The cover of this year-end issue of Science News spotlights a spectacular scientific achievement: an image of deep space captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. After decades of delay and cost overruns, the absurdly complicated craft started beaming back images this summer. Each image has exceeded scientists’ wildest expectations. We had a hard time choosing just one for the cover.
These extraordinary views, some looking more than 13 billion years back in time, brought our staff joy too — so much so that we’ve led off our year-end review with this technological triumph, including more gorgeous images (SN: 12/7/22 p.15). This year had plenty of other big news in astronomy, including the launch of NASA’s Artemis I mission, a key step in sending people to the moon and beyond (SN: 11/16/22 p.30). For sheer fun, it’s hard to beat NASA’s DART spacecraft elbowing an asteroid off course. It was the first test of a method to protect our planet from dangerous collisions with space rocks (SN: 10/11/22 p.30).