This labyrinth – with a silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes at its center – is used as a calibration target for the cameras and laser that are part of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), one of the instruments aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. The image was captured by the Autofocus and Context Imager on SHERLOC on May 11, 2024, the 1,147th day, or sol, of the mission, as the rover team sought to confirm it had successfully addressed an issue with a stuck lens cover.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas of space that are rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into protostars, surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust. In the case of RCW 7, the protostars forming here are particularly massive, giving off strongly ionising radiation and fierce stellar winds that have transformed it into what is known as a H II region. The ultraviolet radiation from the massive protostars excites the hydrogen, causing it to emit light and giving this nebula its soft pinkish glow. Here Hubble is studying a particular massive protostellar binary named IRAS 07299-1651, still in its glowing cocoon of gas in the curling clouds towards the top of the nebula. To expose this star and its siblings, this image was captured using the Wide Field Camera 3 in near-infrared light. The massive protostars here are brightest in ultraviolet light, but they emit plenty of infrared light which can pass through much of the gas and dust around them and be seen by Hubble.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Tan (Chal

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. The GOES-U satellite is the final satellite in the GOES-R series, which serves a critical role in providing continuous coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including monitoring tropical systems in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Image Credit: SpaceX

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"You know, there's the whole impostor syndrome thing, and I didn’t feel like I was qualified to be here because I didn't have some sort of traditional path or because my educational background looks different than that of most of my colleagues. But I'm now at a place where I've come to understand that's true for everyone." – Garrett Sadler, Human Factors Researcher, NASA’s Ames Research Center

Image Credit: NASA/Brandon Torres

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Crews transport NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-U) from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida beginning on Friday, June 14, 2024, with the operation finishing early Saturday, June 15, 2024. The fourth and final weather-observing and environmental monitoring satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series will assist meteorologists in providing advanced weather forecasting and warning capabilities. The two-hour window for liftoff opens 5:16 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

“HuskyWorks,” a team from Michigan Technological University’s Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab, tests the excavation tools of a robot on a concrete slab, held by a gravity-offloading crane on June 12 at NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge at Alabama A&M’s Agribition Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Led by Professor Paul van Susante, the team aimed to mimic the conditions of the lunar South Pole, winning an invitation to use the thermal vacuum chambers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to continue robotic testing.

Image Credit: NASA/Jonathan Deal

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To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

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This image of Galveston was taken on Nov. 23, 2022, from the International Space Station as it orbited 224 miles above Earth. While President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, word that enslaved people were free did not reach Galveston until well into 1865. When Union troops arrived that year to share the news, spontaneous celebrations broke out in African American churches, homes, and other gathering places. As years passed, the picnics, barbecues, parades, and other celebrations that sprang up to commemorate June 19th became more formalized as freed men and women purchased land, or “emancipation grounds,” to hold annual Juneteenth celebrations.

Image Credit: NASA

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“I feel that my larger purpose at NASA, which I've felt since I came on as an intern, is to leave NASA a better place than I found it." — Mallory Carbon, Management and Program Analyst, NASA Headquarters

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and of itself, but it is a peculiarity when compared to its surroundings. NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy some 162,000 light-years from Earth.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Niederhofe

Floating fragments of sea ice spun into intricate patterns as ocean currents carried them south along Greenland’s east coast in spring 2024. The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a moment of this dizzying journey on June 4, 2024.

Image Credit: NASA/Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview

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The waning gibbous Moon is pictured above Earth from the International Space Station as it soared into an orbital nighttime 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean near the northeast coast of South America on Sept. 30, 2023.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA/Andreas Mogensen

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The Intersex Progress Pride flag flies beneath the American flag on the center pole with the California state and NASA flag at either side. The Intersex Progress Pride flag flies for the first time at any NASA center in front of the Ames Administration Building, N200, to commemorate Pride Month.

Image Credit: NASA/Don Richey

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The rising Earth is about five degrees above the lunar horizon in this telephoto view taken from the Apollo 8 spacecraft near 110 degrees east longitude. Astronaut Bill Anders took the photo on the morning of Dec. 24, 1968. The South Pole is in the white area near the left end of the terminator. North and South America are under the clouds.

