Category: Image of the day

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of cloud streets and sea ice in the Sea of Okhotsk on Feb. 8, 2016. Cloud streets are long parallel bands of cumulus clouds that form when cold air blows over warmer waters and a warmer air layer rests over the top of both.

STS-63 astronauts Bernard A. Harris, Jr., payload commander (right), and C. Michael Foale, mission specialist (left), are ready to exit space shuttle Discovery’s airlock for a spacewalk on Feb. 9, 1995. On this extravehicular activity (EVA), which lasted 4 hours and 38 minutes, Bernard Harris became the first African-American to walk in space.

On the evening of Feb. 7, 2016, Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly snapped this photo of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. from the International Space Station, writing, “Got to see the #SuperBowl in person after all! But at 17,500MPH, it didn’t last long. #YearInSpace”

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a peculiar galaxy known as NGC 1487, lying about 30 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Eridanus.

The nitrogen ice glaciers on Pluto appear to carry an intriguing cargo: numerous, isolated hills that may be fragments of water ice from Pluto’s surrounding uplands. These hills individually measure one to several miles or kilometers across, according to images and data from NASA’s New Horizons mission.

In this Feb. 3, 1995, image taken onboard space shuttle Discovery on flight day one of the STS-63 mission, astronaut Eileen M. Collins — the first woman to pilot the shuttle — is at the pilot’s station during a “hotfiring” procedure prior to rendezvous with the Russian Mir Space Station.

Expedition 46 flight engineer Tim Peake of ESA captured this photo on Jan. 29, 2016 from the International Space Station, as the robotic arm in Japan’s Kibo laboratory successfully deployed two combined satellites: AggieSat4 built by Texas A&M University students, and BEVO-2 built by University of Texas students.

NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft readies to transport an Orion spacecraft from the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at “Namib Dune,” where the rover’s activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of sand for laboratory analysis.

Chuck Resnik, brother of Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Judith Resnik, left, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, visit the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial during a wreath laying ceremony that was part of NASA’s Day of Remembrance on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger accident, January 28, 2016, at Arlington National Cemetery.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is another step closer to launching on its first mission to deep space atop the agency’s Space Launch System rocket. On Jan. 13, technicians at Michoud Assembly Facility finished welding together the primary structure of the Orion spacecraft destined for deep space, marking another important step on the journey to Mars.

Expedition 46 flight engineer Tim Peake of the European Space Agency (ESA) shared this stunning nighttime photograph with his social media followers on Jan. 25, 2016, writing, “Beautiful night pass over Italy, Alps and Mediterranean.”

This half-lit view of Enceladus bears a passing resemblance to similar views of Earth’s own natural satellite, but the similarities end there.