The Orion spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis II mission received its latest makeover. Teams adhered the agency’s iconic “worm” logo and ESA (European Space Agency) insignia on the spacecraft’s crew module adapter on Sunday, Jan. 28, inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Image Credit: NASA/Rad Sinyak

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:05 a.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. As part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, Intuitive Machines’ first lunar mission will carry NASA science and commercial payloads to the Moon to study plume-surface interactions, space weather/lunar surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies, and a communication and navigation node for future autonomous navigation technologies.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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Photographers at NASA capture the sunset on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024, near the Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, completed in 1966 and currently used for assembly of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket for Artemis missions, remains the only building in which rockets were assembled that carried humans to the surface of another world.

Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

It’s oh-so-easy to be mesmerized by this spiral galaxy. Follow its clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to its center, where there may be old star clusters and – sometimes – active supermassive black holes. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope delivered highly detailed scenes of this and other nearby spiral galaxies in a combination of near- and mid-infrared light.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), and the PHANGS team

STS-60 commander Charles F. Bolden is seen at the commander's station on the forward flight deck of the space shuttle Discovery. He is wearing the orange launch and entry suit. Bolden and his crewmates performed proximity operations with the Russian Mir space station.

Image Credit: NASA

"Being able to see the world from a different perspective is incredible, and getting to fly in space was the culmination of that, seeing the world from an entirely new vantage point." — Bob Hines, Astronaut, NASA's Johnson Space Center

Image Credit: NASA / Kjell Lindgren

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The crewmen of the third and final manned Skylab mission relax on the USS New Orleans, prime recovery ship for their mission, about an hour after their Command Module splashed down at 10:17 a.m. (CDT), Feb. 8, 1974. The splashdown, which occurred 176 statute miles from San Diego, ended 84 record-setting days of flight activity aboard the Skylab space station cluster in Earth orbit.

Image Credit: NASA

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II approaches his maximum distance from the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Challenger in this 70mm frame photographed by his fellow crewmembers onboard the reusable vehicle. McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of the nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled back-pack device called the manned maneuvering unit (MMU). Astronaut Robert L. Stewart got a chance to test the same unit a while later in the lengthy EVA session while the two spacewalkers were photographed and monitored by their fellow crewmembers in Challenger's cabin. Those inside were Astronauts Vance D. Brand, Robert L. Gibson and Dr. Ronald E. McNair.

Image Credit: NASA

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NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman exits the side of a mockup of the Orion spacecraft during a training exercise in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Jan. 23. As part of training for their mission around the Moon next year, the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign, the crew of four astronauts practiced the recovery procedures they will use when the splash down in the Pacific Ocean.

Image Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

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"... it's challenge, service, and building the future. If I don't do anything else in my entire life except for those three things, I'm at least getting something right. I might be getting everything else entirely wrong, but I can at least work toward those three things.” — Dr. Rodney Martin, Deputy Discovery and Systems Health Technical Area Lead, NASA’s Ames Research Center

Image Credit: NASA/Brandon Torres

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This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows ESO 185-IG013, a luminous blue compact galaxy (BCG). BCGs are nearby galaxies that show an intense burst of star formation. They are unusually blue in visible light, which sets them apart from other high-starburst galaxies that emit more infrared light.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Chandar (University of Toledo); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

NASA completed a full-duration, 500-second hot fire of an RS-25 certification engine Jan. 17, continuing a critical test series to support future SLS (Space Launch System) missions to the Moon and beyond as NASA explores the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all.

Image Credit: NASA/Danny Nowlin

A successful liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida as Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, heads to the International Space Station for the 20th Northrop Grumman resupply mission on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. The spacecraft is expected to reach the space station Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, bringing 8,200 pounds of science investigations, supplies, and equipment for the international crew.

Image Credit: SpaceX

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This high exposure photograph revealed Earth's atmospheric glow against the backdrop of a starry sky in this image taken from the International Space Station on Jan. 21, 2024. At the time, the orbital lab was 258 miles above the Pacific Ocean northeast of Papua New Guinea. The Nauka science module and Prichal docking module are visible at left.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA/Andreas Mogensen

The aerial prototype of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is seen at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steve F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, in Chantilly, Va. The prototype, which was the first to demonstrate it was possible to fly in a simulated Mars environment at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), was donated to the museum on Friday.