Image Credit: NASA

A Florida redbelly turtle casts a suspicious look as he is being photographed on the grounds of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The redbelly turtle inhabits ponds, lakes, sloughs, marshes and mangrove-bordered creeks, in a range that encompasses Florida from the southern tip north to the Apalachicola area of the panhandle. Active year-round, it is often seen basking on logs or floating mats of vegetation. Adults prefer a diet of aquatic plants. The Center shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses 92,000 acres that are a habitat for more than 331 species of birds, 31 mammals, 117 fishes, and 65 amphibians and reptiles. The marshes and open water of the refuge provide wintering areas for 23 species of migratory waterfowl, as well as a year-round home for great blue herons, great egrets, wood storks, cormorants, brown pelicans and other species of marsh and shore birds, as well as a variety of insects.

Image Credit: NASA

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The Artemis II crew, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, pose for a photo after a Moon tree dedication ceremony, Tuesday, June 4, 2024, at the United States Capitol in Washington. The American Sweetgum tree planted on the southwestern side of the Capitol, was grown from a seed that was flown around the Moon during the Artemis I mission.

Image Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft aboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in Florida. NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test is the first launch with astronauts of the Boeing CFT-100 spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The flight test, which launched at 10:52 a.m. EDT, serves as an end-to-end demonstration of Boeing’s crew transportation system and will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the orbiting laboratory.

Image Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

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Technicians inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida prepare to rotate the agency’s largest planetary mission spacecraft, Europa Clipper, to a vertical position on Tuesday, May 28, 2024, as part of prelaunch processing. Slated to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket later this year from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy, Europa Clipper will help determine if conditions exist below the surface Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa, that could support life.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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An external high-definition camera on the International Space Station captured this image of Hurricane Idalia at 11:35 a.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 29, 2023. Idalia was a category 1 storm over the Gulf of Mexico with sustained winds of 140 kilometers (85 miles) per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center. June 1 marks the beginning of the 2024 hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.

Image Credit: NASA

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Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449. This galaxy, also known as Caldwell 21, resides roughly 12.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. NGC 4449 has been forming stars for several billion years, but it is currently experiencing a period of star formation at a much higher rate than in the past. Such unusually explosive and intense star formation activity is called a starburst and for that reason NGC 4449 is known as a starburst galaxy. Starbursts usually occur in the central regions of galaxies, but NGC 4449 displays more widespread star formation activity, and the very youngest stars are observed both in the nucleus and in streams surrounding the galaxy. It's likely that the current widespread starburst was triggered by interaction or merging with a smaller companion; indeed, astronomers think NGC 4449's star formation has been influenced by interactions with several of its neighbors.

Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team

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"I say that to my team, whenever I have an opportunity. I share with my team that they are enabling science and exploration for dozens of missions being supported by NSN. Initially it just seems like words, but once they start realizing [their contributions] are real, I can tell you those people don't want to go anywhere. They just feel that sense of accomplishment." —Vir Thanvi, Deputy Program Manager, Exploration and Space Communications Projects Division, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Image Credit: NASA/Thalia Patrinos

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Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, lunar module pilot, egresses the Apollo 10 spacecraft during recovery operations in the South Pacific. U.S. Navy underwater demolition team swimmers assisted in the recovery operations. Already in the life raft were astronauts Thomas P. Stafford (left), commander; and John W. Young, command module pilot. The three crewmen were picked up by helicopter and flown to the prime recovery ship, USS Princeton.

Image Credit: NASA

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Helen Ling was a supervisor for the computing group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. She was influential in the inclusion of women in STEM positions at JPL. Ling encouraged women within the computing group to attend night school in order to obtain degrees that would allow them more professional opportunities within JPL. A pioneer for women's rights in the workplace, Helen Ling was so admired in the computing group that those who worked under her lovingly referred to themselves as "Helen's girls." Many of them went on to become computer scientists and engineers within JPL thanks to the mentorship and guidance of Helen Ling.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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NASA astronaut Kate Rubins places a sample marker in the soil before collecting a sample during a nighttime simulated moonwalk in the San Francisco Volcanic Field in Northern Arizona on May 16, 2024. A sample marker provides a photographic reference point for science samples collected on the lunar surface.

