Space Exploration Moments

Dramatic visuals of space phenomena, including re-nentries and launches, showcasing elements like the atmosphere, the moon, and celestial objects against a dark backdrop.

Sunrise over Mars, illustration

European Space Agency's 'Jules Verne' Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV-1 re-entry in Earth's atmosphere over Pacific Ocean. The breakup ad fragmentation of the ESA's ATV-1 was captured in dramatic fashion by scientists aboard NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory and a Gulfstream V aircraft as it re-entered the atmosphere early Monday morning over the South Pacific.

S135-E-006690 (10 July 2011) --- The "small" object in center frame is the International Space Station, which would appear as the only recognizable object in this dark image if it were not for the moon in the upper right quadrant. The photo was taken by one of the four crewmembers aboard the space shuttle Atlantis as it and the station gradually approached each other for a docking on July 10, 2011.

An aurora, shining high above the northern part of Saturn, moves from the night side to the day side of the planet in this movie recorded by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Sunrise over Mars, illustration

Witch Head Nebula, IC2118, reflection nebula near the star Rigel in the constellation Orion

Alleged UFO photographed from Apollo II during lunar orbit Date: 1969

The new comet, photographed by the Government Astronomer, Mr. Harley Wood, at approximately 3.20 am. November 15, 1948.

European Space Agency's 'Jules Verne' Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV-1 re-entry in Earth's atmosphere over Pacific Ocean. The breakup ad fragmentation of the ESA's ATV-1 was captured in dramatic fashion by scientists aboard NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory and a Gulfstream V aircraft as it re-entered the atmosphere early Monday morning over the South Pacific.

isoliert von fliegenden Feuer Funken Teilchen auf schwarzem Hintergrund isolated of flying fire spark particles on black background Copyright: xZoonar.com/mtxKANGx 22597352

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASAs SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, Jessica Watkins, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti onboard, Wednesday, April 27, 2022, at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASAs SpaceX Crew-4 mission is the fourth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agencys Commercial Crew Program. Lindgren, Hines, Watkins, and Cristoforetti launched at 3:52 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center to begin a six month mission onboard the orbital outpost.

ISS040-E-098571 (17 Aug. 2014) --- One of the Expedition 40 crew members aboard the International Space Station recorded this image of the Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus cargo carrier spacecraft breaking up in Earth's atmosphere after being released from the orbital outpost. The breakup started around 13:22 GMT on Aug. 17, 2014 and this photo was taken at 13:23:32 GMT.

Neutrino detector interior, illustration

S74-17688 (11 Jan. 1974) --- This color photograph of the comet Kohoutek was taken by members of the lunar and planetary laboratory photographic team from the University of Arizona, at the Catalina Observatory with a 35mm camera on Jan. 11, 1974.

The Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft is launched with Expedition 61 crewmembers Jessica Meir of NASA and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos, and spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori of the United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASAs SpaceX Crew-6 Splashdown. The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft is seen as it lands with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg, UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, Monday, Sept. 4, 2023. Bowen, Hoburg, Alneyadi, and Fedyaev are returning after nearly six-months in space as part of Expedition 69 aboard the International Space Station.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - With its engines burning bright against the late night sky, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes, or RBSP, travels upward after lifting off Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:05 a.m. EDT.RBSP will explore changes in Earth's space environment caused by the sun -- known as "space weather" -- that can disable satellites, create power-grid failures and disrupt GPS service. The mission also will provide data on the fundamental radiation and particle acceleration processes throughout the universe.

Project 23 - Redwing (Enewetak/Bikini) Detonation. Lacrosse Fireball, Aerial, Wilson Cloud. Photographs of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing at Pacific Island and Nevada Test Sites.

This frame from a movie was captured by a star tracker camera on NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft. It was taken over several days as Juno approached Earth for a close flyby that would send the spacecraft onward to the giant planet.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket powers the Dragon spacecraft toward the International Space Station on Friday, June 29, 2018. The two-stage launch vehicle lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:42 a.m. EDT. On the companys 15th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station, Dragon is filled with supplies and payloads, including critical materials to support several science and research investigations that will occur during Expedition 56. The spacecrafts unpressurized trunk is carrying a Canadian-built Latching End Effector, or LEE. This new LEE will replace a failed unit astronauts removed during a series of spacewalks in the fall of 2017. Each end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm has an identical LEE, and they are used as the “hands” that grapple payloads and visiting cargo spaceships.

