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NASA and Lockheed Martin publicly unveil the X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft at a ceremony in Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works...

Members of an audience lift their phones to snap a photo of the recently revealed X-59 aircraft. The plane's long, sharp nose appears to jut out towards the audience.

The Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9 captured this image of Simsbury on September 15, 2022. The tobacco farm where...

A view of Simsbury, Connecticut from the Landsat 9 satellite. The edges of the image are green, while the center has patches of brown along a water source.

This deep dataset from Chandra of the remains of a supernova known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B) reveals...

This deep dataset from Chandra of the remains of a supernova known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B) reveals evidence for more than one supernova explosion in the history of this remnant. Unusual structures in the Chandra data cannot be explained by a single explosion. These images of 30 Dor B also show optical data from the Blanco telescope in Chile, and infrared data from Spitzer. Additional data from Hubble highlights sharp features in the image.

An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it launches from Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Thursday, January...

A white rocket launches upward, leaving a short trail of vapor behind it. The flame at the bottom of the rocket is a bright spot near the center of the photo. To the left of the rocket is a white tower and other structures. Thick plumes of white smoke frame the field in the foreground.

For the first time, astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope to study...

This image of Cassiopeia A resembles a disk of electric light with red clouds, glowing white streaks, red and orange flames, and an area near the center of the remnant resembling a somewhat circular region of green lightning. X-rays from Chandra are blue and reveal hot gas, mostly from supernova debris from the destroyed star, and include elements like silicon and iron. X-rays are also present as thin arcs in the outer regions of the remnant. Infrared data from Webb is red, green, and blue. Webb highlights infrared emission from dust that is warmed up because it is embedded in the hot gas seen by Chandra, and from much cooler supernova debris. Hubble data shows a multitude of stars that permeate the field of view.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a richness of spiral galaxies: the large, prominent spiral galaxy on...

Against the blackness of space, one very large spiral galaxy and three smaller spiral galaxies are prominently visible amidst the other colorful specks of light.

Expedition 70 NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara has her Russian Sokol spacesuit pressure checked ahead launching to the International Space Station...

Astronaut Loral O'Hara looks upward while in a reclined position. Her feet are out of focus in the foreground. Her hand rests on the blue rim of her helmet. She wears a white and blue spacesuit.

Amazonian leaders visit "Space for Earth," an immersive audio-visual installation that draws from near real-time satellite data and images, in...

Amazonian leaders stand in the small "Space for Earth" immersive installation room, with tiny white dots of light representing atmospheric rivers flowing all around them on the walls and floor.

NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Jessica Watkins, and Robert Hines participate in STEM demonstrations with local students at the Martin Luther...

Fog rolls across the floor of an auditorium full of students and teachers. In the background at left are NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Bob Hines, along with students and teachers. To the right are rows of orange seats, where the audience sits, watching the experiment underway.

Jupiter, top, and Venus, bottom, are seen with the crescent Moon above the Vehicle Assembly Building, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023,...

The sky shifts from a deep blue to burnt orange (top to bottom). The crescent moon is at the top of the image, with Jupiter to its right and Venus below it. The silhouette of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center stands out against the orange sky.

Resembling sparks from a fireworks display, this image taken by a JPL camera onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows delicate...

Many points of light are scattered across the black background of space like confetti. At center are blue and orange strands, debris from a star explosion.

Creating an artistic reflection, a Great Blue Heron skims its wings on a waterway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in...

A large gray bird flaps its wings just above a body of water, disrupting the water's surface. There is a reflection of the bird in the water.

"It takes a lot of courage to confront your fears and failures. Each and every time is really difficult, but...

A Vietnamese-American woman with shoulder-length black hair stands in front of a building that is out of focus. She wears a light blue shirt with buttons and a red blazer with a small NASA "meatball" pin.

Seen here by Webb, ice giant Uranus is a dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, extreme seasons, and more. Webb’s...

$An image with a black background. The planet Uranus is a glowing orb near the center surrounded by rings. The planet appears blue with a large, white patch taking up the right half. The patch is whitest at the center, then fades into blue at it expands from right to left. A thin outline of Uranus is also white. Around the planet is a system of nested rings. There are faint orange and off-white smudges, some oval, some circular, that are background galaxies scattered throughout the image. Several bright blue point sources closer to Uranus are the planet’s moons. There is also a bright star at the left of the field, with 8 diffraction spikes.$

Four reindeer walk past the BARREL payload on the launch pad at Esrange Space Center near Kiruna, Sweden. The BARREL...

Four reindeer walk past the BARREL payload. Two are on the left of the payload and two are on the right. The payload looks like a large white box with red square patches on two sides, resting atop a platform with four wheels. The ground is brown with small rocks, and in the background, a forest of green trees spreads over hills in the distance. The sky is overcast.