Image Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

Present-day Island of Hawai'i coastal flood risk, with higher risk indicated in dark blue, was modeled to help the County of Hawai'i in their shoreline setback plan. Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly data from 2022 Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) indicate low temperatures in the East (red) to high in the West (orange). Inland, high probability locations of wetlands are shown in bright yellow and could aid in climate adaptation planning.

Image Credit: NASA/Lisa Tanh, Matilda Anokye, Ian Lee, Connor Racette

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Nighttime, ground-level view of the Apollo 10 space vehicle on Pad B, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center. This photograph of the 363-feet tall Apollo/Saturn V stack was taken during pull back of the mobile service structure. The Apollo 10 crew was astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, and Eugene A. Cernan.

Image Credit: NASA

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a triple-star star system.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Duchene (Universite de Grenoble I); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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"For the girls or women in science — or in any profession or job — opportunities are more abundant than they were previously. Sometimes you need to take bold steps. Just a little push, and then you will get there." — Dr. Yihua (Eva) Zheng, Space Physics and Space Weather Scientist, Heliophysics Science Division, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Image Credit: NASA/Thalia Patrinos

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An American Flamingo takes a sip of water in the Indian River at Haulover Canal on Merritt Island on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. The American Flamingos are more common in Mexico and Cuba but the winds from Hurricane Idalia relocated them to Florida in September 2023. Kennedy Space Center in Florida shares a border with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where more than 310 species of birds inhabit the refuge.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

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This image of the Andromeda galaxy uses data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope. Multiple wavelengths are shown, revealing stars (in blue and cyan), dust (red), and areas of star formation.

Image Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech

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An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this oblique photograph of the Sulaiman Mountains in central Pakistan. The range resulted from the slow-motion collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates that began about 60 million years ago. Peaks rise to more than 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level in the northern portion of the mountain range, shown in this photograph.

Image Credit: NASA

This image of Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1, 2018, as Juno performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was 15,379 miles (24,749 kilometers) to 30,633 miles (49,299 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran

During a mission dress rehearsal, NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronaut Suni Williams flashes a thumbs up in her Boeing spacesuit inside the crew suit-up room inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, April 26, 2024. As part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore are the first to launch to the International Space Station aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 10:34 p.m. ET Monday, May 6.

Image Credit: NASA/Frank Micheaux

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The Moon, left, Jupiter, right, and Saturn, above and to the left of Jupiter, are seen after sunset with the Washington Monument, Thurs. Dec. 17, 2020, in Washington. The two planets drew closer to each other in the sky as they headed towards a “great conjunction” on Dec. 21, where the two giant planets appeared a tenth of a degree apart.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer was launched on April 28, 2003. Its mission was to study the shape, brightness, size and distance of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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In a historic first, all six radio frequency antennas at the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex – part of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) – carried out a test to receive data from the agency's Voyager 1 spacecraft at the same time on April 20, 2024. Known as "arraying," combining the receiving power of several antennas allows the DSN to collect the very faint signals from faraway spacecraft. A five-antenna array is currently needed to downlink science data from the spacecraft's Plasma Wave System instrument. As Voyager gets further way, six antennas will be needed.

Image Credit: MDSCC/INTA, Francisco "Paco" Moreno

"What you eventually realize is that your success as a leader is not really yours, it’s the team’s. You’re not successful without the team, so it’s your ability to support, motivate, and guide the team that allows us to accomplish amazing things." — Dana Weigel, International Space Station Program Manager, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

Image Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

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Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1,300 light-years away. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, K. Misselt (University of Arizona) and A. Abergel (IAS/University Paris-Saclay, CNRS)

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The magnificent central bar of NGC 2217 (also known as AM 0619-271) shines bright in the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog), in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Roughly 65 million light-years from Earth, this barred spiral galaxy is a similar size to our Milky Way at 100,000 light-years across.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. DalcantonA

Artists used paintbrushes and airbrushes to recreate the lunar surface on each of the four models comprising the LOLA simulator. Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface.

