保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
At 9:32 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission launched via a Saturn V rocket with Commander Neil Armstrong, command module pilot Michael Collins and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex Pad 39A. In a little more than eight years after the flights of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard, followed quickly by Presi...
The crew snapped this starry nighttime shot of Rio de Janeiro and surrounding cities on the Brazilian coast, as the International Space Station orbited above São Paolo. Whhile the crew observes Earth from more than 200 miles above the planet, astronaut Bob Behnken and Commander Chris Cassidy also are concentrating on the final set of power upgrade spacewalks...
In this image, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover waits to be lifted onto its Atlas V launch vehicle at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 7, 2020. The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to t...
Astronomers using a previously captured Hubble imagery spotted a remarkable image of a young star’s unseen, planet-forming disk casting a huge shadow across a more distant cloud in a star-forming region. The star is called HBC 672, and the shadow feature was nicknamed the “Bat Shadow” because it resembles a pair of wings. The nickname turne...
Psyche, the NASA mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid of the same name, recently passed a crucial milestone that brings it closer to its August 2022 launch date. Now the mission is moving from planning and designing to high-gear manufacturing of the spacecraft hardware that will fly to its target in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Missio...
When space shuttle Atlantis launched in July 2011 on the STS-135 mission carrying the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module and delivering supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station, it was the orbiter’s final flight and the end of an era. Chris Ferguson commanded the mission and Doug Hurley was its pilot. Also aboard were Rex Walhei...
Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently finished meticulously applying more than 180 blocks of ablative material to the heat shield for the Orion spacecraft set to carry astronauts around the Moon on Artemis II. The heat shield is one of the most critical elements of Orion and protects the capsule and the astronauts inside from the nea...
A multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter’s dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval. This color-enhanced image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Oct. 29, 201...
NASA astronaut Robert Behnken works during the Wednesday, July 1, 2020, six-hour and one-minute spacewalk to swap an aging nickel-hydrogen battery for a new lithium-ion battery on the International Space Station’s Starboard-6 truss structure. NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Behnken concluded their spacewalk at 12:14 p.m. EDT. During the spacewalk, th...
Hitching a ride on the Mars Pathfinder mission, the Sojourner rover arrived at the Red Planet on July 4, 1997. The mission was designed to demonstrate a low-cost method for delivering a set of science instruments to Mars, and served as the foundation for the Mars rovers of today. Pathfinder landed the rover using an air bag landing system and innovative peta...