Cosmic phenomena are events and features that occur in space, involving immense scales of distance, time, and energy. Studying these events provides a deeper understanding of the universe, its origins, and its fundamental laws. From the birth of stars to the collision of galaxies, the cosmos offers an endless array of fascinating sights.
Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has been knocking it out of the park with small-body exploration missions for decades. They had historic successes with both Hayabusa and Hayabusa2, and they are going to visit the Martian Moons soon with the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. But after that, they are aiming for something much more pristine and arguably more difficult - a comet. The Next Generation Small-Body Return (NGSR) was recently described in a paper at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), and is under assessment as a large-class mission for the 2030s.

