Adventures of Space

The microscopic tardigrade —also known as the water bear—is the only animal that can survive the cold, irradiated vacuum of outer space. "Tardigrades can survive pressures that are comparable to those created when asteroids strike Earth, so a small crash like this is nothing to them," Lukasz Kaczmarek , an expert on tardigrades Tardigrades are a class of microscopic animals with eight limbs and a strange, alien-like behavior. William Miller , a leading tardigrade researcher at Baker University, says they are remarkably abundant. Hundreds of species "are found across the seven continents; everywhere from the highest mountain to the lowest sea," he says. "Many species of tardigrades live in water, but on land, you find them almost everywhere there's moss or lichen." Back in April, the moon-bound Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed due to a computer error. Scientists loaded the tardigrades onto the Beresheet along with human DNA samples; when

For the first time, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a distant planet within the zone of potential habitability. The planet is part of a trio orbiting a star known as GJ 357. Known as "GJ 357 d," NASA calls it"especially intriguing." "This is exciting, as this is TESS's first discovery of a nearby super-Earth that could harbor life—TESS is a small, mighty mission with a huge reach," says Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy, director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute, and a member of the TESS science team, in a press statement.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule Vostok 1 completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961.   Space missions:  Vostok 1 Nationality:  Soviet Gagarin's flight came at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for technological supremacy in space. The Soviet Union had already sent the first artificial satellite, called  Sputnik , into space in October 1957.