保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
Supernovas are the explosive deaths of the universe’s most massive stars. In death, these objects blast powerful waves into the cosmos, destroying much of the dust surrounding them. This 2007 composite from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the remnant of such an explosion, known as N132D, and the environment it i...
This tunnel view looking up from Level 5 is of the Zero Gravity Facility at Lewis Research Center, now known as John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, and was taken in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sept. 12, 1966. The tower dropped 460 feet and allowed scientists to perform 5.18 seconds of microgravity research. By comparison, the Washington Monument is 555 fee...
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule soars upward after lifting off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 14, 2022, on the company’s 25th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 8:44 p.m. EDT. Dragon will deliver more than 5,800 pounds of cargo, including a va...
Senior Project Scientist John Mather, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics, speaks with members of the media following the release of the first full-color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Tuesday, July 12, 2022, at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The first full-color images and spectroscopic data from the telescope, a partne...
President Joe Biden previews the first full-color image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the highest-resolution image of the infrared universe in history, Monday, July 11, 2022, in Washington. On screen are NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen, top, Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (...
Within the tempestuous Carina Nebula lies “Mystic Mountain.” This three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 in 2010, is made up primarily of dust and gas, and exhibits signs of intense star-forming activity. The colors in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitroge...
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observation has captured the galaxy CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger which lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world who clas...
We’re less than one week away from the July 12, 2022, release of the first science-quality images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, but how does the observatory find and lock onto its targets? Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), developed by the Canadian Space Agency, was designed with this particular question in mind. Recently it captured a...
A new NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks your help spotting vortices – spiral wind patterns – and other phenomena in photos of the planet Jupiter. Another NASA citizen science project, called Junocam, seeks help from members of the public processing images from NASA’s Juno Mission and choosing targets for the spacecraft. However, the n...
The last rays of an orbital sunset burst through Earth’s horizon as the International Space Station flew 258 miles above Brazil in this image from June 2022. In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets. Want more station facts? Visit International Space Station Facts and Figures. Image Credit: NASA...