NASA’s crawler-transporter 2 moves toward the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. The crawler will transport NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket with the Orion spacecraft to Launch Complex 39B ahead of the Artemis II launch.
The New York–Newark–Jersey City Metropolitan Statistical Area, which spans 23 counties across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut and has a population of about 19.9 million, is pictured at approximately 3:29 a.m. local time Dec. 20, 2025, from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above the Atlantic coast.
NASA’s Pandora small satellite, and NASA-sponsored Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS), and Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT) CubeSat, are ready to be encapsulated inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing in this early January 2026 photo. Pandora and the CubeSats launched Sunday, Jan. 11, from Vandenberg Space Force Base located on California’s central coast.
This artist’s concept depicts a smaller white dwarf star pulling material from a larger star, right, into an accretion disk. Scientists used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer) to study a white dwarf star and its X-ray polarization.
Images depicting NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are projected onto the Washington Monument as part of an event to kick off the nation's 250th birthday year, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, in Washington.
Artemis II crewmembers (left to right) NASA astronauts Christina Koch, mission specialist; and Victor Glover, pilot; CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, commander are led to the crew access arm as they prepare to board their Orion spacecraft atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket during the Artemis II countdown demonstration test on Dec. 20, 2025.
NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured this image of lightning while orbiting aboard the International Space Station more than 250 miles above Milan, Italy.
NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory has mapped the entire sky in 102 infrared colors, as seen here in this image released on Dec. 18, 2025. This image features a selection of colors emitted primarily by stars (blue, green, and white), hot hydrogen gas (blue), and cosmic dust (red).
A scientific balloon starts its ascent into the air as it prepares to launch carrying NASA’s Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) mission. The mission lifted off from Antarctica at 5:56 a.m. NZST, Saturday, Dec. 20 (11:56 a.m., Friday, Dec. 19 in U.S. Eastern Time). The PUEO mission is designed to detect radio signals created when highly energetic particles called neutrinos from space hit the ice.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times of day on Nov. 18, 2025, spanning periods that occurred on both the 4,722nd and 4,723rd Martian days, or sols, of the mission. The panoramas were captured at 4:15 p.m. on Sol 4,722 and 8:20 a.m. on Sol 4,723 (both at local Mars time), then merged together. Color was later added for an artistic interpretation of the scene with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon one.
Data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory come together in this eye-catching photo of colliding spiral galaxies released on Dec. 1, 2025.
Tiny ball bearings surround a larger central bearing during the Fluid Particles experiment, conducted inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) aboard the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module.
NASA engineer Guy Naylor poses for a photograph wearing a custom Santa Claus suit on the 19th level of High Bay 4 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building with NASA's integrated Moon rocket behind him at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025.
From left to right, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman are seen as they depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building to board their Orion spacecraft atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building as part of the Artemis II countdown demonstration test, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
These two galaxies are named NGC 4490 and NGC 4485, and they’re located about 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). They are the closest known interacting dwarf-dwarf galaxy system where astronomers have observed the interactions between them, as well as been able to resolve the stars within.
Justin Hall, left, controls a subscale aircraft as Justin Link holds the aircraft in place during preliminary engine tests on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, at NASA’s Armstong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. Hall is chief pilot at the center’s Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Laboratory and Link is a pilot for small uncrewed aircraft systems.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the blue dwarf galaxy Markarian 178 (Mrk 178) against a backdrop of distant galaxies in all shapes and sizes. Some of these distant galaxies even shine through the diffuse edges of Mrk 178.
Clockwise from left, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and NASA astronauts Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman, and Mike Fincke pose for a playful portrait through a circular opening in a hatch thermal cover aboard the International Space Station on Sept. 18, 2025.
The Calabash Nebula, pictured here — which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 — is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the Sun. This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the star going through a rapid transformation from a red giant to a planetary nebula, during which it blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space. The recently ejected material is spat out in opposite directions with immense speed — the gas shown in yellow is moving close to a million kilometres an hour. Astronomers rarely capture a star in this phase of its evolution because it occurs within the blink of an eye — in astronomical terms. Over the next thousand years the nebula is expected to evolve into a fully fledged planetary nebula. The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula because it contains a lot of sulphur, an element that, when combined with other elements, smells like a rotten egg — but luckily, it resides over 5000 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis (The Poop deck).
Webb’s image of the enormous stellar jet in Sh2-284 provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their parent stars—the more massive the stellar engine driving the plasma, the larger the resulting jet.
The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan with Expedition 73 NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky aboard, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025.
