SIX GREAT SPACE DISCOVERIES FROM THE PAST 12 MONTHS

November 2014

Philae, the European probe, became the first man-made craft to land successfully on a comet – which, in the case of 67P, was travelling at 24,600mph. Scientists compared the task with a fly trying to land on a speeding bullet. Among its discoveries is that the comet contains molecular oxygen, the form of the gas we breathe, as well as other compounds that could provide clues about how the early chemical ingredients that led to life on Earth arrived on the planet.

April 2015

Astronomers discovered a curious empty section of space – a supervoid, measuring 1.8 billion light years across, making it the biggest “object” ever found. The so-called Cold Spot, in the constellation Eridanus in the southern galactic hemisphere, is large enough to contain 10,000 galaxies – but appears to be empty.

July 2015

The Kepler Space Telescope detected the most-similar planet to Earth ever found: Kepler-452b, an exo-planet 1,400 light-years away and about 60 per cent wider than Earth.

July 2015

Nasa astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope confirmed the existence of HD219134b, the closest rocky (as in: not made from gas) exoplanet to Earth, a mere 21 light-years away. However, it orbits too close to its star to sustain life.

September 2015

Nasa scientists announced that water exists in liquid form on the surface of Mars – flowing during the hotter seasons down crater slopes – making it theoretically possible for life to be sustained.

October 2015

Nasa’s New Horizon spacecraft detected numerous small, exposed regions of water on Pluto, preserved as bright red ice. The historic fly-by of the dwarf planet also revealed that, like Earth, its atmospheric hazes are blue.