Image Credit: NASA

Rivers swelled in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan in April 2024 following heavy rain and rapid snowmelt. This image shows Orenburg on April 13, the day river levels peaked. This scene was acquired by the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9.

Image Credit: NASA/Michala Garrison, USGS

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In celebration of the 34th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s legendary Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took a snapshot of the Little Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 76, or M76, located 3,400 light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation Perseus. The name 'Little Dumbbell' comes from its shape that is a two-lobed structure of colorful, mottled, glowing gases resembling a balloon that’s been pinched around a middle waist. Like an inflating balloon, the lobes are expanding into space from a dying star seen as a white dot in the center. Blistering ultraviolet radiation from the super-hot star is causing the gases to glow. The red color is from nitrogen, and blue is from oxygen.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

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Behold one of the more detailed images of Earth. This Blue Marble Earth montage—created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite—shows many stunning details of our home planet.

Image Credit: NASA

This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) of star-forming region NGC 604 shows how stellar winds from bright, hot young stars carve out cavities in surrounding gas and dust.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

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The ocean holds about 97 percent of Earth's water and covers 70 percent of our planet's surface. According to the United Nations, the ocean may be home to 50 to 80 percent of all life on Earth. Even if you live hundreds of miles from a coast, what happens in the ocean is fundamental to your life.

Image Credit: NASA/Jenny Mottar

NASA Engineer Cindy Fuentes Rosal waves goodbye to a Black Brant IX sounding rocket launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The rocket was part of a series of three launches for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study the disturbances in the electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere known as the ionosphere created when the Moon eclipses the Sun. The rockets launched before, during, and after peak local eclipse time on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Image Credit: NASA/Chris Pirner

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This spectacular image showing the Moon’s shadow on Earth’s surface was acquired during a 20-second period starting at 2:59 p.m. EDT (18:59:19 UTC) on April 8, 2024, by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

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The new era in space flight began on April 12, 1981. That is when the first Space Shuttle mission (STS-1) was launched. The Marshall Space Flight Center developed the propulsion system for the Space Shuttle. This photograph depicts the launch of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia crewed with two astronauts, John Young and Robert Crippen.

Image Credit: NASA

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A total solar eclipse is seen in Dallas, Texas on Monday, April 8, 2024. A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the North American continent from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of Central America and Europe.

Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, left, Frank Rubio, Warren Hoburg, and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, right, pose for a photo wearing solar glasses, Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. Bowen, Hoburg, and Alneyadi spent 186 days aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 69; while Rubio set a new record for the longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut, spending 371 days in orbit on an extended mission spanning Expeditions 68 and 69.

“… I've just seen such tremendous things happen since I've been part of the Astrobiology Program, and that's why I'm pretty confident we're going to find life elsewhere, because there are just so many brilliant people working on this.” — Melissa Kirven-Brooks, Exobiology Deputy Branch Chief and Future Workforce Lead of the NASA Astrobiology Program, NASA’s Ames Research Center

Image Credit: NASA/Brandon Torres

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What looks like highways going through a metropolitan area are actually a series of glaciers carving their way through the Karakoram mountain range north of the Himalayas. This photograph was taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above.

Image Credit: NASA/Woody Hoburg

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The primary structure of the Gateway space station's HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) module is one step closer to launch following welding completion in Turin, Italy. HALO is one of four Gateway modules where astronauts will live, conduct science, and prepare for lunar surface missions. NASA is partnering with Northrop Grumman and their subcontractor Thales Alenia Space to develop HALO.

Image Credit: Northrop Grumman/Thales Alenia Space

Safety is important, no matter where you're viewing the eclipse. NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station show off their eclipse glasses, which allow safe viewing of the Sun during a solar eclipse.

Image Credit: NASA/Loral O’Hara

“One of my cornerstone pinnacles [is], ‘Show up to work [and] life with integrity and intent.’ So, accomplish your goals with integrity, intent, and a mission. Stick to that and have the confidence to do that, and be OK with messing up and failing, and have fun with those things." — Meghan Everett, International Space Station Program Deputy Chief Scientist, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

Image Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

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