Best space images from 2024 – From rockets launched to exploring Mars to the beauty of the Aurora Borealis.
Space and science made big waves this year, with a lot of spectacular images captured along the way.
A composite image shows the sun eclipsed to a maximum of 87 percent, as seen from Washington, D.C., on April 8, 2024.
In April, a total solar eclipse amazed viewers across parts of Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, while others across North America saw a partial eclipse.
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the binary star R Aquarii.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a breathtaking image of R Aquarii, a binary star system located about 700 light-years from Earth. The system features a red giant over 400 times the size of the sun, with brightness that fluctuates every 390 days, and a compact white dwarf companion. The white dwarf pulls gas from the red giant, triggering periodic explosions that eject stunning filaments of glowing gas into space.
A photograph captured by NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars shows the shadow of a rotor with its tip broken off on January 18, 2024.
When NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2020, it brought along a four-pound helicopter named Ingenuity. Originally designed as a technology test to see if flight was possible in Mars’s thin atmosphere, Ingenuity exceeded expectations with 72 successful flights, covering over 10 miles and flying for more than two hours. This year, its mission came to an end when a navigation issue caused a rough landing, breaking one of its rotor tips.
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 14, 2024.
This year, NASA launched Europa Clipper, a mission to explore Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, believed to harbour a vast ocean beneath its frozen crust. Considered one of the most promising places for life in our solar system, Europa will be studied up close after the spacecraft’s six-year journey. Europa Clipper will conduct nearly 50 flybys, enduring intense radiation to investigate whether the moon’s hidden ocean could support life.
A close-up of the star-forming region M78, from a large image captured by the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope.
The European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope, launched last year to explore dark matter and dark energy, released its first calibrated science images this summer. One striking image captures Messier 78 (M78), a star-forming region about 1,300 light-years from Earth, glowing with warm hydrogen (pinkish-purple) and dust (reddish-brown). Observations like these aim to shed light on how stars form and shape their surroundings, with Euclid expected to continue its mission for at least five more years.
An aurora seen outside of Las Vegas on May 11, 2024.
The northern lights, typically limited to areas near the North Pole, have dazzled far beyond their usual range this year due to heightened solar activity as the sun reaches the peak of its 11-year cycle. Powerful bursts of radiation and plasma from the sun have triggered auroras as far south as Florida and India. The most spectacular displays came in May, following a surge of solar flares and coronal mass ejections. With the sun’s activity expected to remain intense, 2025 could bring more breathtaking auroras.
A close-up image of the “Cheyava Falls” Mars rock captured by the Perseverance rover on July 18, 2024.
NASA’s Perseverance rover made an exciting discovery this year on Mars, finding an unusual rock named “Cheyava Falls” in the long-dry river valley of Jezero Crater. This stripey rock, about the size of a coffee table, features reddish stripes and distinctive leopard spot-like patches with dark rims. Scientists believe the dark rims may contain iron phosphate, a potential food source for microbes, and that the rock could hold organic molecules, hinting at past microscopic life. A sample of the rock has been collected, with hopes it will be returned to Earth for further analysis in the future.
