Category: Authored by digittante

This week in 1968, Apollo 8, the first crewed Apollo mission, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 21, 1968. Here, the S-IC stage is being erected for final assembly of the Saturn V launch vehicle in Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building. via NASA http://ift.tt/2haJE7x

This composite image, made from ten frames, shows the International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, in silhouette as it transits the sun at roughly five miles per second, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016, from Newbury Park, California. via NASA http://ift.tt/2hn2rKs

Although there are no seasons in space, this cosmic vista invokes thoughts of a frosty winter landscape. It is, in fact, a region called NGC 6357 where radiation from hot, young stars is energizing the cooler gas in the cloud that surrounds them. via NASA http://ift.tt/2h4q8v8

Spiral galaxy IC 5201 sits 40 million light-years from us in the Crane constellation. As with most spirals we see, it has a bar of stars slicing through its center. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gSlccM

Hurricane forecasters will soon have a new tool to better understand and forecast storm intensity. A constellation of eight microsatellites, called NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System mission, or CYGNSS, got a boost into Earth orbit aboard an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket, deployed from an L-1011 aircraft. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gNzyLp

The foreground of this scene from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows purple-hued rocks near the rover's late-2016 location on lower Mount Sharp. The scene's middle distance includes higher layers that are future destinations for the mission. via NASA http://ift.tt/2hwMORD

Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA shared this photograph of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kounotori H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-6) as it approached the International Space Station. Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet successfully captured the spacecraft using the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gWGfGZ

Many Martian landscapes contain features that are familiar to ones we find on Earth, like river valleys, cliffs, glaciers and volcanos. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gsJXXz

Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency captured this photograph from the International Space Station on Nov. 25, 2016, and shared it on social media, writing, "Sunrises. We experience 16 sunrises every 24 hours on the International Space Station as it takes us 90 minutes to do a complete orbit of our planet flying at 28,800 km/h." via NASA http://ift.tt/2htfFoS

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) used a long lens to document what crews have termed one of the most spectacular features of the planet: the dunes of the Namib Sand Sea. via NASA http://ift.tt/2godViQ

On November 1, 2016, NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Indonesia, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board to capture a stunning true-color image of oceanic nonlinear internal solitary waves from the Lombok Strait. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gTsLOY

Middle school students programmed a camera aboard the International Space Station -- the Sally Ride EarthKAM -- to photograph this portion of the Sahara desert in western Libya on October 3, 2016. The Expedition 50 crew set up the EarthKAM gear in the Harmony module’s Earth-facing hatch window, to allow students to photograph targets on Earth. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gz3WVF

The moon Hyperion tumbles as it orbits Saturn. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gbL5C4

Actress Octavia Spencer, left, who plays Dorothy Vaughan in the film "Hidden Figures" and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, greets NASA "human computer" Katherine Johnson, at a reception to honor NASA's "human computers" on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, VA. via NASA http://ift.tt/2fP1tKo

On Nov. 10, 2016, scientists on NASA's IceBridge mission photographed an oblique view of a massive rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf. Icebridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, completed an eighth consecutive Antarctic deployment on Nov. 18. via NASA http://ift.tt/2gQdJ9s