All the cool stuff Nasa did in 2017

While some events on Earth have seemed far-fetched and out of this world in 2017, it seems Nasa has been having a grand time with success after success and a rosy future ahead.

With support from the White House, Nasa has been directed to return astronauts to the Moon to further preparations for manned missions to Mars.

Here are the best bits of what the US space agency has been up to over the last 12 months.

Its astronauts had a pretty special view of the August eclipse.

The International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, is seen in silhouette as it transits the Sun at roughly five miles per second during a solar eclipse (Bill Ingalls/Nasa) — (Bill Ingalls/Nasa)

ICYMI, one of the first images of Saturn we took, and one of the last. Re-live the highlights of the journey in between: https://t.co/LWCJ3N3zvW #SaturnSaturday pic.twitter.com/d7ByUmSTeW

— CassiniSaturn (@CassiniSaturn) December 2, 2017

Voyager 1 and 2 are the longest operating spacecraft in deep space. They celebrated 40 years of service in September and are now 13 billion miles away and *still* going strong.

Sept. 5, I’ll have been in space 40 years, and the hits just keep on comin’! Download free #Voyager40 posters now: https://t.co/QykmCxIpUs pic.twitter.com/PtG1MRy9WO

— NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) August 30, 2017

Nasa’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the first light ever tied to a gravitational-wave event, thanks to two merging neutron stars in the galaxy NGC 4993, located about 130 million light years from Earth.

For the first time, scientists saw a gamma-ray burst caused by neutron stars colliding & saw the gravity wave: https://t.co/1QhDy9v4TG pic.twitter.com/aTHSBuxumA

— NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) October 16, 2017

A Nasa funded telescope, Pan-STARRS1, discovered the first confirmed object to travel through the solar system from another star. The historic discovery revealed the interstellar interloper named Oumuamua to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a ratio of length to width unlike any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system.

Artist’s impression of the interstellar asteroid `Oumuamua — Artist’s impression of the first interstellar asteroid named Oumuamua. (M Kornmesser/European Southern Observatory)

638 days in space and the view is still amazing! Soaking up some sunset time in the cupola… pic.twitter.com/AiReQzkjJZ

— Peggy Whitson (@AstroPeggy) August 6, 2017

Of course, Nasa doesn’t just focus on space. It’s technical skills and know-how can be applied on the ground too. It’s working to make cargo and passenger planes get from the gate to take-off more quickly with ATD – Airspace Technology Demonstration-2. There’s now a three-year demo phase in action after initial testing.

Uncovering mysteries of neutron stars & developing a “GPS” for the galaxy. NASA’s NICER-SEXTANT launches soon to the space station. pic.twitter.com/q5UYb72JpG

— NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) May 24, 2017

And if all that wasn’t enough – never forget…