NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, closing in on asteroid Bennu, has sent back photos showing a body remarkably similar in appearance to the asteroid Ryugu being studied by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft.
Chinese photographer Tianhong Li won “best newcomer” honours in the 2018 Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition for this captivating view of the Milky Way and the vast clouds of stars, gas and dust making up the core and the galactic plane stretching skyward.
Like its cousin the Kepler space telescope, NASA’s Dawn mission to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres has run out of gas, ending a remarkably successful 11-year mission to the two largest members of the asteroid belt.
