NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Nichole Ayers is pictured during a spacewalk to upgrade the orbital outpost’s power generation system and relocate a communications antenna.Credit: NASA NASA astronauts will conduct a pair of spacewalks in January outside of the International Space Station to prepare for the installation of a roll-out solar array and [...]
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare Mid-infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (in white, gray, and red) and X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blue) come together in this photo of colliding spiral galaxies released on Dec. 1, 2025. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago; billions [...]
3 Min Read I Am Artemis: Jen Madsen and Trey Perryman Artemis II Orion Mission Evaluation Room Leads Jen Madsen and Trey Perryman stand in the Orion Mission Evaluation Room in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credits: NASA/Rad Sinyak Listen to this audio excerpt from Jen Madsen and [...]
Photo of the Day Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. And almost every spot in this jewel-box of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a star. Now, some stars are more red than our Sun, and some more blue -- but all of them are much farther away. Although [...]
NASA/Zena Cardman In this Oct. 20, 2025, photo, tiny ball bearings surround a larger central bearing during the Fluid Particles experiment, conducted inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) aboard the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module. A bulk container installed in the MSG, filled with viscous fluid and embedded particles, is subjected to oscillating frequencies [...]
Photo of the Day A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, this beautiful but complex arrangement of interstellar gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen toward the celestial equator and near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the seasonal skyscape mixes [...]
Photo of the Day What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe. Although extremely faint, LRDs are now frequently identified in deep observations made for other purposes. A wide-ranging debate is raging [...]
NASA/Adeline Morgan Santa Claus (NASA engineer Guy Naylor) poses with NASA’s Artemis II Orion spacecraft and SLS (Space Launch System) rocket in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 11, 2025. The Orion spacecraft was stacked atop the SLS in October 2025. Set to launch in early 2026, the [...]
Photo of the Day What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES. Although both last only a small fraction of [...]
Explore This Section Earth Earth Observer Editor’s Corner Feature Articles Meeting Summaries News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam Announcements More Archives Conference Schedules Style Guide 5 min read OPERA: Addressing Societal Needs with Satellite Data Introduction The Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project represents a strategic initiative designed [...]
