People have been gazing skyward at night for all of human history, studying the stars and wondering what could lie beyond them. But soon, scientists will have a powerful new tool at their disposal: the Giant Magellan Telescope, which is expected to be the world’s largest optical telescope once it’s completed.

Under the football stadium at the University of Arizona, Patrick McCarthy, the vice president and senior astronomer at the GMT project, heads the international group building the Giant Magellan.

“One of the big discoveries in astronomy in the past 20 years is that 97% of the universe, we have no idea what it is,” McCarthy said.

Panorama 360, Moon, Apollo 11 — vol. 2 Apollo 50th anniversary Apollo 11.

After a thunderous launch on a Saturn V rocket, a three day journey through the unforgiving environment of space and a daring descent in the Lunar Module, you’re here: standing on the Moon. Look around and take in the sights of the surface, just as Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt saw it almost 5 decades ago. #Apollo50th

https://go.nasa.gov/2YWTVI7

After a thunderous launch on a Saturn V rocket, a three day journey through the unforgiving environment of space and a daring descent in the Lunar Module, you’re here: standing on the Moon. Look around and take in the sights of the surface, just as Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt saw it almost 5 decades ago. #Apollo50th

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NASA imagery experts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have “stitched together” images from the Apollo landing sites on the Moon for a 50^th anniversary reminder of what the 12 humans who walked on its surface experience visually.

Individual images taken by the Apollo astronauts were pulled together by NASA imagery specialist Warren Harold at Johnson, and the accuracy of the unique perspective they represent was verified by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, the only geologist to walk on the Moon.

“The Valley of Taurus-Littrow on the Moon presents a view that is one of the more spectacular natural scenes in the Solar System,” Schmitt said about the images stitched together from his Moon base Station 5 at the Taurus-Littrow landing site.

In the dark and lonely place that is space, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has managed to reach a new level of proximity as it studies an asteroid.

After a manoeuvre, the spacecraft in NASA’s asteroid study mission is orbiting closer to a planetary body than any spacecraft has ever come, the space agency said.

The mission recently entered a new phase where the spacecraft will orbit about 2,231 feet above the asteroid Bennu’s surface.