Artemis 1

India landed a robot on the moon and NASA brought pieces of an asteroid back to Earth to study. A green comet illuminated night skies and a "ring of fire" eclipse captivated spectators from Oregon to Brazil. SpaceX launched nearly 100 rockets, and Japan and Europe put powerful new space telescopes into orbit.

NASA is now targeting Sept. 27 as the earliest possible launch date for its uncrewed Artemis 1 mission to the Moon, the agency said in a blog post on Sept. 12.

Seeing a rocket blast off to the Moon is "a once-in-a-lifetime thing to experience," says Joanne Bostandji.

NASA conducted a test firing of the engines for its giant Space Launch System (SLS) lunar rocket on Jan. 16 but they shut down earlier than planned, the space agency said.

The "hot-fire" test at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was supposed to last a little over eight minutes - the time the engines would burn in flight - but they shut down just over a minute into the burn.

The Japanese government has decided that the country will join NASA's program to colonize the moon, which moves the landing to the lunar surface in 2024, the Kyodo news agency said.

The decision will be formally announced by the end of this year. NASA has announced that the new moon assimilation program has been named "Artemis." It will consist of three stages.

A NASA mission to the Moon next year aims to assess the impact of cosmic rays on the human body using a system devised and produced by Greek startup Herado, founded by Dr Marianthi Frangopoulou.