QUICK TAKES

LAUNCH AND REPEAT

This year, South Korea will begin developing a reusable rocket equipped with a cluster of liquid-fueled, 100-ton-thrust engines. With a starter budget of $10.2 million, the government intends for the new rocket program to dramatically slash launch costs.

EXO-ATMOSPHERE

In a first, astronomers have measured the abundance of both water and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, WASP-77Ab. The team used the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Chile, which provided clearer data than the Hubble Space Telescope.

ARTEMIS 2025

NASA announced Nov. 9 that the Artemis program’s first lunar landing won’t occur until at least 2025 due to budgetary constraints, COVID impacts, testing delays of the Space Launch System rocket, and extended litigation over the Human Landing System contract.

INFANT PLANET

The newly found exoplanet 2M0437b is one of the youngest planets yet known. The budding world likely formed within the past several million years — roughly when the Hawaiian Islands emerged from the Pacific Ocean.

DEEP RED SPOT

New data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft show that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — a centuries-old vortex wider than Earth — extends even deeper than previously thought, plunging more than 200 miles (350 kilometers) beneath the world’s chaotic cloud tops.

JWST + EHT = SGR A*

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will join the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to image the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Scientists hope the infrared view, which cuts through intervening dust, will provide insight into Sgr A*’s flickering flares.