All of the kids manage to show their special skills throughout the journey. All of them, even the ones who don't think they're that special, have hidden talents that aid the group in times of need.
Pretty much every time Kanata performs an impossible feat to save the day. Kid didn't train to be the ultimate athlete for nothing.
Even if he flubs the name, Kanata jumping over a water fountain to divebomb the purse snatcher is unironically pretty cool.
Kanata going to save Aries from drifting off into space by untethering himself from his cable is awesome enough, but the anime goes a step beyond- when they start returning to the Astra, Ulgar points out their trajectory is slightly off, so the rest of the group joins hands and form a human chain to help Kanata and Aries back onboard. Even cooler, this might actually be a reference to the cover of the last volume.
Kanata saving Funi from a Turgon by jumping from tree to tree and lobbing a lance at it like a javelin.
Quitterie deserves some praise for her contribution to this one. Just as Kanata finally reaches Funi he loses his balance- and as he falls back, he's shot up in the air by one of the parachute seeds Quitterie set off earlier. Sure enough, it's revealed that Quitterie ran back during the fight in order to activate them, saving Kanata's life in the process.
Kanata literally dragging himself to the big mushroom in order to get the medicine mushroom the rest of the crew needs to survive.
Kanata jumping down from the ship to save Luca and Ulgar from the raging tsunami.
Kanata launching himself to the top of that worm thing to retrieve Paulina's teammate's dog tags.
Kanata saving Charce after activating the wormhole in the cave on Galem by jumping over the wormhole (while yelling "Ultimate Diving Bomb") and tackling Charce to the ground. He loses his right arm in the process, but man, was he cool the entire time.
Aries may be an airhead, but she can surprise you when you least expect it. She has a photogenic memory that came in handy when the group gets lost on the first planet and when she realized she never saw Charce in her biology class. She also was the one who came up with the planet-hopping plan in the manga and combining the two wrecked ships' parts together on Icriss.
Zack's a genius at everything he does, from creating multiple food testers with everyone's voices inserted, to being able to calculate the trajectory of a crashing space ship in mere seconds.
While she was reluctant to do so, Quiterrie becoming the ship's doctor shows just how much she's grown as a person in the span of a few days. And she does such a good job!
Yunhua singing to the group for the first time. Not only does she have a gorgeous voice (The anime doubly so, courtesy of her seiyuu Saori Hayami, who is very well known for her mature, beautiful voice), but she also finally steps out of her mother's shadow, determined to follow her dreams and become a singer once she gets home.
Ulgar is an awesome sharpshooter, both with a bow and arrow, and a real gun.
Luca coming out as intersex. For the fans out there afraid of exposing their true selves, watching Luca be confident in who he is is amazing. He's accepted his intersexuality, and made it a part of who he is. Oh, and he confesses all this while having a gun to his head. Luca's got nerves of steel.
Just the fact that these kids survived the cold emptiness of space all on their own. It was a miracle they found that old ship when they did. No one dies, either; in fact, they even gain one new member along the way! What are the odds of that happening?
Watching all the awful parents being arrested feels so satisfying. After all the crap most of the main characters went through because of them, seeing each of them in handcuffs was vindicating.
