The Planetary Society's Best of 2023 Awards

2023 has been a remarkable year for space science and exploration. What were the highlights for you? Cast your vote today!

Voting is open until Nov. 30th. The results will be revealed in early December.

Best Solar System image:

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Most exciting moment in planetary science:

JWST confirming its first exoplanet
In January, the world’s newest, most powerful space telescope confirmed the existence of a rocky exoplanet in orbit around a star 40.7 light-years away.

OSIRIS-REx successfully returning a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth
The NASA spacecraft delivered a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth in September, completing a seven-year mission that spanned 7.1 billion kilometers (4.4 billion miles).

Astronomers confirming 12 newly discovered moons of Jupiter
The gas giant now has 92 confirmed moons, pulling it ahead of Saturn, which has 83 known moons.

The launch and successful landing of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover
The spacecraft launched on July 14, 2023 and touched down in the Moon’s south polar region on August 23, 2023.

The discovery of the first signs of possible active volcanism on Venus
Scientists using data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft, which imaged the surface of Venus from orbit in the early 1990s, discovered the first-ever signs of possible active volcanism on Venus.

Scientists finding complex organic molecules in samples of asteroid Ryugu
Analysis of a small sample of the asteroid Ryugu returned to Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission in 2020 found signs of complex organic molecules as well as uracil, one of the four building blocks of RNA.

The launch of Japan’s SLIM lunar lander
SLIM aims to test highly accurate Moon landings that could boost the science value of missions. A successful landing would make Japan the fifth country to land on the Moon.

Researchers finding signs of water in lunar regolith
Researchers analyzing lunar material brought back to Earth in 2020 by China’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft have found water trapped in glass beads.

Ingenuity flying faster and higher than ever before
In April, the Mars helicopter reached a top speed of 23.3 kilometers per hour (14.5 miles per hour) and a maximum altitude of 16 meters (52.5 feet).

ESA launching its Juice mission to Jupiter’s icy moons
Juice (the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) blasted off in April to begin its journey to Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, all three of which may harbor subsurface oceans.

The release of the largest, most detailed global map of Mars ever created
Stitching together 110,000 individual images taken over six years by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists at Caltech created a 5.7-terapixel map that can be zoomed in to a resolution of five meters (16 feet) per pixel.

The launch of the Psyche mission
The spacecraft took off in October, beginning its six-year journey to the metallic asteroid, also named Psyche. The mission will help determine whether Psyche may be the exposed core of a planetesimal that had its outer layers stripped off by collisions.

Best Mars image:

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Best “Fact Worth Sharing” from our weekly Downlink newsletter

Mini moons
Mars’ moons are both very small. Deimos is so small and has such low gravity that if you stood on its surface and jumped you could achieve escape velocity and leave the moon forever.

Expected asteroids
Although astronomers have found and cataloged over 30,000 near-Earth asteroids to date, there have only been seven instances where an Earth-bound asteroid was detected before it entered our atmosphere.

High chances of life
With trillions of galaxies in the Universe, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, most of which are likely to host planets, many of which host moons, the number of worlds out there is staggering — as is the likelihood that life exists beyond Earth.

Rocky tides
On Earth, the Moon's gravity causes tides of at most 16 meters (52 feet) in our oceans. On Io, Jupiter's gravity causes tides too — but this time in the rocky crust, making the entire surface rise and fall by about 100 meters (about 330 feet).

Alien frosts
On Earth, frost happens when water molecules in the atmosphere freeze directly into ice on cold surfaces. On other planets, you get different kinds of frost: carbon dioxide frost on Mars, methane frost on Pluto, and even heavy metal frost on Venus.

Chilly craters
A little sunlight goes a long way. Some permanently shadowed craters on the Moon receive so little sunlight that they are colder than most of the surface of Pluto, which is about five billion kilometers (three billion miles) farther from the Sun.

Floating Saturn
Although Saturn is the second-most massive planet in the Solar System, it’s the least dense of all the planets. Saturn’s average density is lower than that of water — in a hypothetical situation involving a truly enormous pool, Saturn could actually float.

Favorite active planetary science mission this year:

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover and Ingenuity Mars helicopter

The United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars orbiter

China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and Zhurong rover

NASA’s Juno Jupiter orbiter

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover

ESA/JAXA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury

NASA’s Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter

The James Webb Space Telescope

China’s Chang'e-4 lunar orbiter and Yutu-2 lunar rover

NASA’s Psyche mission to the metallic asteroid

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission

The Hubble Space Telescope

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission

ESA’s Juice mission to Jupiter and its moons

Favorite Planetary Society member artwork shared in our Downlink weekly newsletter this year

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Most exciting upcoming planetary science mission:

NASA’s Dragonfly Titan helicopter

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission

NASA’s VERITAS Venus mission

NASA’s DAVINCI Venus mission

ESA’s EnVision Venus mission

NASA’s ACS3 solar sailing mission

NASA’s Artemis Program to the Moon

Japan’s MMX Martian moons mission

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission

NASA’s NEO Surveyor planetary defense mission

The best Planetary Society accomplishment thanks to the support of our members:

STEP grants
This year The Planetary Society awarded the second round of STEP grants (Science and Technology Empowered by the Public): One project to study salty Earth lakes that may be similar to ancient Mars and some of the Solar System's ocean moons, and another to test different methods of growing crops in space in preparation for deep space human exploration.

A new Planetary Radio host
Sarah Al-Ahmed became the new host of Planetary Radio this year, taking over the reins of our weekly podcast after Mat Kaplan’s 20-year run as host.

A new member community
This year we launched our online member community, with activities like a monthly book club, a trivia contest, discussion groups, and live webinars.

Two Day of Action events
The Planetary Society held two Day of Action advocacy events this year: a virtual event where people took more than 1,500 advocacy actions in support of space, and an in-person event where more than 100 people held meetings with their representatives in Congress to advocate for space.

Advocating for exploration
This year The Planetary Society coordinated a series of advocacy actions throughout the year to get the VERITAS mission to Venus, the Mars Sample Return program, and the NEO Surveyor asteroid-hunting space telescope the funding they need.

Defending Earth
The Planetary Society sponsored the 2023 Planetary Defense Conference, bringing together world leaders in the effort to defend Earth from asteroid impacts.

Debunking UFO/UAP claims
In the wake of a spike in media interest in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, The Planetary Society published accurate information about the likelihood of extraterrestrial life.

Empowering the next generation
This year The Planetary Society Partnered with the Zed Factor Fellowship again, a program that empowers and engages aspiring aerospace professionals from underrepresented backgrounds, to host fellow Ariel Barreiro for a summer internship.

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