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It all Happened in 2004!

2004 was a great space year. Twin Rovers at Mars, Stardust at comet Wild 2, and Cassini-Huygens at Saturn. Messenger further successfully launched for its long journey to Mercury. As far as observation is concerned, 2004 granted us with a rare Venus transit as some large sunspots renewed the activity at Sun

see more at dedicated pages on this site (no link back):

. Twin Rovers (MER)
. Stardust: Target Comet Wild
. NASA/ESA Cassini-Huyghens: Mission to Saturn
. Messenger: Towards Nearest Solar System Planet to Sun
. Venus Transit on June 8th, 2004
. for Sun, see at the page "Planets, Moon, Events" of each localized section

About science, those news made the headlines:

- Modern life did not appear linearly but was the product of the merger of two archaic forms of life, an Archaea and of a bacteria, 2 billion years ago. Our information-carrying genes come from the Archaea as our cell operating mechanisms from the bacteria! The other story of Adam and Eve (September). more

- Best matching ever SETI signal was found this year emitting at the 1,420 Mhz hydrogen frequency and shifting as soon as it is intercepted! The source is between constellations Pisces and Aries. Nothing is seen there at less than 1,000 light-years (September). more

- Jupiter JIMO mission to the icy moons of Jupiter in 2012 is on tracks. It will be the first NASA mission implementing nuclear fission technologies for power and ion propulsion (August and September)

- The first "inner Oort Cloud" object has been found at Caltech. Sedna never comes to Sun closer than about 76 AU with a highly elliptical, 10,500-year long orbit (March). more