保护地球，探索宇宙，发现文明
Support teams onboard the SpaceX recovery ship MEGAN work to open the hatch of the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after it landed in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 4, 2023, with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard. Bowen, Hoburg, Alneyadi,...
This colorful image of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 is a spectacular example of how dust in space affects starlight coming from background objects. A globular star cluster is a conglomeration of stars, arranged in a spheroidal shape. Stars in globular clusters are bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards the center. The ...
A recovery team member takes part in field rehearsals in preparation for the retrieval of the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in this image from Aug. 29, 2023. The sample of rocks and dust, which the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected from the asteroid Bennu in Oct. 2020, will return to Earth on Sept. 24, safely landing at the Departm...
On Sept. 5, 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft lifts off atop its Titan/Centaur-6 launch vehicle from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were originally launched to conduct closeup studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn’s rings, and the larger...
As the International Space Station orbited 261 miles above Earth on Aug. 29, 2023, one of the space station’s external high-definition cameras captured Hurricane Idalia in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Idalia made landfall over the Big Bend region of Florida on the morning of Aug. 30, 2023, as a category 3 storm. Winds measured 205 kilometers (125 miles) per...
In this image from Sept. 5, 1983, Guion “Guy” Bluford checks out the sample pump on the continuous flow electrophoresis system (CFES) experiment in the middeck of the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Challenger. Forty years ago today, he launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, becoming the first African American to fly in space. Bluford was a membe...
Rocky Garcia and Wesley James prepare a weather balloon to collect wind data at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on July 20, 2023. Researchers measured wind at altitudes below 2,000 feet using drones, sensors, weather balloons, and other technology during the Advanced Exploration of Reliable Operation at Low Altitudes: Meteorol...
At 3:27 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Aug. 26, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 crew members launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov aboard...
The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, which lies 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, is a ghostly assemblage of stars which resembles a sparkling cloud. Other distant galaxies and foreground stars complete this astronomical portrait, which was captured by the Advanced...
A Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle awaits test-firing in the Redstone Test Stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in this photo from the late 1950s. Between 1953 and 1960, the rocket team at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville performed hundreds of test firings on the Redstone rocket – over 200 on the Mercury-Redstone vehicle co...