Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3
5.10.2003

Apollo 12 was the second mission to land humans on the Moon. The landing site was picked to be near the location of Surveyor 3, a robot spacecraft that had landed on the Moon three years earlier.

Cassini Approaches Saturn
10.12.2003

Cassini, a robot spacecraft launched in 1997 by NASA, is close enough now to resolve many rings and moons of its destination planet: Saturn. The spacecraft has now closed to within a single Earth-Sun separation from the ringed giant. Early last month, Cassini snapped the contrast-enhanced color composite pictured above.

The Powerful Sumatra Andaman Islands Earthquake
2.03.2005

December's 9.0 earthquake has likely shortened Earth's day by about three microseconds and may also have tweaked Earth's rotational wobble. The megathrust earthquake occurred as the Indian tectonic plate slid further beneath the Burma tectonic plate.

A Path Into Victoria Crater on Mars
4.09.2007

What's inside Victoria Crater? Now that the dust has settled from the regional Martian dust storms that immobilized the rolling Martian rovers, the task ahead has become clear. Opportunity arrived at Victoria Crater last month and was poised to enter when the dust storms flared up unexpectedly.

Movie: Approaching Light Speed
18.10.2011

What would it look like to travel near the speed of light? Strange visual effects would appear as documented in the above relativistically-accurate animation. First of all, relativistic aberration would cause objects to appear to bunch up in front you.

Saturn's Moon Dione
9.10.1995

Dione, one of Saturn's larger moons, is remarkable for its bright surface streaks. These streaks run across some of Dione's many craters, which indicate that the process which created the streaks occurred later than the process which created the craters.

An Atlas Centaur Rocket Launches
14.12.1995

Atlas Centaur rockets have launched over 75 successful unmanned missions. These missions included the Surveyor series - the first vehicles to make soft landings on the Moon, Pioneer 10 and 11 - the first missions...

Seven Jets from Comet Hale-Bopp
13.11.1996

Comet Hale-Bopp is turning out to be quite unusual. One reason is the great amount of jet activity at such a large distance from the Sun. In the above false-color image, no less than seven jets can be seen emanating from Hale-Bopp's coma.

All of Mars
10.02.1998

Mars Global Surveyor is photographing Mars. The robot spacecraft arrived last September and continues to use solar panel aerobraking to help maneuver it to a better orbit to survey all of Mars The above image is a reconstruction of several photographs digitally combined to simulate a single vantage point 2700 kilometers above the Martian surface.

Good Morning Mars
19.06.1998

Looking down on the Northern Hemisphere of Mars on June 1, the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft's wide angle camera recorded this morning image of the red planet. Mars Global Surveyor's orbit...