What Are The Big Events To Look Out For?

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We said thank you and goodbye to Ingenuity - Nasa's history-making helicopter on Mars, Japan became the fifth country in the world to land on the Moon and for the first time, a part of a space rocket was successfully caught in mid air on its return to Earth.

Two Nasa astronauts who blasted off into space last summer, and have been stuck there ever since, are finally due to return to Earth in the spring.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams set off from Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) on 5 June 2024 after multiple delays.

However, the US Space Agency discovered a number of issues with the Starliner spacecraft they were due to travel on, including several helium leaks in its capsule.

The problems meant the two astronauts had to remain on the ISS while engineers carried out technical investigations .

It was decided too risky to bring them back on the same craft so, after several more delays, both astronauts are now scheduled to come back home at the end of March, on a SpaceX capsule instead.

The effects of space weather can lead to beautiful displays, like the aurora borealis , but it can also cause disruption to electronic devices, including satellites orbiting our planet.

That's why Nasa is launching its TRACERS mission in April which will look at how activity from the Sun, such as solar wind, interacts with Earth's magnetic field.

TRACERS - which stands for T andem R econnection a nd C usp E lectrodynamics R econnaissance S atellites - is a pair of satellites that will study how solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetosphere.