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Artists used paintbrushes and airbrushes to recreate the lunar surface on each of the four models comprising the LOLA simulator. Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface.
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A team of engineers lifts the mast into place atop of NASA’s VIPER robotic Moon rover in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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Expedition 70 Flight Engineers (from left) Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara, both NASA astronauts, are pictured inside the International Space Station's cupola holding NASA's first graphic novel, "First Woman."
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Rivers swelled in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan in April 2024 following heavy rain and rapid snowmelt. This image shows Orenburg on April 13, the day river levels peaked. This scene was acquired by the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9.
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The new era in space flight began on April 12, 1981. That is when the first Space Shuttle mission (STS-1) was launched. The Marshall Space Flight Center developed the propulsion system for the Space Shuttle. This photograph depicts the launch of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia crewed with two astronauts, John Young and Robert Crippen.
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In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The name 'Little Dumbbell' comes from its shape that is a two-lobed structure of colorful, mottled, glowing gases resembling a...
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows LEDA 42160, a galaxy about 52 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The dwarf galaxy is one of many forcing its way through the comparatively dense gas in the massive Virgo cluster of galaxies. The pressure exerted by this intergalactic gas, known as ram pressure, has dramatic effects on star formation...
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Behold one of the more detailed images of Earth. This Blue Marble Earth montage—created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite—shows many stunning details of our home planet.
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"I've come a long way from thinking, 'Well, I did this whole dissertation on geysers, what it would take for them to erupt, for a spacecraft to see them, and that people might not take me seriously as a scientist because of it,' to being on the Europa Clipper camera team involved in investigating these plumes and ensuring we can...
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This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) of star-forming region NGC 604 shows how stellar winds from bright, hot young stars carve out cavities in surrounding gas and dust.
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The ocean holds about 97 percent of Earth's water and covers 70 percent of our planet's surface. According to the United Nations, the ocean may be home to 50 to 80 percent of all life on Earth. Even if you live hundreds of miles from a coast, what happens in the ocean is fundamental to your life.
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NASA Engineer Cindy Fuentes Rosal waves goodbye to a Black Brant IX sounding rocket launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The rocket was part of a series of three launches for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study the disturbances in the electrified region of Earth’s...
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This spectacular image showing the Moon’s shadow on Earth’s surface was acquired during a 20-second period starting at 2:59 p.m. EDT (18:59:19 UTC) on April 8, 2024, by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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A total solar eclipse is seen in Dallas, Texas on Monday, April 8, 2024.
A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the North American continent from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of Central America and Europe.
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Safety is important, no matter where you're viewing the eclipse. NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station show off their eclipse glasses, which allow safe viewing of the Sun during a solar eclipse.
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NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter's moon Europa. The moon shows strong evidence of an ocean under its icy crust, with more than twice the amount of water of all of Earth's oceans combined. A triangular metal plate, seen here, will honor that connection to Earth.
The plate...
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This majestic image of the dazzling green lights of the aurora borealis was captured on March 17, 2015, around 5:30 a.m. EDT in Donnelly Creek, Alaska.
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NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, left, Frank Rubio, Warren Hoburg, and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, right, pose for a photo wearing solar glasses, Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. Bowen, Hoburg, and Alneyadi spent 186 days aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 69; while Rubio set a...
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The primary structure of the Gateway space station's HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) module is one step closer to launch following welding completion in Turin, Italy. HALO is one of four Gateway modules where astronauts will live, conduct science, and prepare for lunar surface missions. NASA is partnering with Northrop Grumman and their subcontractor Thales Alenia Space to develop HALO.
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A fast boat is seen at sunrise after the landing of SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft a few hours earlier in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. The Crew-7 members returned after nearly six-months in space as part of Expedition 70 aboard the International Space Station.
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Immediately after splashdown, a recovery helicopter from the USS Guadalcanal hovers over the Apollo 9 spacecraft. Still inside the Command Module are astronauts James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, and Russell L. Schweickart. Splashdown occurred at 12:00:53 p.m. EST March 13, 1969, only 4.5 nautical miles from the USS Guadalcanal, the prime recovery ship, to conclude a successful 10-day Earth-orbital...
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“… I've just seen such tremendous things happen since I've been part of the Astrobiology Program, and that's why I'm pretty confident we're going to find life elsewhere, because there are just so many brilliant people working on this.” — Melissa Kirven-Brooks, Exobiology Deputy Branch Chief and Future Workforce Lead of the NASA Astrobiology Program, NASA’s Ames Research Center
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What looks like highways going through a metropolitan area are actually a series of glaciers carving their way through the Karakoram mountain range north of the Himalayas. This photograph was taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above.
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Two full-scale development model rovers that are part of NASA's CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration drive in the Mars Yard at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in August 2023. The project is designed to show that a group of robotic spacecraft can work together as a team to accomplish tasks and record data autonomously...
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NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen holds a small pie that is festively decorated in commemoration of Pi Day aboard the International Space Station.
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“One of my cornerstone pinnacles [is], ‘Show up to work [and] life with integrity and intent.’ So, accomplish your goals with integrity, intent, and a mission. Stick to that and have the confidence to do that, and be OK with messing up and failing, and have fun with those things." — Meghan Everett, International Space Station Program Deputy Chief Scientist,...
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An Atlas-Centaur launched at 5:22 p.m. EST on March 27, 1969, to send Mariner 7 on its way to Mars. Mariner 7 joined its sister spacecraft, Mariner 6, on a journey that carried them within 2,000 miles of the red planet that summer. Mariner 6 was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 24 and investigated the Martian...
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The Moon is seen passing in front of the Sun at the point of the maximum of the partial solar eclipse near Banner, Wyoming on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the contiguous United States from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire...
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This image shows two types of sand dunes on Mars. The small dots are called barchan dunes, and from their shape we can tell that they are upwind. The downwind dunes are long and linear. These two types of dune each show the wind direction in different ways: the barchans have a steep slope and crescent-shaped "horns" that point downwind,...
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Gemini VI astronauts Thomas P. Stafford (left), pilot, and Walter M. Schirra Jr., command pilot, are shown during suiting up exercises at Cape Kennedy, Florida.
