On December 25th 2021, while many people were opening their Christmas presents, astronomers around the world were getting excited about another kind of present: the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Launched at 13:20 on Christmas day, this new telescope built by ESA, NASA, and the Canadian Space Agency, finally made it to space after years of delay due to its complexity and the number of tests it had to go through before being cleared to go up. It is the largest telescope ever sent in orbit and represents not only a real opportunity for astronomy but also a progress in technology and engineering. You are probably familiar with the Hubble…

February 18th 2021, 12:55 PST. A room in California erupts in cheers and applause as mission control watches its robot land on another planet. After years of preparations and almost seven months of space travel, Perseverance arrived safe and sound on the Red Planet, ready to study its environment for a planned duration of two years. It will join NASA’s Mars Exploration Program lineage of four martian rovers, making it the fifth since 1997 to explore this curious planet. But why do we care about Mars so much? Mars has always been an object of wonder, from the idea that a civilization could inhabit it to Elon Musk’s plans for…