The world beyond the planet Earth is becoming increasingly accessible in the past few years, but there seems to be no end to the wonders of space that leaves everyone in awe.

The most recent milestone of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is catching a star explosion -- a supernova -- for the first time in history with the Kepler Space Telescope.

First Supernova Seen in History

The Kepler actually caught the shock wave from the supernova, which was initially in the telescope's radar in 2011. Located roughly 1.2 billion light-years away, the star was dubbed the KSN 2011d and reportedly is 500 times bigger than the sun and 20,000 times brighter.

Although the cartoon animation released by NASA was only 30 seconds long, the shock breakout lasted around 20 minutes, an event that the space agency described as "an investigative milestone for astronomers." The experience will give the scientists an opportunity to collect more data about shock waves from explosions such as this.

Observing the Skies With the Kepler

"In order to see something that happens on timescales of minutes, like a shock breakout, you want to have a camera continuously monitoring the sky," lead author Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame, explained in an official statement. "You don't know when a supernova is going to go off, and Kepler's vigilance allowed us to be a witness as the explosion began."

At the time the shock wave from KSN 2011d was observed, the Kepler was pointed at the Cygnus constellation with the aim of discovering extrasolar planets.

A second supernova was even caught by Kepler, a star called KSN 2011a. This one is a bit smaller at only 300 times the size of the sun and located 1.2 billion light-years away as well. However, the shock wave from the KSN 2011a ended up being unobservable, possibly due to gas surrounding the star.

NASA's Recent Accomplishments

Even those who are not keeping up with the recent space news will likely hear about the recent achievements of the U.S. space agency. One of the interesting releases of NASA lately is a gravity map of Mars, which illustrated the way water used to flow on the red planet. Images of the dwarf planet Ceres were also shown in public, giving people a more detailed glimpse of the world beyond Earth.

Landmark discoveries such as these are probably a big part of the interest surrounding the agency recently. According to a recent report from Latin Post, NASA received the most number of applicants for the astronaut program this year with around 18,300 submissions -- three times more than the last time they entertained applications in 2012.