This image illustrates how a light echo works, and how an optical illusion of material moving outward is created.

This close-up view of comet Hartley 2 was taken at 7:00 a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EDT), after NASA's EPOXI mission flew by.

NASAs SpaceX Crew-6 Splashdown. Support teams work around the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after it landed with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg, UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, Monday, Sept. 4,2023. Bowen, Hoburg, Alneyadi, and Fedyaev are returning after nearly six-months in space as part of Expedition 69 aboard the International Space Station.

Small water ice particles fly from fissures in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus in this image taken during the Aug. 13, 2010, flyby of the moon by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

A four hour exposure of the stars.

This image from NASA's MESSENGER is one of many from the latest vulcanoid search are currently being transmitted to Earth. Vulcanoids are small rocky bodies that have been postulated to exist but not yet been detected.

Halley's Comet, 1910

The Soyuz TMA-21 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 carrying Expedition 27 Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev, NASA Flight Engineer Ron Garan and Russian Flight Engineer Andrey Borisenko to the International Space Station. The Soyuz, which has been dubbed "Gagarin", is launching one week shy of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Yuri Gagarin from the same launch pad in Baikonur on April 12, 1961 to become the first human to fly in space.

The strands of Saturn's F ring disappear into the darkness of the planet's shadow. Background stars make trails across the sky during the long exposure

Vintage Photograph. Shooting comet.

Earth and Moon from 114 Million Miles

ISS039-E-000021 (11 March 2014) --- With darkness in the Zvezda Service Module, the view outside two windows in the module photographed in the early hours of Expedition 39, an Earth horizon (left) and portions of the Pirs Docking Compartment are visible. In the right window, part of a Strela crane and part of an antenna, both attached to the Pirs, can be seen.

NASA's Deep Impact's flyby spacecraft took this image after it turned around to capture last shots of a receding comet Tempel 1. Earlier, the mission's probe had smashed into the surface of Tempel 1.

Glass diapositive by Arthur von Hübl showing an accommodation recorded using a long-distance and scissor removal camera in 1916, depicting architecture and landscape.

Project 30-65 - Operation Plumbob (Nevada Test Site) Detonation. SMOKY fireball, ground view. Photographs of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing at Pacific Island and Nevada Test Sites.

Mimas Above the Haze

New Moon. By the modern definition, New Moon occurs when the Moon and Sun are at the same geocentric ecliptic longitude. The part of the Moon facing us is completely in shadow then. Pictured here is the traditional New Moon, the earliest visible waxing crescent, which signals the start of a new month in many lunar and lunisolar calendars. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been in orbit around the Moon since the summer of 2009. Its laser altimeter (LOLA) and camera (LROC) are recording the rugged, airless lunar terrain in exceptional detail, making it possible to visualize the Moon with unprecedented fidelity. This is especially evident in the long shadows cast near the terminator, or day-night line. The pummeled, craggy landscape thrown into high relief at the terminator would be impossible to recreate in the computer without global terrain maps like those from LRO. To download, learn more about this visualization, or to see what the Moon will look like at any hour in 2015,

USA, Arizona, Buckeye. Comet Neowise spews trail over White Tank Mountains and desert.

This image shows comet Tempel 1 as seen through the clear filter of the medium resolution imager camera on NASA's Deep Impact. It was taken on June 26, 2005.

Macro image Covid vaccine, a drop of Moderna vaccine hangs on a vaccine needle

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON was photographed on April 10, 2013, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 394 million miles from Earth. Even at that great distance the comet is already active as sunlight warms the surface and causes frozen volatiles to boil off. Astronomers used such early images to try to measure the size of the nucleus, in order to predict whether the comet would stay intact when it slingshots around the sun -- at 700,000 miles above the sun's surface -- on Nov. 28, 2013. The comet's dusty coma, or head of the comet, is approximately 3,100 miles across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 57,000 miles, far beyond Hubble's field of view. This image was taken in visible light. The blue false color was added to bring out details in the comet structure.

