T-Minus: Counting down the top 10 space stories of 2024
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. This is T-Minus, where Freethink counts down the biggest developments in space. For the last installment of 2024, Kristin Houser looked back on the 10 greatest space stories of that year. From a first-of-its-kind spacewalk to the recovery of a rocket that could one day take people to Mars, here’s what she found. SLIM’s moon landing An image of SLIM taken by Sora-Q, a tiny rover that joined the lander on its journey. (Credit: JAXA) In 1966, the USSR became the first nation to achieve a “soft” lunar landing, meaning one in which the spacecraft isn’t destroyed upon impact. On January 19, 2024, Japan became just the fifth nation in history to do the same, soft landing its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft on the lunar surface. The landing wasn’t perfect — SLIM hit the moon upside down — but the location was the most precise in history, …