"It was a big and happy surprise, to both me and the whole planetary science community,” describes Dr Lori Glaze, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA. “I think many in our field recognised it was well past time for NASA to return to Venus, but to see both the Venus Discovery concepts selected together was pretty amazing.”
Read MoreHELPING TO BRING AN ASTEROID HOME →
Two weeks before Hayabusa2 was due to return to Earth, Caitlin Caruana feared it would all go wrong. Caruana is part of the Australian Space Agency’s (ASA) international engagement team and for the last six months of 2020, she was dedicating nearly all her time to ensuring that JAXA would be able to collect their spacecraft’s sample return capsule when it landed in Australia on December 6, 2020.
Read MoreYes, We've Discovered a Planet Orbiting the Nearest Star but... let's not lose our minds →
The third brightest star in the night sky is Alpha Centauri. It is our closest stellar neighbour, the fictional birth system of the Transformers, Small Furry Creatures and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters… and now our closest exoplanet.
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