In 1986, the European spacecraft Giotto became one of the first spacecraft ever to encounter and photograph the nucleus of a comet, passing and imaging Halley's nucleus as it receded from the sun.

The Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it launches from Pad-0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Sunday, April 21, 2013. The test launch marked the first flight of Antares and the first rocket launch from Pad-0A. The Antares rocket delivered the equivalent mass of a spacecraft, a so-called mass simulated payload, into Earth's orbit.

Rings of Jupiter

Pacific Ocean, Eniwetok Atoll, Fire ball of nuclear detonation rises through clouds during tests in 1951

S65-63797 (12 Dec. 1965) --- Polaris, underwater launch, missile and trail, off Florida, as seen from the Gemini-7 spacecraft during its 31st revolution of Earth.

Fish and Wildlife Service staff and volunteers help guide disoriented baby loggerhead turtles towards the ocean with the help of a red light which does not interfere with their sense of direction. Subjects: Reptiles; Threatened species; Wildlife refuges; Coastal environments. Location: South Carolina. Fish and Wildlife Service Site: CAPE ROMAIN NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE.

This image shows the initial ejecta that resulted when NASA's Deep Impact probe collided with comet Tempel 1 at 10:52 p.m. Pacific time, July 3 (1:52 a.m. Eastern time, July 4), 2005.

bright jellyfish floating in the dark sea water

Siphonophore, Forskalia sp., black background.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying 24 satellites as part of the Department of Defense's Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission launches from Launch Complex 39A, Tuesday, June 25, 2019 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Four NASA technology and science payloads which will study non-toxic spacecraft fuel, deep space navigation, "bubbles" in the electrically-charged layers of Earth's upper atmosphere, and radiation protection for satellites are among the two dozen satellites that will be put into orbit.

Ball of thread on the scaffolding thread of a european garden spider (Araneus diadematus), Valais, Switzerland, Europe

European Space Agency's 'Jules Verne' Automated Transfer Vehicle ATV-1 re-entry in Earth's atmosphere over Pacific Ocean. The breakup ad fragmentation of the ESA's ATV-1 was captured in dramatic fashion by scientists aboard NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory and a Gulfstream V aircraft as it re-entered the atmosphere early Monday morning over the South Pacific.

STS105-710-081 (10-22 August 2001) --- One of the astronauts on the aft flight deck of the Space Shuttle Discovery used a 70mm handheld camera to record this image of a thruster firing. The blackness of space surrounds this view of the orbital maneuvering system (OMS) pods during the OMS burn giving the tail of the shuttle a red glow.

Long exposure photograph of circumpolar stars with a meteor trail. Dated 19th Century

Project 30-18 - Operation Upshot/Knothole (Nevada Test Site) Detonation. ANNIE fireball, aerial view (1 of 2). Photographs of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing at Pacific Island and Nevada Test Sites.

The Soyuz TMA-8 rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 at 9:30 p.m. EST, (Thursday, March 30, 2006, 8:30 a.m. Kazakhstan time). Aboard the spacecraft are Expedition 13 Commander Pavel V. Vinogradov, Science Officer and Flight Engineer Jeffrey N. Williams, and Brazilian Space Agency Soyuz crew member Marcos Pontes.

The blue features in this VIS image are sand dunes located near Escorial Crater and the north polar cap. The dune field is called Siton Undae. The THEMIS VIS camera contains 5 filters. The data from different filters can be combined in multiple ways to create a false color image. These false color images may reveal subtle variations of the surface not easily identified in a single band image. Orbit Number 60479 Latitude 74.773 Longitude 289.159 Instrument VIS Captured 2015-08-02 14 37

A diseased extracted cornea is held after it has been removed from a patient.

A wide-field framing of the heart of the galaxy-rich region of Coma Berenices and Virgo.

Engraving depicting a meteor observed on 12 November 1861. Dated 19th century

(24 March 1992) --- This 70mm photograph of the external fuel tank (ET) for STS-45 was photographed 4 1/2 minutes after having been jettisoned from Space Shuttle Atlantis. .

Project 30-18 - Operation Upshot/Knothole (Nevada Test Site) Detonation. HARRY detonation, fireball and cloud: series of 12 aerial photos (2 of 12). Photographs of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing at Pacific Island and Nevada Test Sites.