Artemis II crew members: CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, left, NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid...

Four astronauts, wearing blue jackets and black pants, pose for a photo at the White House in front of decorations like trees, wreaths, and boughs. The astronauts, members of the Artemis II mission, have their arms around each other's shoulders. Behind them are two flags, and a seal high on the wall that reads "Seal of the President of the United States."

At the start of October 2023, green conifers and golden aspen covered the slopes of Monroe Mountain in Utah’s Fishlake...

A hillside is covered in gold and green trees. At the center of the image, orange flames burn brightly, sending huge clouds of gray and brown smoke into the sky. The smoke covers most of the muted blue sky.

This composite image shows the Christmas Tree Cluster. The blue and white lights (which blink in the animated version of...

This composite image shows the Christmas Tree Cluster. The blue and white lights (which blink in the animated version of this image) are young stars that give off X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Optical data from the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak shows gas in the nebula in green, corresponding to the “pine needles” of the tree, and infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey shows foreground and background stars in white. This image has been rotated clockwise by about 160 degrees from the astronomer’s standard of North pointing upward, so that it appears like the top of the tree is toward the top of the image.

The surface of Mars is littered with examples of glacier-like landforms. While surface ice deposits are mostly limited to the...

A black and white image of a portion of Mars' surface from above. Ridges stretch from top right to the bottom, the result of ice moving over possibly thousands of years. The glacier-like forms left behind have a mottled appearance.

Orville Wright makes the first powered, controlled flight on Earth as his brother Wilbur looks on in this image taken...

In this black and white photo, a white airplane with two sets of stacked wings with wires connecting them flies low to the ground. A man, Wilbur Wright, stands on the right with his back to the camera.

"Once the rocket launched, [I saw] how it illuminated such a dark space. So even when you're in a dark...

Artemis II crew members, shown inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida,...

Four astronauts wearing blue flight suits stand inside a building, with the Orion crew module behind them. They are, from left, Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch. Glover is a Black man, and Koch is a White woman. Orion is cone-shaped, with a flat top. It is black and has yellow wiring on it, as well as blue dots around some panels.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s new view of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) in near-infrared light is giving astronomers hints at...

Cassiopeia A, a circular-shaped cloud of gas and dust with complex structure. The inner shell is made of bright pink and orange filaments studded with clumps and knots that look like tiny pieces of shattered glass. Around the exterior of the inner shell, particularly at the upper right, there are curtains of wispy gas that look like campfire smoke. The white smoke-like material also appears to fill the cavity of the inner shell, featuring structures shaped like large bubbles. Around and within the nebula, there are various stars seen as points of blue and white light. Outside the nebula, there are also clumps of yellow dust, with a particularly large clump at the bottom right corner that appears to have very detailed striations.

Astronaut Kathryn C. Thornton works with equipment associated with servicing chores on the Hubble Space Telescope during the fourth spacewalk...

Astronaut Kathryn Thornton works with instruments while on a spacewalk. A small part of Earth is visible behind her on the right.)

This striking image shows the densely packed globular cluster known as NGC 2210, which is situated in the Large Magellanic...

A dense cluster of stars. It is brightest and most crowded in the center, where the stars are mostly a cool white color. Moving out towards the edges the stars become more spread out and reddish until a noticeable ‘edge’ to the cluster is reached. Beyond that edge there are still many stars, more disorganized and seen on a black background. Some stars appear to be in front of the cluster.

Artemis II NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (left) and Christina Koch (middle) of NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy...

From left to right, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, and two people stand in a circle as they have a discussion. The astronauts wear blue flight suits with various patches on them. A building with bare ceilings and concrete floors stretches far behind them.

The mated Russian-built Zarya (left) and U.S.-built Unity modules are backdropped against the blackness of space and Earth's horizon shortly...

The first pieces of the International Space Station, the mated Russian-built Zarya (left) and U.S.-built Unity modules, are backdropped against the blackness of space and Earth's horizon. Zarya is cylinder-shaped and has solar panels that stick out from the body of the module.

The Moon, left, Saturn, upper right, and Jupiter, lower right, are seen after sunset from Washington, DC, Thurs. Dec. 17,...

The night sky is deep blue, framed at bottom left by leafless trees branches. At top left, the Moon glows. Saturn and Jupiter are visible at upper right and upper left, respectively.

If spacecraft are to visit the outer solar system, they must cross the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The...

In this illustration, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft flies through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft is shown to the right of Jupiter (right), dwarfed by the planet's size. The white line representing Pioneer 10's path curls around Earth and past Jupiter. At the center, the Sun is represented in bright, luminous white and orange, while streaks of red, orange, purple, and black represent space. The image is dotted with spots of purple, blue, yellow, and white.

