1. In July, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center housed the agency’s first space-bound Orion capsule. This marks a major milestone in the construction of space ships that will Cary humans farther into space than ever before. This capsule is so special because it has the most advanced landing gear, and it can sustain humans for long periods of time.

2. Astronomers announced in April that they are actively hunting supermassive black holes throughout the universe. To do this NASA requires a super powerful telescope, they have it. The Wide Infrared Survey-Explorer or W.I.S.E. for short. This telescope has already found hundreds of supermassive black holes with the potential of finding thousands more.

3. NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft has been studying Mercury for many years and now it has made a sensational discovery. It has found ice on Mercury! This is very unusual considering how close the planet is to the sun.

4. The International Space Station is now fully operational since it opened twelve years ago. More than 1500 research and technology experiments have been conducted on the I.S.S. and more than 200 this year. The I.S.S. will help make technological advances and broaden our overall understanding of the universe.

5. An international team of experts from the European Space Agency and NASA have collected data from multiple satellites about the loss of the ice shelf in the North Pole and Antarctica. What they have found is astonishing, apparently the melting of the ice sheets has increased over the last 20 years. The ice sheets are now losing 3 times as much ice as they were in the 1990’s.