NASA publishes unpublished photos of the Hubble telescope 1:09
(CNN) -
This has been a difficult year no matter where in the world you live, but discoveries beyond our planet and dazzling images of the cosmos gave us joy in 2020.
Astronauts continued to travel safely into space, despite the pandemic, and even embarked on historic launches.
And they taught us how to handle isolation.
We learned more about our little corner of the universe, as well as the vast expanses beyond dotted with strange stars and even stranger exoplanets.
Hubble's 30th anniversary, a key piece of space discoveries
The before and after the Hubble launch 9:31
The Hubble Space Telescope debuted 30 years ago in April, forever changing the way we view the universe.
The telescope's ethereal, dreamy and almost fantastic views of space have inspired people for decades and led to some of the most important astronomical discoveries.
Hubble captured this image of a giant red nebula and a smaller blue nebula to celebrate their 30th anniversary in April.
Hubble has enabled astronomers around the world to study black holes, mysterious dark energy, distant galaxies, and galactic mergers.
This vital research instrument has observed planets outside our solar system and where they form around stars, and the formation and death of stars.
You have seen through 97% of the universe, effectively looking back in time.
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In 2020, the Hubble teams continued to publish new images and contributed to a host of discoveries.
Hubble scientists believe that the telescope will continue to operate until at least 2025, if not longer.
Humans in space
This year marks 20 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station.
Some of the experiments launched on the space station this year included genetically enhanced "mighty mice" and Nickelodeon's slime.
Plus, the astronauts even tried baking cookies and growing their own salad ingredients in space.
The astronauts also learned more about how their bodies adapt to space.
A set of studies revealed some of the genetic changes astronauts experience during long-term space flights.
A crew had to handle a blood clot in space, and NASA astronaut Christina Koch set a new space flight record for women.
Study reveals impact on astronauts' health 0:42
Commercial cargo vehicles and crew transport provided by SpaceX are allowing more experiments and astronauts to travel to and from the space station.
This means that there may be even more scientific discoveries on the space station in the future.
And the current team recently received a virtual reality camera and a new toilet based on feedback from astronauts.
A long lost comet
Comet NEOWISE delighted us as it crossed our skies.
It is named after NASA's NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission that discovered it in late March.
Comet NEOWISE is seen in the sky over the town of Kreva, about 100 km northwest of Minsk, on July 13, 2020.
By observing the comet, researchers have discovered that it is about 4.8 km in diameter, the average size of a comet with a long orbit.
And it's incredibly bright, even if it's not as spectacular as Comet Hale-Bopp as seen in 1997.
After disappearing from view, the comet continued on its long orbit to the edge of the solar system.
This is the reason why we will not see the comet again in our lives.
It takes thousands of years to travel through the outer solar system before returning to the solar system.
Scientists point out that this means that the comet isn't exactly new, just new to us, because it previously streaked through Earth's skies around 6,800 years ago.
These stellar marriage proposals are unmatched 0:54
Space discoveries about our peculiar neighbors
The Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter made headlines for new discoveries on each planet that are intriguing to researchers.
New research revealed that there may be more water on the Moon than previously believed, even on its sunlit surface. This water could be used as a resource during upcoming missions, such as the return of humans to the lunar surface of NASA through the Artemis program.
The first results from NASA's InSight lander revealed that Mars is active from the point of view of earthquakes and experiences earthquakes on a regular basis.
Venus could have the ability to host life in its clouds.
A gas was also detected on Earth in the atmosphere of Venus.
The discovery of phosphine could point to unknown processes occurring in Earth's "twin."
Phosphine suggests the presence of life on Earth.
And the idea of aerial life in the clouds of Venus is intriguing.
While not likely, the researchers want to investigate this idea further in the future.
The Juno mission on Jupiter investigated water on the largest planet in our solar system, as well as observing blue goblins and elves spinning in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.
While it may sound like something out of a fantasy novel, goblins and elves are actually two types of fast, bright flashes of light or transient light events.
Juno and Hubble also spied monstrous storms and the eerie glow of the planet.
This illustration shows the transient light event known as 'goblin' on Jupiter.
Asteroid samples coming to Earth
Bennu was close to Earth for millions of years 0:42
In October, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission briefly landed on the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and successfully collected a sizeable sample from the asteroid's surface that will reach Earth in 2023.
It was the agency's first mission to land on an asteroid and collect a sample, and the spacecraft sent out some great images of the historic moment.
The spacecraft cameras captured the moment OSIRIS-REx landed on Bennu.
Meanwhile, Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 mission dropped off its sample collection capsule, containing samples from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, in December before moving on to visit more asteroids.
The sample is one of the first subsurface materials to have been collected from an asteroid.
Samples from both asteroids could tell us more about how the solar system formed and how elements such as water came to Earth early in its history.
Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse
This year it was all about Betelgeuse, a red giant star in the constellation Orion believed to be on the brink of a supernova explosion.
This image shows the red supergiant star Betelgeuse as it dimmed in December 2019.
The star began to darken in 2019 and continued into 2020, leading astronomers to think that it might explode.
