The exhaust plumes of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft are seen illuminated by sunlight against the predawn sky during the launch of NASA’s SpaceX CRS-35 mission, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, as seen from Cocoa Beach, Florida. The light makes the plumes look like a jellyfish in the sky.
Three NASA-supported small spacecraft, shown along with many commercial payloads, before being encapsulated in a SpaceX Falcon 9. The rocket launched the payloads into low-Earth orbit at 11:32 a.m. PDT Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, as part of the company’s Transporter-18 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features galaxies in incredible detail that have been warped and multiplied like they’ve stepped into a house of mirrors.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft is seen as it lands with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026.
A visualization of a dark Moon eclipsing the Sun is marked with handwritten notes in this April 6, 2026, screenshot from an Artemis II crew member's tablet.
This artist’s concept depicts a possible explanation for the unusual chemical abundances NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope detected in the HS 0209+0832 system: a second-generation planet orbiting the white dwarf star.
NASA astronaut and mission specialist of the agency's Artemis II mission, Christina Koch, led the fans in singing the Eagles Fight Song from the field at an NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026, in Philadelphia.
An engineering model of NASA’s DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) descent probe passed a key test that ran from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, showing it can survive the extreme temperatures of Venus.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov aboard, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
This long-duration image shows star trails above Earth and the blue lights of fishing boats and the yellow lights of Indonesian cities stretching below the International Space Station as it orbited 258 miles above the Banda Sea.
Ahead of launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon spacecraft atop, is vertical at the launch pad of Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026.
This nighttime view of the United States, dotted with city lights looking toward New York City (center), was taken at approximately 3:40 a.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above Earth.
An Alta-X drone flies an advanced guidance and navigation system known as the Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) experiment near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026.
An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of galaxy cluster MACS J0417 is part of repeated observations to monitor for the reappearance of supernova Athena, which can help astronomers measure the expansion rate of the universe.
NASA astronaut and commander of the agency’s Artemis II mission, Reid Wiseman, a Baltimore native, takes a selfie with fans at an NFL game between the New Orleans Saints and the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026, in Baltimore.
UC Berkeley engineers and managers watch as the COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) detector assembly is slowly raised from a table in this July 8, 2026, image.
The rollout ceremony for NASA’s first space shuttle, OV-101, coincided with Constitution Day of the nation’s bicentennial on Sept.17, 1976. Although the orbiter was originally planned to be named Constitution, Star Trek fans successfully convinced President Gerald Ford to name it Enterprise after the series’ fictional starship.
NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik (left) and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano view progress on the solid rocket booster integration in High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026.
Fans pose for a photo with an astronaut in the NASA Experience Zone at an NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Atlanta Falcons at Acrisure Stadium, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Galaxies are like cosmic gems, each with characteristics including size and shape that make them distinct. A gallery from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes displays a collection of galactic images that showcase this variety.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have discovered that dust and water can form and survive surprisingly close to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
N44 is a complex nebula filled with glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars, and many populations of stars of different ages. One of its most distinctive features, however, is the dark, starry gap called a “superbubble,” visible in this Hubble Space Telescope image in the upper central region.
On Wednesday, June 17, skywatchers across the United States—and parts of Canada—enjoyed a rare event: a daytime lunar occultation of Venus. A lunar occultation occurs when the Moon moves directly in front of another celestial object from our viewpoint on Earth, briefly hiding it from sight.
Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A lunar eclipse is visible over southern Louisiana. The lunar eclipse was visible throughout much of North and South America and part of Europe and Africa between Aug. 27-28. The Full Moon slipped through Earth’s shadow on Aug. 27, continuing into Aug. 28 for some parts of the world, resulting in the lunar eclipse. At maximum eclipse, the Moon takes on a dramatic dark, ruddy or coppery tint along the covered edge. New Orleans is home to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, where stages for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and structures for Orion spacecraft are produced for the Artemis missions.
Technicians prepare to transfer the #2 RS-25 SLS (Space Launch System) rocket engine (front) to the work stand with the #3 engine (back) for integration with the Artemis III core stage rocket on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During Artemis III, the four RS‑25 engines will launch the Orion spacecraft and its crew of four into low Earth orbit, generating more than two million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope on board is seen transiting the sun during launch from Launch Complex 39A, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
President Donald J. Trump awarded NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Aug. 28, 2026, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
New civil servants and guests pose for a group photo with NASA and Center leadership in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) 80-by-120-foot test section, N221.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, encapsulated in its payload fairing, travels to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026.
From left, Expedition 75 flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA (partially obscured and wearing the spacesuit with a red stripe on the legs) and Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) work together during a six‑hour and 23‑minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander, is seen in the two-seat IndyCar as he prepares for driver Conor Daly to take him on a lap in the fastest seat in sport ahead of the start of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).
A NASA jacket containing Artemis I and II mission patches, along with other NASA patches hangs on the back of a chair on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, inside Firing Room 1 of the Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a terminal countdown simulation for the Artemis III mission.
About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH collided with a young Milky Way and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this collision by studying globular star clusters.
Like a collage made of layered sheets of colored cellophane, a vibrant new image layers observations of a famous star-forming nebula from NASA space telescopes. The resulting cosmic “craft” reveals new details about the star formation region known as 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope imaged the planetary nebula NGC 2392, the Lion Nebula, using the observatory’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The central star’s remains are responsible for the nebula’s structure, including a lion face-shaped bubble of ionized gas and dust “mane.”
NASA astronaut and Expedition 75 commander Jessica Meir wears a set of virtual reality goggles, also called the Nevada Screening Vision System, for a test that measures visual function using a series of vision screening apps testing visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and more.
A first of its kind measurement of a magnetar may have captured empty space behaving in a way physicists have predicted for 90 years, but never directly observed. The results published Wednesday in Nature.
Engineers connect the Orion crew and service modules for the Artemis III mission inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Technicians inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center complete installation of a commemorative plaque on the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, as photographed on Tuesday, July 28, 2026.
Relatively low tidal waters expose sandflats and mudflats in the Bijagós Archipelago of Guinea-Bissau in this image acquired on November 28, 2025, with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8. These coastal landforms support an array of invertebrates, making the archipelago a popular stopover for migratory shorebirds.
NASA opened its newest wind tunnel, the Flight Dynamics Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on Friday, providing a critical resource for the agency and its partners to test the safety and performance of future generations of aircraft, rockets, and space exploration vehicles.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals the nearby galaxy Centaurus A, exposing the dusty structures and hidden activity that shape this unusual system.
This illustration depicts charged particles from a solar storm stripping away charged particles of Mars' atmosphere, one of the processes of Martian atmosphere loss studied by NASA's MAVEN mission.
NASA astronaut Chris Williams is seen outside the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft after he landed with Expedition 74 Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and Sergei Mikaev in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Sunday, July 26, 2026. The trio returned to Earth after logging 241 days in space as a members of Expeditions 73 and 74 aboard the International Space Station.
From left, Expedition 74 flight engineers Anna Kikina and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, and Anil Menon of NASA pose for a portrait while holding a cake celebrating their recent arrival aboard the International Space Station.
Crews at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans transport the 130-foot-tall liquid hydrogen tank out of a production cell inside the main factory building into a detached test building on a separate portion of the 829-acre site.
This composite of images taken by NASA’s Psyche mission shows the crescent of Mars grow as the spacecraft approached the planet for a gravity assist from May 2 to May 15, 2026. Because Psyche approached Mars from a high phase angle, the planet appeared as a thin crescent in the days running up to the close approach, lit by sunlight reflecting off its surface.
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