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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Saturn on July 4, 2020. Two of Saturn's icy moons are clearly...
Saturn and its rings appear to glow against the darkness of space. At right and at middle bottom, two small dots can be seen: they are two of Saturn's moons - Mimas and Enceladus, respectively. Saturn itself takes on a reddish tint in its northern hemisphere and blue at its bottom. The planet's concentric rings are an icy white.
Astronauts Eileen M. Collins, STS-93 mission commander, and Jeffrey S. Ashby, pilot, peruse checklists on Columbia's middeck.
Two astronauts, one male (back) and one female (front) float inside the space shuttle. The woman in the front smiles at the camera while holding a spiral bound notebook in her right hand. She is wearing a blue polo shirt and blue pants with utility pockets on the thigh, as well as a gold watch on her left wrist. Her short brown hair floats upward.
The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 is interacting with a smaller galaxy to the upper left. The smaller galaxy has...
In this composite image, a large spiral galaxy has some of its superheated gas stolen by a smaller, nearby neighbor. Centered in the frame, NGC 6872 is a large spiral galaxy with two elongated arms that stretch toward our upper right and lower left. Near the white dot at the heart of the galaxy, a cloud of neon purple tints the arms, which appear steel blue at the tips. The purple represents hot gas detected by Chandra. Just to the upper left of NGC 6872 is a second spiral galaxy. Its spiraling arms are much smaller, but the bright white dot at its core is quite large, suggesting a supermassive black hole. Some of the steel blue matter and gas from NGC 6872’s lower arm appears to be floating toward the smaller galaxy, likely pulled toward the supermassive black hole.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, poses for a photo beside the U.S. flag that has been placed on the...
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin looks at a United States flag as he stands to the right of it. He is wearing a white spacesuit. The lunar module is on the left side of the flag. Bootprints in the gray lunar soil trail from the right in the foreground to the gold lunar module in the back. The darkness of space provides a contrasting backdrop to the image. The faint crosses on the image are markings that are used to calibrate distance and heights in photos taken on the lunar surface.
On July 16, 2024, the Artemis II core stage rolled out of the Vertical Assembly Building to the waiting Pegasus...
An aerial view of the Artemis II SLS core stage on a road. The core stage is a massive orange and white cylinder with four silver and red engines at the bottom. There are two vehicles on the road behind the core stage, highlighting its size. The road curves up from bottom left of the photo to the top middle, where it ends at a body of water. The land surrounding the road is a bright green.
"I found out years later that seeing me in high school and hearing my experience in college inspired her to...
Acting Center Chief Technologist Dr. Phillip Williams holds up a model and smiles at the camera. A NASA meatball logo can be seen in the background.
Apollo 11 launches from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:32 a.m. EDT, July 16, 1969. Aboard the Apollo...
The Apollo 11 spacecraft lifts off from a launchpad. The view looks downward at an angle, so the entirety of the spacecraft is visible. Vapor spreads out behind the rocket. Further in the distance is blue water and sky.
Painting of the NASA logo, also called the meatball, continued on the 525-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy...
Painters stand on suspended platforms as they work on painting the red, white, and blue NASA "meatball" logo on the white and gray Vehicle Assembly Building. The painters are tiny compared to the size of the logo.
The distorted spiral galaxy at center, the Penguin, and the compact elliptical at left, the Egg, are locked in an...
Arp 142, two interacting galaxies, observed in near- and mid-infrared light. At left is NGC 2937, nicknamed the Egg. Its center is the brighter and whiter. There are six diffraction spikes atop its gauzy blue layers. At right is NGC 2936, nicknamed the Penguin. Its beak-like region points toward and above the Egg. Where the eye would be is a small, opaque yellow spiral. The Penguin’s distorted arms form the bird’s beak, back, and tail. The tail is wide and layered, like a beta fish’s tail. A semi-transparent blue hue traces the Penguin and extends from the galaxy, creating an upside-down U over top of both galaxies. At top right is another galaxy seen from the side, pointing roughly at a 45-degree angle. It is largely light blue. Its length appears approximately as long as the Egg’s height. One foreground star with large, bright blue diffraction spikes appears over top of the galaxy and another near it. The entire black background is filled with tiny, extremely distant galaxies.
Several transient luminous events illuminate pockets of Earth’s upper atmosphere. A line of thunderstorms off the coast of South Africa...
A line of bright blue lightning storms shines against a black background. Above the largest storm small wisps of red sprites stretch up. Along the left side, small yellow lights shine from an illuminated city.
The Artemis II Core Stage moves from final assembly to the VAB at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans...
The Artemis II Core Stage moves from final assembly to the VAB at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in preparation for delivery to Kennedy Spaceflight Center later this month. Image credit: NASA/Michael DeMocker
Space shuttle Columbia heads skyward after clearing the fixed service structure tower at Launch Complex Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy...
