NASA Image of the Day

Space Station Science (Mi, 17 Sep 2025)
NASA astronaut Zena Cardman processes bone cell samples inside the Kibo laboratory module's Life Science Glovebox on Aug. 28, 2025.
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An Eye-catching Star Cluster (Tue, 16 Sep 2025)
Westerlund 1 is the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth. Data from Chandra and other telescopes are helping astronomers delve deeper into this galactic factory where stars are vigorously being produced. Observations from Chandra have uncovered thousands of individual stars pumping out X-ray emission into the cluster.
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Helicopter Training for Artemis Missions (Mon, 15 Sep 2025)
NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (left) and Mark Vande Hei (right) prepare to fly out to a landing zone in the Rocky Mountains as part of the certification run for the NASA Artemis course at the High-Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site in Gypsum, Colorado, Aug. 26.
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A Brief Outburst (Fri, 12 Sep 2025)
The Sun blew out a coronal mass ejection along with part of a solar filament over a three-hour period on Feb. 24, 2015. While some of the strands fell back into the Sun, a substantial part raced into space in a bright cloud of particles (as observed by the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft). Because this occurred way over near the edge of the Sun, it was unlikely to have any effect on Earth.
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Shining Pismis 24 (Thu, 11 Sep 2025)
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured newborn stars forming in clouds of dust and gas (colored golden and orange in this image) in a star-forming region called Pismis 24.
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Dinner is Served! (Wed, 10 Sep 2025)
Dinner is served aboard the International Space Station! One tray features shrimp cocktail on whole grain wheat crackers, while the other holds sushi made with seaweed, Spam, tuna, and rice.
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Artemis II Crew Walks Out for Practice Scenarios (Tue, 09 Sep 2025)
From left to right, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot; Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander; CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, and NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, suit up and walk out of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. During a two-day operation, the Artemis II team practiced night-run demonstrations of different launch day scenarios for the Artemis II test flight.
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NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio in Space Station Cupola (Mon, 08 Sep 2025)
NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio is pictured inside the cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world," as the orbiting lab flew 263 miles above southeastern England on Oct. 1, 2022.
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Orion Mission Evaluation Room (Fri, 05 Sep 2025)
Orion Mission Evaluation Room (MER) team member works during an Artemis II mission simulation on Aug. 19, 2025, from the new Orion MER inside the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
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NASA astronauts Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman pose for a portrait in the Unity module (Thu, 04 Sep 2025)
NASA astronauts Jonny Kim and Zena Cardman, both Expedition 73 Flight Engineers, pose for a portrait inside the International Space Station's Unity module during a break in weekend housecleaning and maintenance activities. Kim and Cardman are both part of NASA Astronaut Group 22 selected in June 2017 with 12 other astronauts, including two Canadian Space Agency astronauts, and affectionately nicknamed "The Turtles."
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Thinning Arctic Sea Ice (Wed, 03 Sep 2025)
Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats in the ocean. This photo, taken from NASA’s Gulfstream V Research Aircraft on July 21, 2022, shows Arctic sea ice in the Lincoln Sea north of Greenland.
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Circular Star Trails (Tue, 02 Sep 2025)
This long-exposure photograph, taken over 31 minutes from a window inside the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module, captures the graceful arcs of star trails.
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Landsat 9 Sees Buccaneer Archipelago (Fri, 29 Aug 2025)
In the sparsely populated Kimberley region of Western Australia, jagged landforms reach like fingers into the turquoise-blue ocean waters. Along the coastline north of Derby, they used to reach even farther. But rising sea levels submerged part of the coastal landscape, giving rise to hundreds of islands and low-lying reefs that compose the Buccaneer Archipelago.
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Portrait of an Astronaut (Thu, 28 Aug 2025)
NASA astronaut Zena Cardman poses for a portrait in a photography studio at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
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NASA’s X-59 at Sunrise (Mon, 25 Aug 2025)
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the ramp at sunrise before ground tests at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, on July 18, 2025. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight.
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Epic Research Can Help Mars Missions (Fri, 22 Aug 2025)
The parachute of the Enhancing Parachutes by Instrumenting the Canopy test experiment deploys following an air launch from an Alta X drone on June 4, 2025, at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
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Cities by the Bay (Thu, 21 Aug 2025)
California's San Francisco Bay Area surrounded by the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, and their suburbs, is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the Golden State on Aug. 3, 2025.
