With about 200 orbital launches scheduled and ambitious missions on everything from lunar bases to the search for life in the works, there’s a lot to watch in 2022. An astronomer explains the highlights.
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the solar system and is home to a potentially habitable planet.
Hubble/European Space Agency/WikimediaCommons
Astronomers just measured the largest flare ever from Proxima Centauri, humanity’s closest neighboring star. These flares could be bad news for life trying to develop on a planet orbiting the star.
The Perseverance Rover’s first image sent back to NASA from Mars shows the surface of the Jezero crater.
NASA/JPL
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission has arrived and landed the Perseverance Rover on the red planet. The rover’s goal is to collect rock and soil samples to be brought back to Earth in the future.
The groundbreaking Xenobots were created by a team from Tufts University and the University of Vermont.
Douglas Blackiston, Tufts University
Xenobots have been called the world’s first “living robots”. They are made entirely of living tissue, and can be programmed to move towards a certain object.