Category: Image of the day

Frequent cloud cover in the southern Atlantic Ocean often obscures satellite images of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. But occasionally the clouds give way. On September 14, 2016, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured natural-color images of South Georgia Island, where several glaciers are in retreat.

The left side of this 360-degree panorama from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the long rows of ripples on a linear shaped dune in the Bagnold Dune Field on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp.

These images of the sun were captured at the same time on January 29, 2017 by the six channels on the Solar Ultraviolet Imager or SUVI instrument aboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite. Data from SUVI will provide an estimation of coronal plasma temperatures and emission measurements which are important to space weather forecasting.

On Feb. 22, engineers successfully installed ESA’s European Service Module Propulsion Qualification Module (PQM) at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico that was delivered by Airbus – ESA’s prime contractor for the Service Module. The module will be equipped with a total of 21 engines to support NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

Charles Smoot was employed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center where he began laying the foundation of a cooperative program targeting qualified African American students from universities across the nation.

A NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket soars skyward into an aurora over Alaska following a 5:13 a.m. EST, Feb. 22, 2017 launch from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. The rocket carried an Ionospheric Structuring: In Situ and Groundbased Low Altitude StudieS (ISINGLASS) instrumented payload examining the structure of an aurora.

When viewed from a distance with the sun directly behind Cassini, the larger, brighter craters really stand out on moons like Dione.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is the company’s 10th commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 9:39 a.m. EST from the historic launch site now operated by SpaceX under a property agreement with NASA.

NASA provider SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are vertical at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff of SpaceX’s tenth Commercial Resupply Services cargo mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for 10:01 a.m. EST on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017.

On March 2, 1963 Engineer Thomas Byrdsong checks the Apollo/Saturn 1B Ground-wind-loads model in the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Pine Island Glacier has shed another block of ice into Antarctic waters. The loss was tiny compared to the icebergs that broke off in 2014 and 2015, but the event is further evidence of the ice shelf’s fragility.

Expedition 50 Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency shared this photograph from the International Space Station on Feb. 14, 2017, writing, “Venice, city of gondoliers and the lovers they carry along the canals. Happy Valentine’s Day!”

When seen up close, the F ring of Saturn resolves into multiple dusty strands. This Cassini view shows three bright strands and a very faint fourth strand off to the right.