SEOUL, South Korea — Japan’s recently elected prime minister set an end-of-the-decade goal for sending Japanese astronauts to the moon as part of the U.S.-led Artemis program. 

HELSINKI — This year, China’s main space contractor will target more than 40 orbital launches, including completion of the Tiangong space station, following 48 successful launches in 2021.

WASHINGTON — After a year marked by little launch activity and one high-profile failure, the head of India’s space program says he expects much more in 2022, including an uncrewed test flight for its human spaceflight program.

Just before 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT) on Jan. 1, people in Pittsburgh heard what sounded like a loud “boom” outside. Reports described windows rattling and objects shaking in their homes, according to CBS Pittsburgh. The sudden blast surprised those living in the Pittsburgh area as the meteor broke up in the cloudy morning sky. 

The James Webb Space Telescope has successfully deployed all five layers of its tennis-court-sized sunshield, a prerequisite for the telescope’s science operations and the most nerve-wracking part of its risky deployment.

NASA is tracking two explorers on a 2,268-mile (3,650 kilometers) journey across Antarctica to learn more about humanity’s ability to survive on Mars. 

The car-sized Perseverance landed last February inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero, which hosted a big lake and a river delta in the ancient past. 

Mars is a planet of vast contrasts — huge volcanoes, deep canyons, and craters that may or may not host running water. It will be an amazing location for future tourists to explore, once we put the first Red Planet colonies into motion. The landing sites for these future missions will likely need to be flat plains for safety and practical reasons, but perhaps they could land within a few days’ drive of some more interesting geology. Here are some locations that future Martians could visit.

Kepler Communications plans to use a Spire Global nanosatellite launching late next year to test a terminal it hopes to someday deploy by the thousands to create a mesh network of data-relay satellites.

While the impending launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has astronomers both excited and nervous, the liftoff marks only the beginning of the riskiest part of the mission.

With a deadline for an agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union on British involvement in, and funding for, Copernicus come and gone, the European Space Agency is pressing ahead on several missions in the hopes a deal can eventually be reached.

Canadian startup NorthStar Earth & Space plans to set up European headquarters in Luxembourg, after getting an investment from the country’s government-backed venture capital fund. 

The Kennedy Space Center announced last week that it was starting the process of an environmental review of the proposed Launch Complex (LC) 49 in response to an inquiry from SpaceX. The center did not disclose a timeline for conducting the review but said it would precede any agreement with SpaceX to develop the site.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will be more extreme than its famous predecessor in a variety of ways, including its cosmic locale. The $10 billion Webb is considerably bigger, more complex and more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been studying the heavens from Earth orbit for more than three decades. 

Astronomers have produced a detailed image of a massive eruption from the nearest feeding supermassive black hole that spans the size of 16 full moons in the sky.

The James Webb Space Telescope is due to launch on Saturday (Dec. 25) during a 32-minute window that opens at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT). The massive observatory will blast off from Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 rocket operated by European launch provider Arianespace. You can watch launch coverage live at Space.com beginning at 6 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) courtesy of NASA or you can watch directly at the agency’s website.