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Viking 1 Begins Journey to Mars (Wed, 20 Aug 2025)
Viking 1 was launched by a Titan-Centaur rocket from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:22 p.m. EDT on Aug. 20, 1975, to begin a half-billion mile, 11-month journey through space to explore Mars. The 4-ton spacecraft went into orbit around the red planet in mid-1976 and landed on Mars on July 20, 1976.
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Moonlight and Our Atmosphere (Tue, 19 Aug 2025)
The Moon's light is refracted by Earth's atmosphere, giving it a spheroid shape in this April 13, 2025, photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited into a sunset 264 miles above the border between Bolivia and Brazil in South America.
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Artemis II Crew Practices Night Launch Scenario (Mon, 18 Aug 2025)
NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, walk on the crew access arm of the mobile launcher in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025.
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Spacewalk Pop-Up (Fri, 15 Aug 2025)
Former NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough is photographed during a spacewalk in January 2017.
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Say Cheese! (Thu, 14 Aug 2025)
Eleven International Space Station crew members gather inside the International Space Station's Unity module for a portrait on Aug. 3, 2025.
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Alligator Goes for a Swim (Wed, 13 Aug 2025)
An alligator moves through a brackish waterway at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The center shares space with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. More than 330 native and migratory bird species, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles call NASA Kennedy and the wildlife refuge home.
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Hubble Captures a Tarantula (Tue, 12 Aug 2025)
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a portion of the Tarantula Nebula.
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NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 Splashes Down in Pacific Ocean (Mon, 11 Aug 2025)
Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, left, NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft aboard the SpaceX recovery ship SHANNON shortly after having landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov returned after 147 days in space as part of Expedition 73 aboard the International Space Station.
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Rare Type of Black Hole Snacks on Star (Fri, 08 Aug 2025)
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to identify a new possible example of a rare class of black holes. Called NGC 6099 HLX-1, this bright X-ray source seems to reside in a compact star cluster in a giant elliptical galaxy.
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NASA’s Artemis II Crew Trains in Orion (Thu, 07 Aug 2025)
The Artemis II crew (from left to right) CSA (Canadian Space Agency) Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist; Christina Koch, mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; and Reid Wiseman, commander, don their Orion Crew Survival System Suits for a multi-day crew module training beginning Thursday, July 31, 2025, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Behind the crew, wearing clean room apparel, are members of the Artemis II closeout crew.
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Curiosity Looks Back Toward Its Landing Site (Wed, 06 Aug 2025)
This view of tracks trailing NASA's Curiosity rover was captured July 26, 2025, as the rover simultaneously relayed data to a Mars orbiter.
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Second Lady Usha Vance, NASA Astronaut Suni Williams Celebrate Reading (Tue, 05 Aug 2025)
Second Lady Usha Vance hosted a special Summer Reading Challenge event at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Aug. 4, 2025. She was joined by NASA astronaut Suni Williams to read a space-themed book to children in grades K-8 as part of her initiative to promote literacy.
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Perseids Meteor Shower (Mon, 04 Aug 2025)
In this 30 second exposure photograph, a meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid and Alpha Capricornids meteor showers, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.
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Crew-11 Launches to International Space Station (Fri, 01 Aug 2025)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov aboard, Friday, Aug. 1, 2025, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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Sunrise on Crew-11 Launch Attempt (Thu, 31 Jul 2025)
A NASA photographer captured the sunrise on July 31, 2025, ahead of NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 launch attempt. The Crew-11 mission will send NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9.
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Looking Forward to the Moon (Wed, 30 Jul 2025)
NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems’ Program Manager Shawn Quinn captured this image of the Hadley–Apennine region of the moon including the Apollo 15 landing site (very near the edge of the shadow of one of the lunar mountains in the area).
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NASA Drop Test Supports Safer Air Taxi Designs (Tue, 29 Jul 2025)
An aircraft body modeled after an air taxi with weighted test dummies inside is being prepared for a drop test by researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The test was completed June 26 at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility. The aircraft was dropped from a tall steel structure, known as a gantry, after being hoisted about 35 feet in the air by cables. NASA researchers are investigating aircraft materials that best absorb impact forces in a crash.
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Hubble Spies Swirling Spiral (Mon, 28 Jul 2025)
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 3285B, a member of the Hydra I cluster of galaxies.
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