Photograph of a spiral galaxy in coma bernices seen edge-on, showing central plane of obscuring matter. Photographed by James Edward Keeler with the Crossley 36-inch reflector at Lick Observatory. James Edward Keeler (1857-1900) an American astronomer. Dated 20th century

Project 30-18 - Operation Upshot/Knothole (Nevada Test Site) Detonation. HARRY detonation, fireball and cloud: series of 12 aerial photos (12 of 12). Photographs of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing at Pacific Island and Nevada Test Sites.

Photograph of a spiral galaxy in coma bernices seen edge-on, showing central plane of obscuring matter. Photographed by James Edward Keeler with the Crossley 36-inch reflector at Lick Observatory. James Edward Keeler (1857-1900) an American astronomer. Dated 20th century

ISS013-E-69634 (20 Aug. 2006) --- The Aurora Borealis, also known as "northern lights", is featured in this photograph taken by an Expedition 13 crewmember on the International Space Station.

STS033-S-001 (22 Nov 1989) --- Lighting up the entire launch complex, the Space Shuttle Discovery heads toward an earth-orbital mission, devoted to the Department of Defense. Launch occurred at 7:23:29.989 p.m. (EST), November 22, 1989. The photograph was taken by Astronaut Michael L. Coats in the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA).

STS077-150-022 (20 May 1996) --- After leaving the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the Spartan 207/Inflatable Antenna Experiment (IAE) payload goes through the final stages its inflation process, backdropped over clouds and blue water. The view was photographed with a large format still camera on the first full day of in-space operations by the six-member crew. Managed by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Spartan is designed to provide short-duration, free-flight opportunities for a variety of scientific studies. The Spartan configuration on this flight is unique in that the IAE is part of an additional separate unit which is ejected once the experiment is completed. The IAE experiment will lay the groundwork for future technology development in inflatable space structures, which will be launched and then inflated like a balloon on-orbit.

Puppis constellation, Cluster of stars, Poop Deck constellation Puppis constellation, Cluster of stars, Poop Deck constellation Copyright: xZoonar.com/AleksandarxVukicevicx 19383175

An SUV-sized Asteroid 2008TC# Impacts on October 7, 2008 in the Nubian Desert, Northern Sudan Dr. Peter Jenniskens, NASA/SETI joined Muawia Shaddas of the University of Khartoum in leading an expedition on a search for samples.

Medical Syringe, Hypodermic Syringe Closeup on Black Background

Spider lightning spreads across the base of a storm cloud. Of particular scientific interest, this photo shows breakdown around main discharge channel. Tucson Mountains, Tucson, Arizona, USA.

Green hydrogen

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the U.S. Space Force 67 payload launches from Space Launch Complex-39A at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on Jan. 15, 2023. The mission launched the Space Force's second Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM, or CBAS 2, communications satellite and the Long Duration Propulsive ESPA 3A, or LDPE 3A, rideshare satellite hosting multiple experimental payloads.

The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, with Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard, launches from Pad-0A, Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Northrop Grumman's 11th contracted cargo resupply mission for NASA to the International Space Station will deliver about 7,600 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory and its crew.

The Forced Flow Flame-Spreading Test was designed to study flame spreading over solid fuels when air is flowing at a low speed in the same direction as the flame spread. Previous research has shown that in low-speed concurrent airflows, some materials are more flammable in microgravity than earth. This image shows a 10-cm flame in microgravity that burns almost entirely blue on both sides of a thin sheet of paper. The glowing thermocouple in the lower half of the flame provides temperature measurements.

Hydra constellation, Cluster of stars, Sea Serpent constellation Hydra constellation, Cluster of stars, Sea Serpent constellation Copyright: xZoonar.com/AleksandarxVukicevicx 19383110

These two infrared images of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring were taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Oct. 19, 2014.

Jupiter, left, and Saturn, right, are seen during the great conjunction where the two planets appear a tenth of a degree apart from one another, Monday, Dec. 21, 2020, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

This frame from an animation shows a very strong jet from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured by Rosetta's OSIRIS on July 29, 2015.

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Spray Above Enceladus

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