Image Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

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From left to right, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, and Deputy Chief of Mission for the Embassy of Israel Eliav Benjamin, place wreaths at the Space Shuttle Columbia Memorial during a ceremony that was part of NASA's Day of Remembrance, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. The wreaths were laid in memory of those men and women who lost their lives in the quest for space exploration.

Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

On the 20th anniversary of the landing of Spirit and Opportunity, celebrate NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project with this two-sided poster that lists some of the pioneering explorers’ accomplishments on the Red Planet. Download the poster for free here.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft for Axiom Space’s Axiom Mission 3 (Ax-3) to the International Space Station lifts off at 4:49 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024. Ax-3 is the third all private astronaut mission to the space station, sending crew members Commander Michael López-Alegría, Pilot Walter Villadei, and Mission Specialists Marcus Wandt and Alper Gezeravci into orbit. The crew will spend about two weeks conducting microgravity research, educational outreach, and commercial activities aboard the space station.

Image Credit: NASA/Chris Swanson

A NASA intern uses an augmented reality headset to test out heads-up display technology being developed for future Artemis missions. This technology was created as part of the NASA Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students, or SUITS, design challenge in which college students from across the country help design user interface solutions for future spaceflight needs.

Image Credit: NASA/James Blair

A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside. Erika Blumenfeld, creative lead for the Advanced Imaging and Visualization of Astromaterials (AIVA) and Joe Aebersold, project management lead, captured this picture using manual high-resolution precision photography and a semi-automated focus stacking procedure. The result is an image that can be zoomed in on to show extreme detail of the sample. The remaining sample material includes dust and rocks up to about .4 in (one cm) in size.

Image Credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

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This Hubble Picture of the Week features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies — NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral — that are in the midst of a collision. This dramatic cosmic encounter is located at the very safe distance of roughly 570 million light-years from Earth.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgement: L. Shatz

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite sensor on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite captured this image of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, over western Canada on November 5, 2023.

Image Credit: NASA/Lauren Dauphin and Wanmei Liang; NOAA

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NASA and Lockheed Martin publicly unveil the X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft at a ceremony in Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land, currently banned in the United States, by making sonic booms quieter.

Image Credit: NASA/Steve Freeman

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The Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9 captured this image of Simsbury on September 15, 2022. The tobacco farm where Martin Luther King worked—Meadowood—is located west of the Farmington River, a tributary of the Connecticut River.

Image Credit: NASA/Joshua Stevens; USGS

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This deep dataset from Chandra of the remains of a supernova known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B) reveals evidence for more than one supernova explosion in the history of this remnant. Unusual structures in the Chandra data cannot be explained by a single explosion. These images of 30 Dor B also show optical data from the Blanco telescope in Chile, and infrared data from Spitzer. Additional data from Hubble highlights sharp features in the image.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; Infrared: NASA/JPL/CalTech/SST; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, K. Arcand

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An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it launches from Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Thursday, January 9, 2014, Wallops Island, VA. Antares is carrying the Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Cygnus is carrying science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware to the space station.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

For the first time, astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope to study the well-known supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). This work has helped explain an unusual structure in the debris from the destroyed star called the “Green Monster,” because of its resemblance to the wall in the left field of Fenway Park.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScl; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScl/Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand

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This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a richness of spiral galaxies: the large, prominent spiral galaxy on the right side of the image is NGC 1356; the two apparently smaller spiral galaxies flanking it are LEDA 467699 (above it) and LEDA 95415 (very close at its left) respectively; and finally, IC 1947 sits along the left side of the image.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz

Expedition 70 NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara has her Russian Sokol spacesuit pressure checked ahead launching to the International Space Station with fellow crewmates, Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, Friday, Sept. 15, 2023 in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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Amazonian leaders visit "Space for Earth," an immersive audio-visual installation that draws from near real-time satellite data and images, in NASA's Earth Information Center at the NASA Headquarters Mary W. Jackson Building in Washington on Nov. 17, 2023.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Jessica Watkins, and Robert Hines participate in STEM demonstrations with local students at the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library, Thursday, March 30, 2023, in Washington. Lindgren, Hines, and Watkins spent 170 days in space as part of Expeditions 67 and 68 aboard the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA / Keegan Barber

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Jupiter, top, and Venus, bottom, are seen with the crescent Moon above the Vehicle Assembly Building, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as preparations continued for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission. The agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission was the sixth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Image Credit: NASA / Joel Kowsky

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