NASA Image of the day

• Testing Drones for Mars in the Mojave Desert

  Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California monitor a research drone in the Dumont Dunes area of the Mojave Desert in September 2025 as part of a test campaign to develop navigation software to guide future rotorcraft on Mars.

• NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Completed

  Over the course of several hours, technicians meticulously connected the inner and outer segments of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

• Hubble Seeks Clusters in ‘Lost Galaxy’

  This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 4535.

• Waxing Gibbous Moon

  The waxing gibbous Moon rises above Earth’s blue atmosphere in this photograph taken from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above a cloudy Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Quebec, Canada.

• Sagittarius B2 Molecular Cloud

  NASA's James Webb Space Telescope took a look at the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, the most massive, and active star-forming region in our galaxy, located only a few hundred light years from our central supermassive black hole.

• Newly Found Organics in Enceladus’ Plumes

  NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed 'tiger stripes' near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

• Artemis II Orion Spacecraft Stacked

  NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft with its launch abort system is stacked atop the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025. The spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day mission around the Moon and back in early 2026.

• Red Spider Nebula

  Using its Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed never-before-seen details in the picturesque Red Spider Nebula with a rich backdrop of thousands of stars.

• City Lights and Atmospheric Glow

  The atmospheric glow blankets southern Europe and the northwestern Mediterranean coast, outlined by city lights. At left, the Po Valley urban corridor in Italy shines with the metropolitan areas of Milan and Turin and their surrounding suburbs.

• Hubble Captures Puzzling Galaxy

  This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy, NGC 2775, that’s hard to categorize.

• NASA’s Quesst Mission Marks X-59’s Historic First Flight

  NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft lifts off for its first flight Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, from U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The aircraft’s first flight marks the start of flight testing for NASA’s Quesst mission, the result of years of design, integration, and ground testing and begins a new chapter in NASA’s aeronautics research legacy.

• NASA Telescopes View Spiral Galaxy

  NGC 1068, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, appears in this image released on July 23, 2025.

• Suited Up for Science: NASA ER-2 Pilot Prepares for GEMx Flight

  NASA ER-2 pilot Kirt Stallings waits inside the transport vehicle at Edwards, California, on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, moments before boarding NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center’s ER-2 aircraft for a high-altitude mission supporting the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx). Through the vehicle window, the aircraft can be seen being readied for flight.

• Mapping Dark Matter

  This image shows two massive galaxy clusters. The vast number of galaxies and foreground stars in the image were captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light. Glowing, hot X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory appear in pink. The blue represents the dark matter, which was precisely mapped by researchers with Webb’s detailed imaging.

• A Robotic Helping Hand

  The 57.7-foot-long Canadarm2 robotic arm extends from a data grapple fixture on the International Space Station’s Harmony module in this July 23, 2025, image.

• Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon Io

  During its close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io on December 30, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured some of the most detailed imagery ever of Io’s volcanic surface. This image is the NASA Science Image of the Month for October 2025.

• Hubble Surveys Cloudy Cluster

  This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the nebula LMC N44C.

• Golden Lake

  This stunning Earth image taken from the International Space Station looks at a large lake in eastern Kazakhstan with golden sunglint: Lake Balkhash. It is one of the largest lakes in Asia and is the 15th largest lake in the world.

• 3-in-1 Launch

  A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), the agency’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On–Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind — the continuous stream of particles emitted by the Sun — and space weather — the changing conditions in space driven by the Sun — from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our solar system.

• Airplane Aerobatics

  NASA astronaut Nick Hague watches as Robert Schmidle Pitts Aerobatics perform, Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, during the Joint Base Andrews Air Show at Joint Base Andrews in Prince George's County, Maryland. Hague spent 171 days aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 72.

• NASA’s New Astronaut Candidates

  NASA’s 10 new astronaut candidates were introduced Monday, Sept. 22, 2025, following a competitive selection process of more than 8,000 applicants from across the United States.

• IC Stars

  IC 348 is a star-forming region in our Milky Way galaxy.

• A Beacon to Space

  In this infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.

• Milky Way Views

  The Milky Way appears above Earth's bright atmospheric glow in this photograph from the International Space Station as it soared 261 miles above southern Iran at approximately 12:54 a.m. local time on Aug. 23, 2025.

• Space Station Science

  NASA astronaut Zena Cardman processes bone cell samples inside the Kibo laboratory module's Life Science Glovebox on Aug. 28, 2025.

• An Eye-catching Star Cluster

  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.

• Helicopter Training for Artemis Missions

  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.

• A Brief Outburst

  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.

• Shining Pismis 24

  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.

• Dinner is Served!

  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.