"Everyone needs an anchor from their community to motivate and inspire them to move forward. I want to be a...

A man wearing a tan flight suit flies in a blue-lit flight simulator. Navigation guidance and other controls light up the simulator’s front dashboard.

A cluster brimming with millions of stars glistens like an iridescent opal in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope....

A cluster brimming with millions of stars glistens like an iridescent opal in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called Omega Centauri, the sparkling orb of stars is like a miniature galaxy. It is the biggest and brightest of the 150 or so similar objects, called globular clusters, that orbit around the outside of our Milky Way galaxy. Stargazers at southern latitudes can spot the stellar gem with the naked eye in the constellation Centaurus. Globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in our universe. Their stars are over 12 billion years old, and, in most cases, formed all at once when the universe was just a toddler. Omega Centauri is unusual in that its stars are of different ages and possess varying levels of metals, or elements heavier than boron. Astronomers say this points to a different origin for Omega Centauri than other globular clusters: they think it might be the core of a dwarf galaxy that was ripped apart and absorbed by our Milky Way long ago. In this new view of Omega Centauri, Spitzer's infrared observations have been combined with visible-light data from the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Visible-light data with a wavelength of .55 microns is colored blue, 3.6-micron infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera is colored green and 24-micron infrared light taken by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer is colored red. Where green and red overlap, the color yellow appears. Thus, the yellow and red dots are stars revealed by Spitzer. These stars, called red giants, are more evolved, larger and dustier. The stars that appear blue were spotted in both visible and 3.6-micron-, or near-, infrared light. They are less evolved, like our own sun. Some of the red spots in the picture are distant galaxies beyond our own.

The sun's first rays begin illuminating Earth's atmosphere in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 260...

In the distance, small points of light can be seen against the darkness of space. The sun's rays peek over Earth, creating a blue haze tinged with orange. On Earth, the city lights of Chicago, Illinois, (far left) and the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area (far right) shine.

A model of the Mariner-C spacecraft at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lewis Research Center for a June...

A black and white photo of a model of the Mariner-C spacecraft against a black backdrop. The spacecraft is tilted to the left. It has a conical shape, with two solar panels and a satellite dish at the bottom.

The spectacular aurora borealis, or the “northern lights,” over Canada is sighted from the space station near the highest point...

A green, fog-like haze stretches over Canada. At the edges of Earth’s atmosphere, the light takes on a purple-red color, eventually fading into the darkness of space. Some stars are faintly visible. At top left, a portion of the solar arrays of the International Space Station is backlit against the planet.

A disk of hot gas swirls around a black hole in this illustration from Dec. 20, 2022. A long stream...

Against a black background dotted with stars, a disk of hot red gas swirls around a black hole in this illustration. There is a long stream of hot gas extending out to the right, which is feeding into the disk, and a bright cloud of plasma hovering just above the center of the black hole.

NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins (left) and Rick Mastracchio, both Expedition 38 flight engineers, pose for a photo with a Thanksgiving...

NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins (left) and Rick Mastracchio smile for the camera while aboard the International Space Station. Hopkins holds a thin white sheet with Velcro on it, which secures the Thanksgiving foods shown, including green beans, smoked turkey, and stuffing.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 flight engineer Nicole Mann is pictured during a fit check of her spacesuit ahead of...

Astronaut Nicole Mann faces the camera and smiles. She is wearing a white spacesuit, which has an American flag patch on the left arm, and another patch on the right arm.

The NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s reveals a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core...

A crowded region of space, full of stars and colorful clouds, more than twice as wide as it is tall. A funnel-shaped region of space appears darker than its surroundings with fewer stars. It is wider at the top edge of the image, narrowing towards the bottom. Toward the narrow end of this dark region a small clump of red and white appears to shoot out streamers upward and left. A large, bright cyan-colored area surrounds the lower portion of the funnel-shaped dark area, forming a rough U shape. The cyan-colored area has needle-like, linear structures and becomes more diffuse in the center of the image. The right side of the image is dominated by clouds of orange and red, with a purple haze.

Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., attired in his Mercury pressure suit, poses for a photo on May 5, 1961, prior...

Astronaut Alan Shepard smiles while wearing an all-silver pressure suit for the Mercury mission. He holds a white helmet in his hands.

NASA’s Space Launch System carrying the Orion spacecraft lifts off the pad at Launch Complex 39B at the agency’s Kennedy...

NASA's Space Launch System lifts off from the launch pad, illuminating the ground with a bright white light that bounces off of clouds of smoke. Pictured on the left side of this image is the liquid hydrogen "flare stack" where vented liquid hydrogen is burned off safely.