Category: Image of the day

Jupiter’s north polar region is coming into view as NASA’s Juno spacecraft approaches the giant planet. This view of Jupiter was taken on August 27, when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away. The Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter.

NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at Langley Research Center. Born on Aug. 26, 1918, in White Sulphur Springs, WV, Johnson worked at Langley from 1953 until her retirement in 1986, making critical technical contributions which included calculating the trajectory of Alan Shepard’s historic 1961 flight.

To celebrate the centennial of the U.S National Park Service, Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA has taken hundreds of images of national parks from his vantage point in low Earth orbit, aboard the International Space Station. Here, a series of Williams’ photographs are assembled into this composite image of the Grand Canyon.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Station Commander Jeff Williams passed astronaut Scott Kelly, also a former station commander, for most cumulative days living and working in space by a NASA astronaut (520 days and counting). Williams is scheduled to land Sept. 6, 2016, for a record total of 534 days in space.

Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams (shown here) and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins of NASA successfully installed the first of two international docking adapters Friday Aug. 19, 2016, during a five hour and 58-minute spacewalk. On Sept. 1, the two astronauts will spacewalk outside the space station for the second time in less than two weeks.

Dione reveals its past via contrasts in this view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

As NASA celebrates National Aviation Day, the agency’s innovators are working to transform air transportation to meet the future needs of the global aviation community. The agency is embarking on a 10-year plan, New Aviation Horizons, that will see NASA field a number of experimental aircraft to demonstrate 21st century ideas for flight.

Welders inside a large liquid hydrogen tank for NASA’s Space Launch System at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans are plugging holes left after the tank was assembled.

A new look at the debris from an exploded star in our galaxy has astronomers re-examining when the supernova actually happened.

The remotely controlled Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station acquired this photograph on July 14, 2016, as the orbiting laboratory flew over Lake Powell and the border of Utah and Arizona. Located on the Colorado River, Lake Powell is the second largest artificial reservoir in the United States.

Expedition 48 crew members Kate Rubins (left) and Jeff Williams (right) of NASA outfit spacesuits inside of the Quest airlock aboard the International Space Station. Rubins and Williams will conduct a spacewalk on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016, to install a new docking port that will enable the future arrival of U.S. commercial crew spacecraft.

In this 30 second exposure, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite passed directly over Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 2, 2016, just prior to the opening of the Summer Olympic Games. On the left is an image from MISR’s nadir camera; on the right, a map of aerosol optical depth.