Space shuttle Columbia lifts off from the launchpad, heading upward through the partly cloudy blue sky. A conical spray of fire comes out from the bottom of the spacecraft. It is the brightest thing in the image. Below that, clouds of vapor spread out horizontally across the pad. In the foreground are some green plants.
Technicians used a 30-ton crane to lift NASA’s Orion spacecraft on Friday, June 28, 2024, from the Final Assembly and...
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft is pictured surrounded by the metal walls of the altitude chamber. Orion is a cone shaped spacecraft with metal and wires exposed. Technicians stand around the open top of the altitude chamber.
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image of Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean on July 1, 2024, while aboard the...
A view of Hurricane Beryl from the International Space Station. The hurricane is a big white circle of clouds, with spiral arms visible at far right and bottom middle. The surrounding water is various shades of blue: lighter blue at the top and deeper blue at the bottom of the photo. Earth's curve is visible in the back, up against the darkness of space.
Saturn and its rings completely fill the field of view of Cassini's narrow angle camera in this natural color image...
Saturn and its rings against the blackness of space. Saturn is a pale beige, with slightly varying stripes. At the top is a sliver of blue light.
This labyrinth – with a silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes at its center – is used as a...
A black and white image of a circular labyrinth. A silhouette of Sherlock Holmes holding a magnifying glass is at the center of the labyrinth.
Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas...
Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat, blue background toward the bottom, and become thicker and smokier toward the top. Stars on one side light the nebula. A thick arc of gas and dust reaches around from the bottom-right corner of the image toward the top-left corner. It begins as a dark and obscuring cloud at bottom right and gradually becomes brightly lit by many stars at the upper left. Other large, foreground stars lie between the nebula and the viewer.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) lifts off...
Looking down a runway, we see clouds of vapor billowing outward as a rocket takes off. A black tower structure called the gantry is on the left of the rocket's flames, and further in the distance on the right is a white water tower.
"You know, there's the whole impostor syndrome thing, and I didn’t feel like I was qualified to be here because...
Garrett Sadler smiles softly outside in front of a marble building for his Faces of NASA portrait. His brown hair is long, past his shoulders, and he's wearing a zipped-up jacket with tropical plants, flowers, and tigers on it.
Crews transport NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-U) from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to...
NOAA's GOES-U satellite (left) and NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (right) are both lit up at night. GOES-U is a white cylindrical object and the VAB is a tall, square building.
“HuskyWorks,” a team from Michigan Technological University’s Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab, tests the excavation tools of a robot on...
“HuskyWorks,” a team from Michigan Technological University’s Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab, tests the excavation tools of a robot on a concrete slab, held by a gravity-offloading crane on June 12 at NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge at Alabama A&M’s Agribition Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Led by Professor Paul van Susante, the team aimed to mimic the conditions of the lunar South Pole, winning an invitation to use the thermal vacuum chambers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to continue robotic testing.
To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute...
To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.
This image of Galveston was taken on Nov. 23, 2022, from the International Space Station as it orbited 224 miles...
A view of Galveston from the International Space Station. The colors are faded: the land is a muted green, while the water is a hazy blue.
“I feel that my larger purpose at NASA, which I've felt since I came on as an intern, is to...
NASA Management and Program Analyst Mallory Carbon, poses for a portrait, Wednesday, May 29, 2024, outside the NASA Headquarters Mary W. Jackson Building in Washington. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and...
A globular cluster that looks like a very dense, ball-shaped collection of many shining stars in colors of white, yellow-orange, and blue. Some stars appear a bit larger and brighter than others, with the brightest having faint cross-shaped diffraction spikes. The cluster’s stars are scattered mostly uniformly, with their density increasing toward the cluster’s core where they merge into a strong, bright-white glow.
Floating fragments of sea ice spun into intricate patterns as ocean currents carried them south along Greenland’s east coast in...
A satellite view of sea ice. The ice is white and solid at top left, while the edges swirl and swoop through the dark blue water.
The waning gibbous Moon is pictured above Earth from the International Space Station as it soared into an orbital nighttime...
The waning gibbous moon is a small gray circle at the top middle of this photo. Some details of the Moon's surface can be seen. The top half of the photo is black, while the bottom half is a hazy blue.
The Intersex Progress Pride flag flies beneath the American flag on the center pole with the California state and NASA...
Three silver flagpoles are in front of a building with the words "Ames Research Center" on it. On the left pole is the California state flag. On the middle flagpole are, from top to bottom, the American flag and the Intersex Progress Pride flag. The Intersex Progress Pride flag has a purple circle on a yellow triangle, a five-stripe chevron with colors representing LGBTQI+ people of color and the transgender community, and rainbow stripes. Finally, on the right flagpole, is the NASA flag.
The rising Earth is about five degrees above the lunar horizon in this telephoto view taken from the Apollo 8...
A color photograph of Earth rising over the horizon of the Moon, as seen from the Apollo 8 spacecraft. The Moon's horizon is a dull gray, covering the bottom quarter of the image. Earth, with its blue water and white swirling clouds, is almost at the center of the image. The bottom third of Earth is not visible.
