Year in review: A comprehensive guide to everything that happened in the fields of space and astronomy in 2017

In 2017, we discovered exoplanets with conditions totally unsuitable for life, Cassini concluded its mission with a suicidal dive into Saturn, NASA outsourced the processing of stunning images of Jupiter to the general public, astronomers and planetary scientists continued to argue over whether Pluto was a planet, Blue Origin successfully tested an unmanned Crew Capsule and not one single SpaceX rocket blew up. Details: https://t.co/n4g13S46mX pic.twitter.com/HHBJ9Ucanx — NASA Solar System November 27, 2017 Over the course of its mission, Cassini studied the atmosphere of Saturn, including moving methane clouds and the hexagonal jet streams around the north pole of the gas giant. Discovery of exoplanets that may support life, including seven in the TRAPPIST-1 system The TRAPPIST-1 system was initially discovered in mid 2016 and researchers had identified three of the planets in orbit around the star. Adam Burgasser, the lead author of the study said, “If there is life on these planets, I would speculate that it has to be hardy life, because it has to be able to survive some potentially dire scenarios for billions of years.” Researchers using data from follow up observations via the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that the inner planets may have lost about 20 Earth oceans worth of water over the last 8 billion years, considering the exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the host star.