As 2023 comes to a close , we are taking a look back at some of the biggest space stories of the year .
A container carrying asteroid material captured in space three years ago arrived safely on Earth in September .
The container , or capsule , was released by the American space agency NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft .
It floated to Earth and landed in a desert area in the western state of Utah .
The spacecraft captured the asteroid material , or sample , from the asteroid Bennu in 2020 .
NASA announced in October the first examinations of the sample showed evidence of high-carbon material and water .
These two substances suggest the possibility that “the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock .”
NASA's Psyche spacecraft launched on a mission to observe an asteroid made mostly of metal .
It is expected to travel 3.6 billion kilometers over six years to reach the asteroid , also called Psyche .
NASA believes the asteroid could have separated during violent crashes that happened during our solar system's early creation .
Scientists think data collected on the asteroid could provide new details about how rocky planets , including Earth , formed .
The Psyche spacecraft is also being used to test a laser-based communication method .
The system aims to greatly improve data links between Earth and spacecraft exploring deep space .
A few weeks ago , NASA demonstrated the technology with a short video sent by the laser technology over 30 million kilometers to Earth .
The space agency said it took less than two minutes for the video to reach an observatory in California .
The video showed a cat repeatedly chasing a red laser light .
Scientists announced last month they had discovered the oldest black hole ever found .
The huge object is believed to have formed about 470 million years after the Big Bang .
The researchers said the findings confirm their theory that supermassive black holes existed in the very early universe .
Last month , the European Space Agency (ESA ) released the first images from its new Euclid space telescope .
ESA designed Euclid to study dark matter and dark energy .
Scientists think those hidden forms of matter and energy make up 95 percent of the universe .
ESA said the newly-released images covered 1,000 galaxies about 240 million light years away from Earth .
Data collected by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope helped astronomers identify the most distant , active supermassive black hole ever discovered .
Researchers said the black hole sits at the center of a galaxy called CEERS 1019 .
The galaxy is estimated to have existed about 570 million years after the Big Bang .
Earlier this month , NASA said its Ingenuity helicopter continues to perform well in tests carried out on Mars .
So far , Ingenuity has completed at least 66 flights over the past two-and-a-half years .
NASA said it is also testing equipment on Earth that it plans to include in future helicopters built for space exploration .
The latest tests on Earth involved new rotor blades the space agency said reached speeds near the speed of sound in experiments .
In August , India became the fourth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon .
The moon lander , called Chandrayaan-3 , also became the first spacecraft to land near the moon's south pole .
The south pole is thought to be an important area , with scientists saying it may contain large amounts of frozen water and minerals .
Chinese scientists announced in March they had discovered water in materials collected during the country's Chang'e 5 mission .
Researchers from Nanjing University reported the water was in the form of extremely small beads found in dirt collected in 2020 .
The scientists noted that billions , if not trillions , of these beads could exist on the moon , possibly providing a huge water source .
But the team said mining the water would be difficult .