from
https://www.space.com/top-10-spaceflight-stories-2023

(It is best to go to the citation to see the pictures.)

The top 10 spaceflight stories of 2023
News
By Josh Dinner published about 18 hours ago
A lot happened last year.

Comments (0)
a massive plume of fire shoots out of a rocket engine
The engine of an Antares rocket fires during the launch of the NG-18
cargo mission to the International Space Station. (Image credit: Josh
Dinner)
Last year was a very busy one in the final frontier.

Here's a rundown of some of the highlights, from the highly anticipated
debut of SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket to the safe landing on
Earth of NASA's first-ever pristine asteroid sample.

Related: 8 ways that SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

SPACEX'S STARSHIP LAUNCHES FIRST 2 TEST FLIGHTS
a giant rocket rises from its smoke plume in the disatnce. boaters look
on from the water

SpaceX's Starship launches on its second integrated flight test on Nov.
18, 2023. (Image credit: Space.com / Josh Dinner)
Last year, we saw SpaceX make some significant headway in the company's
development of its next-generation launch vehicle, Starship. The fully
stacked rocket lifted off for the first time on April 20.

That flight lasted about 4 minutes. During the test, Starship's upper
stage failed to separate from its Super Heavy booster. The vehicle began
toppling end-over-end through the sky, ultimately reaching an explosive
end with an autodestruct command. Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines also
blasted out a crater in the concrete beneath the launch pad at SpaceX's
Starbase facility in South Texas, prompting upgrades to both the rocket
and ground infrastructure.

Starship's next flight was delayed, pending the conclusion of
investigations led by the United States Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) and Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) into the causes and
consequences of Starship's April 20 mishap. SpaceX enacted 63
"corrective actions" at the direction of the FAA and was finally cleared
to launch Starship again about seven months later, in November.

Starship launched for the second time Nov. 18. A water deluge system
installed beneath the pad, and a new "hot-fire" staging system
incorporated into Starship's launch procedures, solved two of the major
issues the vehicle experienced during its first test, but Starship again
failed to complete its full flight profile. A short time after stage
separation, Super Heavy exploded, followed shortly by a communications
loss with the Starship upper stage and its subsequent destruction.

After the November launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk voiced
optimism that the third Starship test flight could lift off shortly
after, in December. And, in the middle of the month, SpaceX rolled
Starship hardware to the pad for testing ahead of that anticipated
launch. However, that flight still hasn't happened.

MAJOR SCIENCE MISSIONS
a triple booster rocket blasts off from a launch tower with a blue hazy
sky behind

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off with NASA's Psyche probe to a
metal-rich asteroid, Oct. 13, 2023. (Image credit: Josh Dinner)
2023 was a great year for science missions launching into space. In
April, the penultimate launch of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket sent the
European Space Agency's (ESA) JUICE spacecraft on a journey to the
Jovian system to study three of Jupiter's largest moons.

JUICE (short for "Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer") will spend the next eight
years traveling to the gas giant, completing several gravity-assist
maneuvers around Earth and Venus during the interim years. Once JUICE
arrives at Jupiter in July 2031, it will begin studying the big moons
Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, all of which are believed to contain
liquid-water oceans beneath their icy, outer layers.

Another ESA mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in July of last
year, to study and map the "dark universe." The Euclid telescope is
designed to study dark matter and dark energy, and will spend the next
six years scoping out areas of the universe outside our Milky Way galaxy.

A third science mission, NASA's Psyche probe, launched on a Falcon Heavy
in October. Psyche is on a 2.2 billion-mile (3.5 billion kilometers)
journey to an asteroid of the same name, which is composed primarily of
nickel and iron. Scientists believe the asteroid 16 Psyche may be the
remnant of an ancient protoplanetary core, and they hope its study will
yield clues into the processes of planetary formation.

OSIRIS-REX ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN LANDING
A capsule with a sample of asteroid Bennu inside, delivered to Earth on
Sept. 24, 2023, by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, is seen shortly after
touching down on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range.

OSIRIS-REx's asteroid sample return capsule landed at the Department of
Defense's Utah Test and Training Range on Sept. 24, 2023. (Image credit:
NASA/Keegan Barber)
The return capsule from NASA's first mission to retrieve samples from an
asteroid touched town in September of last year. OSIRIS-REx launched in
2016 and spent two years traveling to its target asteroid, Bennu. After
an extensive survey in orbit around the space rock, OSIRIS-REx
maneuvered to the asteroid's surface to collect its samples in October 2020.

After another few years in space, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's trajectory
brought it back toward Earth, providing a window to eject the probe's
sample return capsule on Sept. 24. As the capsule shot through Earth's
atmosphere, the craft's heat shield protected the asteroid samples
despite friction-induced temperatures as high as 5,300 degrees
Fahrenheit (2,900 degrees Celsius) and speeds up to 27,000 mph (43,450 kph).

Following its fiery flight, the sample return capsule successfully
deployed its main parachute and touched down for a soft landing at the
Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range.

In a twist, NASA has yet to open OSIRIS-REx's main sample container, and
is developing a new tool in order to safely remove its cover. However,
even with the main samples still sealed shut, enough material was found
to have collected outside the main sample container to exceed
OSIRIS-REx's mission targets.

Though this is not the first material recovered from an asteroid in
space, it is NASA's first such effort, and the largest amount snagged to
date. Once the agency is able to open the probe's sample container, it
plans to send 25% of the Bennu samples to more than 200 scientists
across the globe, including those representing the space agencies of
other nations.

Following the separation of its return capsule, the main OSIRIS-REx
spacecraft changed its course toward a different target, an asteroid
named Apophis. Now on a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft
will reach Apophis in 2029.

INDIA LANDS ON THE MOON
a lander on the lunar surface

The first image of the Chandrayaan 3 mission's Vikram lunar lander on
the moon's surface, taken by the mission's Pragyan rover. (Image credit:
ISRO)
India became the fourth nation to successfully land on the moon when its
Chandrayaan-3 mission achieved the feat in August of last year.
Chandrayaan-3's landing duo consisted of two vehicles, the Vikram lander
and the Pragyan rover. The Chandrayaan-3 propulsion module remained in
lunar orbit to perform its own research.

The lander-rover duo touched in the moon's southern hemisphere, at
around 70 degrees south, on Aug. 23. Once on the surface, Pragyan exited
Vikram to begin its mission of analyzing the lunar soil and other
surface material.

A few days after landing, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)
released an image of Vikram, snapped by Pragyan as it rolled along the
surface of the moon. Their primary mission goals accomplished, both the
rover and lander were later placed in sleep mode, as the lunar night set
in on their landing site. However, after the dark, two-week lunar frost,
teams at ISRO were unable to wake the vehicles.

RUSSIA'S MOON CRASH
a small crater appears on the moon's surface in a before-and-after animation

Before and after stills of Luna-25's crash site on the surface of the
moon. (Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State
University)
Russia also launched a mission to land on the moon during 2023.
Unfortunately, however, its attempt was not successful.

Luna-25, the first Soviet/Russian lunar mission in 47 years, launched
from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia's eastern Amur Region, on Aug.
10. Its mission was to land in the moon's south polar region, near
Boguslawsky Crater, but a malfunction during one of the spacecraft's
engine burns caused the probe to crash into the lunar surface.

"At about 14:57 Moscow time [on Aug. 19], communication with the Luna-25
spacecraft was interrupted," the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, wrote
in a Telegram update (in Russian; translation by Google). "The measures
taken on August 19 and 20 to search for the device and get into contact
with it did not produce any results."