Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata is pictured in his Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or spacesuit, during his spacewalk on Feb. 2, 2023. He and NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, who took this photo, installed a modification kit on the International Space Station’s starboard tr […]
A snapshot of the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is featured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Tarantula Nebula is a large star-forming region of ionized hydrogen gas that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and its turbulent clou
Officials from NASA, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the Indian Embassy visit a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 3, 2023, to view the scientific instrument payload for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission. The NISAR mission—a joint eff
This Jan. 10, 2013, composite image of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and infrared data acquired by NASA’s Sp
The waxing gibbous Moon stands out in this Jan. 2, 2023, image from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above the southern Indian Ocean. In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets. To find out where the ISS is now—or to get
In this photo from Oct. 14, 2008, a great blue heron stands watch among a pond of water lilies on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It is one of 310 species of birds that inhabit the National Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, which shares a boundary with Kennedy. The marshes and open water of the ref
Chile’s Villarrica volcano emits steam and other volcanic gases in this photo taken from the International Space Station on Jan. 17, 2023. The gases come from a series of minor explosions—called Strombolian eruptions—that have been ongoing at Villarrica since October 2022. Located along Chile’s sout
The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has also captured a smaller companion star in the upper left of this image. Both stars lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1,450 light-years from E
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson lays a wreath at the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial during NASA’s Day of Remembrance, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. Wreaths were laid in memory of those men and women who lost their lives in the quest for space explo
On Jan. 25, 1984, President Ronald Reagan used his State of the Union address to call for NASA to build a permanent crewed space station. While Reagan’s speech took place in a broader sociopolitical context of generally heightened tensions with the Soviet Union, his remarks foreshadowed the in
