of 50 stunning Hubble images to celebrate the veteran telescope’s 30th anniversary, which took place earlier this year. The images show 30 cosmic objects, visible to amateur astronomers across the globe.

Boeing has taken another step forward – following one or two recent steps back – in the development of its Starliner capsule, successfully completing a series of final parachute drop tests for the spacecraft’s landing system.

Scientists have condensed decades of footage taken of our Sun’s atmosphere into a 47-minute video showcasing solar activity on a grand scale. The video was released to mark the 25th anniversary of the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric observatory.

A new NASA release has converted astronomy data into sounds, allowing the listener to hear musical compositions derived from the structure of the cosmos. The process takes data points in images such as galaxies or stars, and assigns them sounds.

When NASA’s Perseverance rover touches down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, it will carry with it an experiment that will attempt to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen – a gas that can be used to create rocket fuel.

With the world continuing to warm and sea levels continuing to rise, NASA and the ESA are eyeing the next decade of climate change and its consequences, launching a new satellite to observe the ocean in greater detail from orbit.