A flash of lightning, and then—something else. High above a storm, a crimson figure blinks in and out of existence. If you see it, you are a lucky witness of a sprite, one of the least-understood electrical phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
This composite image of the Cassiopeia A (or Cas A) supernova remnant, released Jan. 8, 2024, contains X-rays from Chandra (blue), infrared data from Webb (red, green, blue), and optical data from Hubble (red and white). A study by the XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) spacecraft has made the first-ever X-ray detections of chlorine and potassium in the wreckage.
Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California monitor a research drone in the Dumont Dunes area of the Mojave Desert in September 2025 as part of a test campaign to develop navigation software to guide future rotorcraft on Mars.
The waxing gibbous Moon rises above Earth’s blue atmosphere in this photograph taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above a cloudy Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Quebec, Canada.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope took a look at the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, the most massive, and active star-forming region in our galaxy, located only a few hundred light years from our central supermassive black hole.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed 'tiger stripes' near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft with its launch abort system is stacked atop the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025. The spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day mission around the Moon and back in early 2026.
Using its Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed never-before-seen details in the picturesque Red Spider Nebula with a rich backdrop of thousands of stars.
The atmospheric glow blankets southern Europe and the northwestern Mediterranean coast, outlined by city lights. At left, the Po Valley urban corridor in Italy shines with the metropolitan areas of Milan and Turin and their surrounding suburbs.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft lifts off for its first flight Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, from U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The aircraft’s first flight marks the start of flight testing for NASA’s Quesst mission, the result of years of design, integration, and ground testing and begins a new chapter in NASA’s aeronautics research legacy.
NASA ER-2 pilot Kirt Stallings waits inside the transport vehicle at Edwards, California, on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, moments before boarding NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center’s ER-2 aircraft for a high-altitude mission supporting the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx). Through the vehicle window, the aircraft can be seen being readied for flight.
This image shows two massive galaxy clusters. The vast number of galaxies and foreground stars in the image were captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light. Glowing, hot X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory appear in pink. The blue represents the dark matter, which was precisely mapped by researchers with Webb’s detailed imaging.
The 57.7-foot-long Canadarm2 robotic arm extends from a data grapple fixture on the International Space Station’s Harmony module in this July 23, 2025, image.
During its close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io on December 30, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured some of the most detailed imagery ever of Io’s volcanic surface. This image is the NASA Science Image of the Month for October 2025.
This stunning Earth image taken from the International Space Station looks at a large lake in eastern Kazakhstan with golden sunglint: Lake Balkhash. It is one of the largest lakes in Asia and is the 15th largest lake in the world.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), the agency’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On–Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind — the continuous stream of particles emitted by the Sun — and space weather — the changing conditions in space driven by the Sun — from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our solar system.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague watches as Robert Schmidle Pitts Aerobatics perform, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, during the Joint Base Andrews Air Show at Joint Base Andrews in Prince George's County, Maryland. Hague spent 171 days aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 72.
NASA’s 10 new astronaut candidates were introduced Monday, Sept. 22, 2025, following a competitive selection process of more than 8,000 applicants from across the United States.
In this infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.
The Milky Way appears above Earth's bright atmospheric glow in this photograph from the International Space Station as it soared 261 miles above southern Iran at approximately 12:54 a.m. local time on Aug. 23, 2025.
Westerlund 1 is the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth. Data from Chandra and other telescopes are helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are vigorously being produced. Observations from Chandra have uncovered thousands of individual stars pumping out X-ray emission into the cluster.
NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (left) and Mark Vande Hei (right) prepare to fly out to a landing zone in the Rocky Mountains as part of the certification run for the NASA Artemis course at the High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site in Gypsum, Colorado, Aug. 26.
The Sun blew out a coronal mass ejection along with part of a solar filament over a three-hour period on Feb. 24, 2015. While some of the strands fell back into the Sun, a substantial part raced into space in a bright cloud of particles (as observed by the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft). Because this occurred way over near the edge of the Sun, it was unlikely to have any effect on Earth.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured newborn stars forming in clouds of dust and gas (colored golden and orange in this image) in a star-forming region called Pismis 24.
Dinner is served aboard the International Space Station! One tray features shrimp cocktail on whole grain wheat crackers, while the other holds sushi made with seaweed, Spam, tuna, and rice.
From left to right, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot; Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander; CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, and NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, suit up and walk out of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. During a two-day operation, the Artemis II team practiced night-run demonstrations of different launch day scenarios for the Artemis II test flight.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio is pictured inside the cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world," as the orbiting lab flew 263 miles above southeastern England on Oct. 1, 2022.
Orion Mission Evaluation Room (MER) team member works during an Artemis II mission simulation on Aug. 19, 2025, from the new Orion MER inside the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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