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Chaos at Hyperion

The moon Hyperion tumbles as it orbits Saturn.

Fiery South Atlantic Sunset

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a sunset that looks like a vast sheet of flame. With Earth’s surface already in darkness, the setting sun, the cloud masses, and the sideways viewing angle make a powerful image of the kind th

Celebrating Thanksgiving Aboard the International Space Station

The six Expedition 50 crew members celebrate Thanksgiving in space, Nov. 24, 2016, with rehydrated turkey, stuffing, potatoes and vegetables.

Hubble Spies Spiral Galaxy

Spiral galaxy NGC 3274 is a relatively faint galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion).

GOES-R Weather Satellite Ready For Launch

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and its GOES-R payload at the launchpad as preparations continue for launch at 5:42 p.m. EST, Saturday, Nov. 19, from Space Launch Complex 41.

Expedition 50 Crew Launches to the International Space Station

In this one second exposure photograph, the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft is seen launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome with Expedition 50 crewmembers NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet fro

Expedition 50 Crew Waves Farewell

Expedition 50 crewmembers ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, top, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, middle, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos wave farewell before boarding their Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft for launch Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, (Kazakh Time) i

Cloudscape Over the Philippine Sea

Flying over the Philippine Sea, an astronaut looked toward the horizon from the International Space Station and shot this photograph of three-dimensional clouds, the thin blue envelope of the atmosphere, and the blackness of space. The late afternoon sunligh

Cloudscape Over the Philippine Sea

Flying over the Philippine Sea, an astronaut looked toward the horizon from the International Space Station and shot this photograph of three-dimensional clouds, the thin blue envelope of the atmosphere, and the blackness of space. The late afternoon sunligh

November 15, 1966: Gemini XII Crew Returns to Earth

Following the Gemini XII splashdown on Nov. 15, 1966, astronauts Buzz Aldrin, left, and Jim Lovell are welcomed aboard the recovery aircraft carrier, USS Wasp, concluding their four-day mission. Gemini XII was the final flight of the Gemini program, a bridge

Supermoon and Expedition 50 Soyuz

The moon, or supermoon, is seen rising behind the Soyuz rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will launc

Getting to Know the Getz Ice Shelf

As scientists and crew with NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission prepared for a research flight on Nov. 5, 2016, the weather in Punta Arenas, Chile, was cold, wet, and windy. But when they reached their survey site in West Antarctica, skies were clear and win

Wind Carved Rock on Mars

The distinctively fluted surface and elongated hills in this image in Medusae Fossae are caused by wind erosion of a soft fine-grained rock. Called yardangs, these features are aligned with the prevailing wind direction. This wind direction would have dominat

Election Day 2016

Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots. To preserve the integrity of the secret vote, the ballot is encrypt

Hubble Takes Flight with the Toucan and the Cluster

NGC 299 is an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud just under 200,000 light-years away.

Orion Crew Module Underway Recovery Testing

U.S. Navy divers and other personnel in a rigid hull Zodiac boat have attached tether lines to a test version of the Orion crew module during Underway Recovery Test 5 in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. NASA and the U.S. Navy are conducting a se

Prototype Capture System, Mock Asteroid Help Simulate Mission Sequence

A prototype of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) robotic capture module system is tested with a mock asteroid boulder in its clutches at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The robotic portion of ARM is targeted for launch in 2021.

Expedition 49 Soyuz Spacecraft Landing

The Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 49 crew members NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) near the town of Zhezkazg

NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins Prepares For the Journey Home

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins is pictured inside of the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft while conducting routine spacesuit checks. The Expedition 49 trio of Rubins, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin are scheduled to undock their Soyuz on Saturd

First Pass of Echo 1 Satellite Over the Goldstone Tracking Station

This photograph shows the first pass of Echo 1, America’s first communications satellite, over the Goldstone Tracking Station managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, in the early morning of Aug. 12, 1960. The movement of the