A Florida redbelly turtle casts a suspicious look as he is being photographed on the grounds of NASA's Kennedy Space...
A Florida redbelly turtle looks to its left, directly at the camera. The turtle takes up most of the image. Its head and body peek out from its shell. The top of the shell is dark brown with lighter brown patterns; the underside is a pale tan-yellow. There are small pieces of vegetation stuck to the top of the turtle's shell.
The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy...
Four astronauts, three men and one woman (second from right), rest their hands on the handles of short shovels that are planted in dirt. They surround a small tree sapling that has bright green leaves.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft aboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at...
A white rocket takes off, leaving a trail of fire and vapor behind it. The sky is a cool blue-gray.
Technicians inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida prepare to rotate the agency’s largest...
Technicians wearing blue suits with white head coverings and gloves look on as the Europa Clipper spacecraft is lifted out of its protective shipping container. The spacecraft is silver with orange wiring throughout; many of its components are wrapped.
An external high-definition camera on the International Space Station captured this image of Hurricane Idalia at 11:35 a.m. Eastern Time...
Hurricane Idalia as seen from the International Space Station looks like a huge, sprawling white circular cloud. It dominates the image, with the water of the Gulf of Mexico mostly visible in the bottom right portion of the photo. Also at bottom right is part of Cuba. At top is some of Earth's curvature and at bottom left is part of the space station.
Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449. This galaxy,...
A close view of the central area of a dwarf galaxy. A huge number of stars fill the whole galaxy as tiny glowing points. They are brightest around the galaxy’s shining core. Thick clouds of gas and dust billow out across the scene, curling like moving flames. They glow in warm colours following their location: orange around the galaxy’s core, and around glowing star clusters in the bottom-left, and dark red elsewhere.
"I say that to my team, whenever I have an opportunity. I share with my team that they are enabling...
“I had the privilege of being the very first project manager for [the] Near Space Network (NSN), and in my current role as deputy program manager for [the] Exploration and Space Communications Division, it is still in my portfolio. NSN is one of the [agency’s two] communication and navigation networks. When we see the volume and the variety of NASA, other agency, and commercial missions supported by the network, and the science being achieved, and the exploration being enabled — when you leave for the day, you feel accomplished that you contributed [to the] agency’s goal. You contributed toward [the] nation’s priorities, such as cislunar [exploration], and then you helped humankind by enabling the science and exploration. Without communication, every satellite in this space is a black box. So, just knowing that every single day we are flowing terabytes of data through relay and direct-to-earth services directly to our [missions], enabling the exploration and achieving the science — is a great sense of accomplishment. ... Whatever role you are in, as long as you find a way to understand what mission, what goal, what objective you are contributing to, there is no bigger motivator than that. As a software programmer, normally you think that your job is to come in and write some code and solve some discrepancy reports and do the testing — and then you go home. But in the end, when you see that the program you are writing or fixing is something that controls the satellite that’s observing the sea levels and the sea temperatures or [controls] a capsule that is carrying astronauts, now you know you're actually contributing to a bigger purpose, a bigger objective. I say that to my team, whenever I have an opportunity. I share with my team that they are enabling science and exploration for dozens of missions being supported by NSN. Initially it just seems like words, but once they start realizing [their contributions] are real, I can tell you those people don't want to go anywhere. They just feel that sense of accomplishment.” NASA Deputy Program Manager for Exploration and Space Communications, Vir Thanvi poses for a portrait, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024 at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thalia Patrinos)
Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, lunar module pilot, egresses the Apollo 10 spacecraft during recovery operations in the South Pacific. U.S....
In the middle of a deep blue ocean, choppy with small waves, are two rafts. On the left is a larger orange raft that surrounds the Apollo 10 spacecraft. The spacecraft is a rounded pyramid shape and is painted white. Two men in black wetsuits look on as astronaut Eugene A. Cernan emerges from the spacecraft. Two other astronauts dressed in white are already on the smaller orange raft on the right, along with another person in a black wetsuit.
Helen Ling was a supervisor for the computing group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. She was influential...
Helen Ling, an Asian woman, looks over her shoulder at the camera. Her arm is resting on the back of the chair she's sitting on. In front of her are several large computers.
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins places a sample marker in the soil before collecting a sample during a nighttime simulated moonwalk...
At night, an astronaut wearing white gear places a sample marker in the soil. The soil in front of her is lit up by the lights on the front of the open helmet. Two people in bright vests look on. In the background on the left, another astronaut wearing a similar outfit looks at another patch of soil.
Present-day Island of Hawai'i coastal flood risk, with higher risk indicated in dark blue, was modeled to help the County...
The island of Hawai'i is black, with streaks of orange and purple. There is a big orange spot (near center). The water around the island is, going from left to right, orange and red. The coastline has a blue line along it, indicating high flood risk.