But Hubble helped astronomers determine that the star ejected some of its material, blocking the star's light.
The star is usually one of the brightest in our sky.
However, not all researchers agree with this scenario and continue to observe Betelgeuse.
Black holes in the spotlight
It is fitting that 2020 may go down in the history of space discoveries as the year of the black hole, considering that all of our plans for this year seemed to disappear into a black hole of its own.
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for discoveries of black holes that revealed the "darkest secrets of the universe."
Andrea Ghez is the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics 1:04
Astronomers discovered an unprecedented explosion created by a black hole 390 million light years away.
The researchers compared the largest explosion ever detected in the universe to the 1980 Mount St. Helena eruption, except that "fifteen Milky Way galaxies could be tucked in a row into the crater that this eruption left" through a gaseous cluster in space, they said.
This illustration shows a star that undergoes a spaghetti process when absorbed by a supermassive black hole.
Astronomers discovered the long-sought intermediate-mass black hole, which is between that of supermassive black holes and the smallest black holes.
This finding will help scientists understand how black holes evolve.
The research team was able to confirm the observation of an intermediate mass black hole, known as an IMBH, within a dense star cluster.
The shocking black hole that measures more than the Sun 0:39
Gravitational waves were also detected from the merger of two black holes that included an intermediate mass black hole.
The researchers also found the closest black hole to Earth 1,000 light-years away, observed the beating heart of a supermassive black hole, and detected light from two colliding black holes for the first time.
And astronomers witnessed the "spaghetti" of a star as it was ripped apart and eaten by a supermassive black hole.
Strange exoplanets and rogue planets, other 2020 space discoveries
Astronomers found baby exoplanets forming around stars, doomed exoplanets, 'cotton candy' exoplanets with whimsical names, Star Wars-style planets, planets made of diamonds, and the hottest exoplanet.
Identify 24 'superinhabitable' planets 1:10
The researchers also found an exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf, or dead star, for the first time, as well as an exposed planetary core orbiting a distant star.
For the first time in history, they captured an image of two giant exoplanets orbiting a young sun-like star.
But much of the excitement on the horizon revolves around rogue planets or planets traveling through space that don't orbit stars.
Astronomers spotted the smallest rogue planet in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and it's about the size of Mars and Earth.
Given the fact that rogue planets don't emit light like stars, not even enough heat to be visible in infrared light, these otherwise invisible worlds are difficult to detect.
But NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to be available in the mid-2020s, could reveal a multitude of rogue planets in our galaxy.
Rapid radio bursts from space
Mysterious radio bursts from space are known to have been repeated.
However, this year for the first time researchers noticed a pattern in two separate series of bursts from distant sources in the universe.
Fast Radio Bursts, or FRBs, are millisecond-long bursts of radio waves in space.
Known fast radio bursts have a repeating pattern that occurs every 16 days, while the other occurs every 157 days.
Astronomers have yet to determine what causes these fast radio bursts, which are unpredictable but can be detected and traced back to their source using sensitive telescopes.
The bursts are being used to find "lost matter" in the universe.
And last month, for the first time, astrophysicists detected a fast radio burst that likely traveled to Earth from a particular type of neutron star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, accompanied by X-ray emissions.
A new look at our Sun
This is what a sunspot image looks like 0:38
After making its first approach to the Sun this year, the Solar Orbiter mission captured the closest images ever taken of the Sun. In the images are small solar flares called "bonfires" that can be seen near the surface of the Sun. Scientists still They don't know exactly what bonfires are, but they think they could be "nanoflares" or tiny sparks that help heat the sun's outer atmosphere.
The first images from the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope revealed that the surface of our Sun is a wild and violent place.
The details in the images show that the plasma, which covers the Sun, appears to boil.
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has produced the highest resolution image of the Sun's surface ever taken.
Every 11 years, the Sun completes a solar cycle of calm and stormy activity and begins a new one.
The Sun has just finished its first year of a new cycle.
The new solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, officially began in December 2019. Solar Cycle 25 will be very similar to what we have just experienced for the past 11 years.
The next solar maximum, when the Sun experiences a peak of activity, is expected to occur in July 2025. During that time, solar flares or other flares from the Sun may disrupt communications on Earth.
The Artemis program seeks to land the first woman and the next man on the moon in 2024, so updates about the goals, training and preparation for Artemis are expected throughout 2021.
A look at possible space breakthroughs and discoveries in 2021
If 2020 was the year of launching multiple missions to Mars - China's Tianwen-1, the United Arab Emirates' Hope Probe, and NASA's Perseverance rover - then 2021 will likely be the year of new discoveries on Mars.
NASA provides more details of mission heading to Mars 1:10
In 2021, the first observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope could also take place after its launch in October and the "first light" from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
The first light is the first astronomical image captured by a telescope after it is completed.
And NASA's Artemis program is expected to move forward.
In 2020 the science objectives of the mission and the first team of 18 Artemis astronauts were announced.
The Artemis program seeks to get the first woman and the next man to the Moon in 2024, so it is expected that in 2021 there will be new information about the goals, training and preparation for Artemis.