NASA

Comet passing above auroras on Earth

The center of the image has the brightest pixel, indicating where the comet is. The next brightest shades in the image indicate areas where the instrument detected atoms of hydrogen coming from the comet. This hydrogen is released when sunlight heats the comet, causing its water ice to turn directly into vapor. Once released into space, the water molecules break apart into oxygen and hydrogen atoms.

Artist illustration of two ESCAPADE satellites orbiting Mars

A large planetary nebula. The nebula’s central star is hidden by a blotchy pinkish cloud of dust. A strong red light radiates from this area, illuminating the nearby dust. Two large loops extend diagonally away from the centre, formed of thin ridges of molecular gas, here coloured blue. They stretch out to the corners of the view. A huge number of bright, whitish stars cover the background, also easily visible through the thin dust layers.

The first six women in newly issued, incompletely adorned astronaut jumpsuits, 1978: (front, left to right) Sally Ride, Rhea Seddon; (rear) Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, Anna Fisher, Judy Resnik.

Cars driving down snowy road at night

A stream of plasma moves from the sun toward Earth. On its way, the plasma hits four, square spacecraft, which are arranged in a triangular-pyramid formation. The spacecraft closest to the sun is in the center of a large, aluminum sail.

a gold dollar coin. the heads side has a woman holding a baby on her back named sacagewea on it and the back an eagle with 17 stars

a mock up of a boarding pass for a flight during artemis 2

Lunar rover concept going up hill with US flag mounted on rear

An artist illustration of a small planet-sized object striking Mars during its early years.

A scanning electron microscope image of a micrometeorite impact crater in a particle of asteroid Bennu material.

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope exquisitely captures Uranus's seasonal north polar cap and dim inner and outer rings. This Webb image also shows 9 of the planet's 27 moons – clockwise starting at 2 o'clock, they are: Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet, and Perdita.

An artist’s impression of the "Cosmic Grapes" galaxy, composed of at least 15 massive star forming clumps—far more than current theoretical models predict could exist within a single rotating disk at this early time. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/B. Saxton

Image of comet taken by Hubble Space Telescope

Artist illustration of supermassive black hole surrounded by cloud of red and yellow gas

Photo of galaxy with zoom in box showing Betelgeuse and companion star

This artist’s concept visualizes a kilonova – an explosion that happens when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole collide and merge. When these collisions happen, a fraction of the resulting debris is ejected as jets, which move near the speed of light. The remaining debris produces hot, glowing, neutron-rich clouds that forge heavy elements, like gold and platinum. Researchers will mine data from NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will survey the same areas of the sky every few days, to identify kilonovae. Roman’s extensive data will help astronomers better identify how often these events occur, how much energy they give off, and how near or far they are.

These images, showing ejecta around the impacted near-Earth asteroids, were taken during the approach (with Didymos to the upper left) and departure (Didymos to the upper right) of DART's companion spacecraft, LICIACube, which flew past a few minutes after the impact and imaged the aftermath. The ejecta field consists of an asymmetric cone of dust that exhibits streamers and filaments, as well as over a hundred meter-sized boulders that were ejected in preferred directions.

Red sprite above Earth in photo taken from International Space Station