NASA fully deploys world’s most powerful space telescope
NASA partnered with the European and Canadian space agencies to build and launch the new 7-ton telescope, with thousands of people from 29 countries working on it since the 1990s.
U.S. NASA
NASA astronauts successfully complete first ever all-woman spacewalk
Christina Koch and Jessica Meir completed the first spacewalk with an all-women team. Since cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to do a spacewalk in 1984, women have participated in 42 spacewalks.
U.S. NASA announces world’s first-ever all-female spacewalk
On March 29, Anne McClain and Christina Koch will leave the relative safety of the International Space Station for a spacewalk to upgrade the craft’s batteries – the first-ever to be all-female.
Earth has more tree and leaf coverage now than in 2000, thanks to China and India
According to U.S. NASA, there are now more than 2 million sq miles of extra leaf area per year, compared with the early 2000s — a 5% increase. The greening effect stems mainly from ambitious tree-planting and intensive farming in China and India.
NASA launches the Hubble Space Telescope, opening a new window on the universe
The Hubble Space Telescope launched aboard Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, carrying a 2.4-meter mirror above Earth’s distorting atmosphere. After a famously blurry start, astronauts installed corrective optics in 1993, and Hubble went on to contribute to more than 19,000 peer-reviewed papers — making distant galaxies feel, for the first time, genuinely knowable.
NASA’s Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet
Mariner 9 reached Mars on November 14, 1971, becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit another planet. Arriving mid–dust storm, it waited out the weather, then mapped 85% of the surface and revealed Olympus Mons, the vast Valles Marineris canyon, and ancient riverbeds — a Mars far stranger and wetter-looking than anyone had imagined.