space

NASA Picture Of The Day Freedom 7 On May 5, 1961, at 9:34am EST NASA astronaut Alan Shepard launched about his Mercury Redstone spacecraft, nicknamed Freedom 7, to become the first American in space. In this image, fellow astronaut Gus Grissom wishes a suited Alan Shepard a safe flight just...

NASA Picture Of The Day Stellar Nursery in the Rosette Nebula This image from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory shows the cloud associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation. Herschel...

NASA Picture Of The Day Guenter Wendt and the Apollo 11 Crew Within the White Room atop the gantry on Launch Complex 39 Pad A, the Apollo 11 astronauts egress from the Apollo spacecraft after participation in the Countdown Demonstration Test. In the foreground of the photograph is Astronaut...

NASA Picture Of The Day Double Trouble in Twin Black Holes This image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the central region of the starburst galaxy M82 and contains two bright X-ray sources of special interest. New studies with Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton show that these two sources...

NASA Picture Of The Day Building Planets This artist's animation illustrates a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our Sun. Asteroids are chunks of rock from "failed" planets, which never managed to coalesce into full-sized planets. Asteroid belts can be...

NASA Picture Of The Day Solar Prominence This new image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) shows in great detail a solar prominence taken from a March 30, 2010 eruption. The twisting motion of the material is the most noticeable feature. Launched on Feb...

NASA Picture Of The Day Oil Slick Spreads off Gulf Coast NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the Gulf of Mexico on April 25, 2010 using its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. With the Mississippi Delta on the left, the silvery swirling oil slick from...

NASA Picture Of The Day Renewing Partnerships NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson signed a Memorandum of Agreement today to promote and continue collaboration between the two agencies in environmental and Earth sciences and...

NASA Picture Of The Day The Birth of Stars This new Hubble photo is but a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. Reminiscent of Hubble's classic image of the Eagle...

NASA Picture Of The Day Cumulonimbus Cloud Over Africa High above the African continent, tall, dense cumulonimbus clouds, meaning 'column rain' in Latin, are the result of atmospheric instability. The clouds can form alone, in clusters, or along a cold front in a squall line. The high energy...

NASA Picture Of The Day Separation As the shuttle and the space station began their post-undocking relative separation, Expedition 23 flight engineer Soichi Noguchi photographed the underside of the shuttle over the south end of Isla de Providencia, about 150 miles off the coast of Nicaragua...

NASA Picture Of The Day Homecoming The space shuttle Discovery is seen as it lands at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Tuesday, April 20, 2010. Discovery and the STS-131 mission crew--Commander Alan G. Poindexter, pilot James P. Dutton Jr. and mission specialists Dorothy...

NASA Picture Of The Day Gazing at Earth The STS-131 crew snapped this image as space shuttle Discovery remained docked with the International Space Station. The Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module can be seen in Discovery’s payload bay. Earth’s horizon and the blackness of space provide...

NASA Picture Of The Day Group Portrait The crews of STS-131 and Expedition 23 gathered for a group portrait in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station while space shuttle Discovery was docked at the station. STS-131 crew (in light blue shirts) are commander Alan Poindexter...

NASA Picture Of The Day President Obama Visits Kennedy Space Center President Barack Obama waves hello as he exits of Air Force One along with Senator Bill Nelson after landing at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Thursday, April 15, 2010. Obama visited Kennedy to...

NASA Picture Of The Day Working in Tandem Dwarfed by space shuttle Discovery and with Earth's horizon and the blackness of space providing the backdrop for the scene, NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio (right) and Clayton Anderson worked in Discovery's aft payload bay during the mission's third...

NASA Picture Of The Day Spacewalkers at Work During the second of three spacewalks STS-131 astronauts Rick Mastracchio (left) and Clayton Anderson continued maintenance activities outside the International Space Station by installing a 1,700-pound ammonia tank on the station's Starboard 1...

NASA Picture Of The Day A Day's Work During the second spacewalk of the STS-131 mission, NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson (out of frame) unhooked and removed the depleted ammonia tank and installed a 1,700-pound replacement on the station’s Starboard 1 truss. This was the...

NASA Picture Of The Day Upgrading the Station During the STS-131 mission's first spacewalk, which lasted about 6.5 hours, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio helped move a new 1,700-pound ammonia tank from space shuttle Discovery's cargo bay to a temporary parking place on the station, retrieved...

NASA Picture Of The Day A View of the Main Engines The Expedition 23 crew photographed this view of the aft portion of space shuttle Discovery, including the three main engines, during a survey of the approaching vehicle prior to docking with the International Space Station. As part of the...