It’s time to look back at spaceflight in 2023, a real “two steps forward, one step back” kind of year, filled with highs, lows, and everything in between.
Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are all set with their Moon landers. Now they just need their rockets prepped and the launch windows to swing open. But once underway, these NASA-funded missions, slated for early 2024, will chart a new course for the future of private space exploration.
Experimental rockets, Moon landers, planetary flybys, breathtaking spacewalks, and vintage boosters—these are just a few of the many stories that contributed to the most striking and memorable images of 2023.
Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu via Getty Images
Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters
China’s Shenlong robotic spaceplane, on its third mission, has added a new layer of intrigue to its space activities by deploying six unidentified objects into Earth’s orbit.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
SpaceX is gearing up to launch the first batch of Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability, with plans to test the technology in Earth orbit so that it can expand its reach on Earth beyond the range of cell towers.
Space is hard, as the cliché reminds us, and that was plenty clear this week, as several groups ran into trouble: NASA with its aging Voyager 1 spacecraft, AstroForge with a struggling debut mission to prove asteroid mining can work, and a few missing-in-action satellites from a recent SpaceX launch. Back on Earth,…
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images and Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images