Set to launch on Dec. 22, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the largest space observatory in history, and it has an equally gargantuan task: to collect infrared light from the distant corners of the cosmos, enabling scientists to probe the structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

Many cosmic objects – including stars and planets, as well as the gas and dust from where they form – emit infrared light, sometimes called heat radiation. But so do most other warm objects, like toasters, humans, and electronics. That means Webb's four infrared instruments can detect their own infrared glow.

On April 28, 2021, at 0933 UT (3:33 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time), NASA's Parker Solar Probe reached the sun's extended solar atmosphere, known as the corona, and spent five hours there. The spacecraft is the first to enter the outer boundaries of our sun.

The results, published in Physical Review Letters, were announced in a press conference at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2021 on December 14. The manuscript is open-access and freely available to download.

"This marks the achievement of the primary objective of the Parker mission and a new era for understanding the physics of the corona," said Justin C. Kasper, the first author, Deputy Chief Technology Officer at BWX Technologies, and a professor at the University of Michigan. The mission is led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL).

For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA's Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun's upper atmosphere—the corona—and sampled particles and magnetic fields there.

The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system.

The largest parachute set to fly on Mars has completed its first successful high-altitude drop test, a critical milestone for ensuring the ExoMars mission is on track for launch in 2022. Both the first and second stage parachutes have now successfully flown this year.

A pair of high-altitude drop tests took place in Oregon on 21 November and 3 December as part of the ongoing parachute testing to ensure the safe delivery of the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover and Kazachok lander to the surface of Mars in June 2023.

A clay mineral known as smectite could hold a substantial portion of the water missing from Mars, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Rivers and streams once flowed across the surface of Mars, etching channels still evident on the planet's surface today. Water in lakes once lapped ancient shores. But today, Mars' red sands appear bone-dry. Where did all that water go?

Some of that water is trapped in the planet's polar ice caps, which behave like stone due to Mars' frigid temperatures. The rest may have gone underground, locked inside clay minerals such as smectite.

New research from Binghamton University Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Professor David Jenkins and former graduate student Brittany DePasquale provides information on how deep smectite could occur in the surface rocks of Mars. They found that iron-rich smectite, the least-stable form of smectite, can form to depths up to 30 km, much deeper than others might have predicted. In view of this rather robust stability for smectite, it appears that clay minerals are able to receive and store the missing water on Mars.

Now is the best time to get a glimpse of Comet C/2021 A1, better known as Comet Leonard. It's named for its discoverer, Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Every night with clear skies, astronomers with LPL's Catalina Sky Survey scan the sky for near-Earth asteroids—space rocks with the potential of venturing close to Earth at some point.

During one such routine observation run on Jan. 3, Leonard spotted a fuzzy patch of light tracking across the starfield background in a sequence of four images taken with the 1.5-meter telescope at the summit of Mount Lemmon.