Sending “Water” to Europa

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter's moon Europa. The moon shows strong evidence of an ocean under its icy crust, with more than twice the amount of water of all of Earth's oceans combined. A triangular metal plate, seen here, will honor that connection to Earth.

The plate is made of tantalum metal and is about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters). It is engraved on both sides and seals an opening in the electronics vault, which houses the spacecraft's sensitive electronics. The art on this side of the plate features waveforms that are visual representations of the sound waves formed by the word "water" in 103 languages. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for "water."

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CADRE Rovers’ Test Drive in the Mars Yard

Two full-scale development model rovers that are part of NASA's CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration drive in the Mars Yard at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in August 2023. The project is designed to show that a group of robotic spacecraft can work together as a team to accomplish tasks and record data autonomously – without explicit commands from mission controllers on Earth.

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Hubble Views a Galaxy Under Pressure

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows LEDA 42160, a galaxy about 52 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. The dwarf galaxy is one of many forcing its way through the comparatively dense gas in the massive Virgo cluster of galaxies. The pressure exerted by this intergalactic gas, known as ram pressure, has dramatic effects on star formation in LEDA 42160.

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Ocean Worlds Planetary Scientist Dr. Lynnae Quick

"I've come a long way from thinking, 'Well, I did this whole dissertation on geysers, what it would take for them to erupt, for a spacecraft to see them, and that people might not take me seriously as a scientist because of it,' to being on the Europa Clipper camera team involved in investigating these plumes and ensuring we can image them if they're there. It's a full-circle moment." – Dr. Lynnae Quick, Ocean Worlds Planetary Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

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St. Patrick's Aurora Illuminates the Night Sky

This majestic image of the dazzling green lights of the aurora borealis was captured on March 17, 2015, around 5:30 a.m. EDT in Donnelly Creek, Alaska.

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Celebrating Pi Day on the International Space Station

NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen holds a small pie that is festively decorated in commemoration of Pi Day aboard the International Space Station.

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Apollo 9 Crew Comes Home

Immediately after splashdown, a recovery helicopter from the USS Guadalcanal hovers over the Apollo 9 spacecraft. Still inside the Command Module are astronauts James A. McDivitt, David R. Scott, and Russell L. Schweickart. Splashdown occurred at 12:00:53 p.m. EST March 13, 1969, only 4.5 nautical miles from the USS Guadalcanal, the prime recovery ship, to conclude a successful 10-day Earth-orbital mission in space.

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NASA Astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara Read First Woman

Expedition 70 Flight Engineers (from left) Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara, both NASA astronauts, are pictured inside the International Space Station's cupola holding NASA's first graphic novel, "First Woman."

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Moon and Sun Over Wyoming

The Moon is seen passing in front of the Sun at the point of the maximum of the partial solar eclipse near Banner, Wyoming on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017. A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the contiguous United States from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of South America, Africa, and Europe. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

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Martian Barchan Dunes

This image shows two types of sand dunes on Mars. The small dots are called barchan dunes, and from their shape we can tell that they are upwind. The downwind dunes are long and linear. These two types of dune each show the wind direction in different ways: the barchans have a steep slope and crescent-shaped "horns" that point downwind, while the linear dunes are stretched out along the primary wind direction. Linear dunes, however, typically indicate a wind regime with at least two different prevailing winds, which stretch out the sand along their average direction. In several places in this image, you can find barchan dunes turning into linear dunes as they are stretched out, but they both seem into indicate the same wind direction.

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Apollo 9 Astronaut David Scott’s Spacewalk

Excellent view of the docked Apollo 9 command and service modules (CSM) and lunar module (LM), with Earth in the background, during astronaut David R. Scott's stand-up spacewalk, on the fourth day of the Apollo 9 Earth-orbital mission. Scott, command module pilot, is standing in the open hatch of the command module. Astronaut Russell L. Schweickart, lunar module pilot, took this photograph of Scott from the porch of the LM. Inside the LM was astronaut James A. McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander.

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NASA’s Newest Astronauts

NASA newest class of astronauts, selected in 2021, graduate during a ceremony on March 5, 2024, at the at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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Women of NASA Langley Research Center

In honor of Women’s History Month 2024 and those who paved the way for them, hundreds of female staff – from artists to administrative support, educators to engineers, and scientists to safety officers – gathered in front of the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on Feb. 6, 2024.

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Hubble Uncovers a Celestial Fossil

This densely populated group of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1841, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy that lies about 162,000 light-years away. Satellite galaxies are bound by gravity in orbits around a more massive host galaxy. We typically think of the Andromeda Galaxy as our galaxy’s nearest galactic companion, but it is more accurate to say that Andromeda is the nearest galaxy that is not in orbit around the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, dozens of satellite galaxies orbit our galaxy and they are far closer than Andromeda. The largest and brightest of these is the LMC, which is easily visible to the unaided eye from the southern hemisphere under dark sky conditions away from light pollution.

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Odysseus Lands on the Moon

Following a launch on Feb. 15, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander touched down in the Moon’s south polar region on Feb. 22 and has since transmitted valuable scientific data back to Earth.

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Atmospheric Science Branch Chief Dr. Charles Gatebe

"Anyone you see on the streets, their color or background doesn't matter; we all come into this world the same way. You're equipped with skills, so find your passion and go for it." – Dr. Charles Gatebe, Chief of Atmospheric Science Branch, NASA's Ames Research Center

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A Splash of Pink

A female (left) and a male roseate spoonbill get together near the tall grasses at the edge of a pond in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, northwest of Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Spoonbills inhabit areas of mangrove such as on the coasts of southern Florida and Texas. These birds feed on shrimps and fish in the shallow water, sweeping their bills from side to side. This and other wildlife abound throughout Kennedy as it shares a boundary with the Wildlife Refuge, home to some of the nation’s rarest and most unusual species of wildlife. The wildlife refuge is a habitat for more than 310 species of birds, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles.

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NASA, Partners Test Artemis II Recovery Procedures

Members of NASA’s Exploration Ground System’s Landing and Recovery team and partners from the Department of Defense aboard the USS San Diego practice recovery procedures during Underway Recovery Test 11 (URT-11) off the coast of San Diego on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. The team works to secure the Crew Module Test Article and align it on its stand inside the ship’s well deck. URT-11 is the eleventh in a series of Artemis recovery tests, and the first time NASA and its partners put their Artemis II recovery procedures to the test with the astronauts.

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Hubble Views an Active Star-Forming Galaxy

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features IC 3476, a dwarf galaxy that lies about 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. While this image does not look very dramatic – we might say it looks almost serene – the actual physical events taking place in IC 3476 are highly energetic. In fact, the little galaxy is undergoing a process called ram pressure stripping that is driving unusually high levels of star formation in regions of the galaxy.

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Shanghai from Space

The city lights of Shanghai, the most populous city in China with a population of about 24.9 million, and the Huangpu River flowing through downtown, are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the East China Sea.

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小森林

每个人都有属于自己的一片森林,也许我们从来不曾走过,但它一直在那里,总会在那里。迷失的人迷失了,相逢的人会再相逢。愿这里,成为属于你的小森林。