NASA - Image of the Day

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• NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Captures Eerie Cat's Head

  NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view reveals intricate structures within the Cat's Head Nebula, traced by the emission from warm dust and carbon-based molecules excited by starlight.

• NASA's Hubble Marks Way for Roman Space Telescope

  A sinuous spiral galaxy (center) appears in the same field of view as a vivid gravitational lens (right corner) in this Hubble image.

• Webb Sees Turbulent Star Nursery

  In this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope, we visit a turbulent cauldron of star formation to see what is brewing inside dense clumps of gas.

• NASA's Neo Surveyor Sunshade

  The large sunshade of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission is inspected by a technician at BAE Systems Space & Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in late July.

• NASA's X-59 Aircraft and Test Pilot

  NASA test pilot Mike Lippert poses for a photo ahead of his first time flying the agency's X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft on Oct. 21, 2026.

• RS-25 Engine Tests at NASA Stennis

  Teams at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi tested RS-25 engine No. 10001 on Oct. 21, 2026.

• Spiral's Edge

  This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove.

• Science on the Space Station with NASA Astronaut Jessica Watkins

  NASA astronaut and Expedition 75 flight engineer Jessica Watkins works inside the Kibo laboratory module's Life Science Glovebox, safely mixing living cell samples with a bioink and then filling a special cartridge with the cell‑ink mixture.

• Webb Captures Stellar Jets

  NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed many protostars and stars within the glowing gases of NGC 7129. Hot, atomic hydrogen gas is shown here in the golden region, while cooler, molecular hydrogen gas, shocked by embedded protostars, is represented in red.

• Martian Dawn

  The captivating shapes of wind-carved crags called yardangs are revealed in this zoomed-in crop of a broader panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Scientists are eager to learn more about how the yardang layer formed.

• Artemis II Heat Shield After Splashdown

  Shortly after Artemis II splashdown on April 10, 2026, U.S. Navy divers captured underwater imagery of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield.

• Chandra Finds Possible Origin of 'Treble Clef' Waves

  Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to break down the cause of a remarkable formation of radio waves they have nicknamed the “Treble Clef” because its distinct shape strongly resembles the musical symbol.

• NASA’s SpaceX CRS-35 Launch Jellyfish

  The exhaust plumes of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Dragon spacecraft are seen illuminated by sunlight against the predawn sky during the launch of NASA’s SpaceX CRS-35 mission, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, as seen from Cocoa Beach, Florida. The light makes the plumes look like a jellyfish in the sky.

• Transporter-18 SmallSats Encapsulation

  Three NASA-supported small spacecraft, shown along with many commercial payloads, before being encapsulated in a SpaceX Falcon 9. The rocket launched the payloads into low-Earth orbit at 11:32 a.m. PDT Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, as part of the company’s Transporter-18 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

• Cosmic House of Mirrors

  This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month features galaxies in incredible detail that have been warped and multiplied like they’ve stepped into a house of mirrors.

• Crew-12 Returns to Earth

  The SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft is seen as it lands with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026.

• Artemis II Crew Moon Photo Annotations

  A visualization of a dark Moon eclipsing the Sun is marked with handwritten notes in this April 6, 2026, screenshot from an Artemis II crew member's tablet.

• Astronomers Solve Cosmic Cold Case with NASA Hubble Data

  This artist’s concept depicts a possible explanation for the unusual chemical abundances NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope detected in the HS 0209+0832 system: a second-generation planet orbiting the white dwarf star.

• NASA Astronaut Christina Koch at Eagles vs. Rams

  NASA astronaut and mission specialist of the agency's Artemis II mission, Christina Koch, led the fans in singing the Eagles Fight Song from the field at an NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026, in Philadelphia.

• NASA's DAVINCI Probe Can Stand the Heat

  An engineering model of NASA’s DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) descent probe passed a key test that ran from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10, showing it can survive the extreme temperatures of Venus.

• NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 Launches

  A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov aboard, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

• Star Trails

  This long-duration image shows star trails above Earth and the blue lights of fishing boats and the yellow lights of Indonesian cities stretching below the International Space Station as it orbited 258 miles above the Banda Sea.

• Crew-13 Rocket and Spacecraft at Launch Pad

  Ahead of launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon spacecraft atop, is vertical at the launch pad of Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026.

• Space Station View of Earth at Night

  This nighttime view of the United States, dotted with city lights looking toward New York City (center), was taken at approximately 3:40 a.m. local time from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above Earth.

• Hubble Spots Chaotic Secret in Galaxy

  Though the spiral galaxy in this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret.

• Practicing for Safe Landings on the Moon and Beyond

  An Alta-X drone flies an advanced guidance and navigation system known as the Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) experiment near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026.

• NASA's Hubble Telescope Reaches Milestone, Looks for Elusive Supernova

  An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of galaxy cluster MACS J0417 is part of repeated observations to monitor for the reappearance of supernova Athena, which can help astronomers measure the expansion rate of the universe.

• NASA's Chandra Finds Unusual Objects in Pinwheel Galaxy

  Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have seen before.

• NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman Attends Ravens vs. Saints Game

  NASA astronaut and commander of the agency’s Artemis II mission, Reid Wiseman, a Baltimore native, takes a selfie with fans at an NFL game between the New Orleans Saints and the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026, in Baltimore.

• COSI Telescope Comes Together

  UC Berkeley engineers and managers watch as the COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) detector assembly is slowly raised from a table in this July 8, 2026, image.