Category: Image of the day

The gantry arms close around the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft to secure the rocket, as seen in this long exposure photograph taken on Wednesday, March 16, 2016 at launch pad 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Launch of the Expedition 47 crew is scheduled for 5:26 p.m. EDT Friday, March 18.

This image of haze layers above Pluto’s limb was taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. About 20 haze layers are seen; the layers have been found to typically extend horizontally over hundreds of kilometers, but are not strictly parallel to the surface.

On March 16, 1966, command pilot Neil Armstrong and pilot David Scott successfully docked their Gemini VIII spacecraft with the Agena target vehicle, the first-ever linking of two spacecraft together in Earth orbit. This crucial spaceflight technology milestone would prove vital to the success of future moon landing missions.

The remotely controlled Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station snapped this striking photograph of South Africa on Feb. 9, 2016. The EarthKAM program allows students to request photographs of specific Earth features, which are taken by a special camera mounted on the space station when it passes over those features.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus that shows wrinkled plains that are remarkably youthful in appearance, being generally free of large impact craters.

Containing countless galaxies, this parallel field observation is nearly as deep as the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. When compared to other deep fields, it will help astronomers understand how similar the universe looks in different directions.

“Frontier Fields” galaxy cluster MACS J0717, one of the most complex and distorted galaxy clusters known, is the site of a collision between four clusters. It is located about 5.4 billion light years away from Earth.

During the afternoon of March 9, 2016, a total solar eclipse was visible in parts of southeast Asia. An eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun. The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the total solar eclipse moving across the south Pacific Ocean at 03:05 UTC on March 9, 2016.

On April 8, 2010, STS-131 mission specialists Stephanie Wilson of NASA, Naoko Yamazaki of JAXA, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger of NASA, and Expedition 23 flight engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson (top left) work at the robotics workstation on the International Space Station, in support of transfer operations using the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm .

The mysterious mountain Ahuna Mons is seen in this mosaic of images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

Showcased at the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image is an emission-line star known as IRAS 12196-6300, located just under 2,300 light-years from Earth.

Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA is seen after returning to Ellington Field, Thursday, March 3, 2016 in Houston, Texas after his return to Earth the previous day.

The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 (Kazakh time).