Space, it's been busy up there

Attention was focused towards the heavens with space agencies going above and beyond.

Jade Rabbit hops into history

China became the third country to successfully make a "soft landing" on the surface of the moon. The Jade Rabbit mission, designed to conduct scientific experiments, was declared a success by China. China has said they plan to launch another in 2017 to collect soil samples to return to earth followed by a mission in 2020 to land a Chinese astronaut on the moon.

Gaia's billion star mission

The ESA (European Space Agency) launched the Gaia mission aboard a Soyuz rocket to "decipher the history of the milky way". The mission is designed to accurately measure the positions and motions of roughly 100 billion stars.

A stroll, at 8km/s, through space

Astronauts on board the ISS will get 3 space walks to do essential repairs to the International Space Station replacing a malfunctioning pump which required emergency procedures leaving some experiments offline.

All talk?

A new robot companion, Kirobo, has taken up residence on the ISS to talk with Japanese astronaught, Koichi Wakata. The robot is designed to process questions and construct answers instead of a pre-programmed response.

Like new

NASA reactivated NEOWISE,the Asteroid-Hunting Probe, after 2.5 years of hibernation. The probe has sent back it's first images in an attempt to find potentially dangerous asteroids or some for exploration.