Paw Paw Bends

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of the Potomac River and canal on September 27, 2016. The image shows the stretch between Hancock and Cumberland, Maryland—about 97 kilometers (60 miles) if you were to hike or bike along th

Hubble Spins a Web Into a Giant Red Spider Nebula

Huge waves are sculpted in this two-lobed nebula called the Red Spider Nebula, located some 3,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Expedition 49 Launch to the International Space Station

The Soyuz MS-02 rocket is launched with Expedition 49 Soyuz commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, flight engineer Shane Kimbrough of NASA, and flight engineer Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The crew will

A Laser-Sharp View of Blended Wing Body Plane Design

A Laser-Sharp View of Blended Wing Body Plane Design

Star Trails Seen From Low Earth Orbit

Astronauts on the International Space Station captured a series of incredible star trail images on Oct. 3, 2016, as they orbited at 17,500 miles per hour. The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and astronauts aboard see an average of 16 sunrises and s

Star Trails Seen From Low Earth Orbit

Astronauts on the International Space Station captured a series of incredible star trail images on Oct. 3, 2016, as they orbited at 17,500 miles per hour. The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and astronauts aboard see an average of 16 sunrises and s

Hurricane Matthew Hits Haiti

On October 4, 2016, Hurricane Matthew made landfall on southwestern Haiti as a category-4 storm—the strongest storm to hit the Caribbean nation in more than 50 years. Just hours after landfall, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NA

A Trio of Plumes in the South Sandwich Islands

On September 29, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this false-color image (MODIS bands 7-2-1) showing volcanic activity in the South Sandwich Islands. Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, the u

Water Swirls, Gulf of St. Lawrence

Orbiting above eastern North America, a crew member on the International Space Station photographed a dense pattern of eddies in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Caught briefly in the Sun’s “glint point,” reflections off the water surface show an interlinked m

Tectonically Active Planet Mercury

New NASA-funded research suggests that Mercury is contracting even today, joining Earth as a tectonically active planet. Images obtained by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft reveal previously undetected small fault scarps— cliff-like landforms that resemble sta

Practicing Orion Spacecraft Recovery After Splashdown

A group of U.S. Navy divers, Air Force pararescuemen and Coast Guard rescue swimmers practice Orion underway recovery techniques in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to prepare for the first test flight of an uncrewed Orion spac

One Billion Base Pairs Sequenced on the Space Station

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins checks a sample for air bubbles prior to loading it in the biomolecule sequencer. When Rubins’ expedition began, zero base pairs of DNA had been sequenced in space. Within just a few weeks, she and the Biomolecule Sequencer team h

Space Station Flight Over the Southern Tip of Italy

The southern tip of Italy is visible in this image taken by the Expedition 49 crew aboard the International Space Station on Sept. 17, 2016. The brightly lit city of Naples can be seen in the bottom section of the image. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft can be see

Infrared Echoes of a Black Hole Eating a Star

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, disrupted as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole. The feeding black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust. This dust was previously illuminated by flares of high-energy radiation

Sept. 14, 1966 - View From Gemini XI, 850 Miles Above the Earth

The western half of Australia, looking west, as seen from the Gemini XI spacecraft, 850 miles above the Earth on Sept. 14, 1966. Reaching this record-shattering altitude was a highlight of a demanding, three-day mission for Gemini XI command pilot Charles "Pe

A Streamlined Form in Lethe Vallis, Mars

This image shows a portion of Lethe Vallis, an outflow channel that also transported lava. This is one of only a few places on Mars where these pristine-appearing landforms have been identified. The channel formed by catastrophic floods, during which it produ

At Hangar, Raptors Find Shelter from the Storm

As Tropical Storm Hermine charged up the East Coast Sept. 2, the hangar at NASA Langley was able to carefully sandwich in more than a dozen Air Force fighters and offer them protection from the wind. The hangar provides 85,200 square feet (7,915 square meters

Hubble Peers into the Storm

Hubble sees a maelstrom of glowing gas and dark dust within one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Expedition 48 Crew Returns Home

The Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 48 crew members NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin, and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016(Kazakh time
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