

A supernova remnant sits next to the nebula N76 in a bright, star-forming region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy located about 200,000 light-years from Earth. A supernova remnant is made up of the messy bits and pieces of a massive star that exploded, or went supernova.
Aracar volcano is one of many volcanoes in the Andes Range that is located just east of the Argentina-Chile border. Well-preserved lava flows are found at its base. Prior to a report of ash columns from the summit in 1993, the volcano was not known to be active and very little is known of the volcano's age and history. Salars, the large whitish features are very common in the arid Andes.
From left to right are pictured NASA's Michael J. Massimino (Astronaut), and rock band Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson (vocalist and Airline Captain) and Nicko McBrain (drummer). Universal Music Enterprises/PRNewsFoto/Newscom
The Apollo 16 crew captured this Earthrise with a handheld Hasselblad camera during the second revolution of the moon. Identifiable craters seen on the moon include Saha, Wyld and Saenger. Much of the terrain seen here is never visible from the Earth, as the command module was passing onto what is known as the 'dark side' of the moon.
This majestic false-color image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the "mountains" where stars are born. Dubbed "Mountains of Creation" by Spitzer scientists, these towering pillars of cool gas and dust are illuminated at their tips with light from warm, embryonic stars. The new infrared picture is reminiscent of Hubble's iconic visible-light image of the Eagle Nebula (inset), which also features a star-forming region, or nebula, that is being sculpted into pillars by radiation and winds from hot, massive stars.
NASA's modified Boeing 747 carrying the space shuttle Discovery taxis toward the runway at Edwards Air Force Base shortly before dawn on Sept. 20, 2009, prior to taking off on their two-day ferry flight to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This Landsat 7 image of Guinea-Bissau, a small country in West Africa, shows the complex patterns of the country's shallow coastal waters.
Hyper-X, the flight vehicle for which is designated as X-43A, is an experimental flight-research program seeking to demonstrate airframe-integrated, "air-breathing" engine technologies that promise to increase payload capacity for future vehicles, including hypersonic aircraft (faster than Mach 5) and reusable space launchers. This multiyear program is currently underway at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California. T
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit recorded this forward view of its arm and surroundings during the rover's 2,052nd Martian day, or sol, on Oct. 11, 2009. Bright soil in the left half of the image is loose, fluffy material churned by the rover's left-front wheel as Spirit, driving backwards, approached its current position in April 2009 and the wheel broke through a darker, crusty surface.
Our Milky Way is a dusty place. So dusty, in fact, that we cannot see the center of the galaxy in visible light. But when NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope set its infrared eyes on the galactic center, it captured this spectacular view. Taken with just one of Spitzer's cameras (at a wavelength of 8 microns), the image highlights the region's exceptionally bright and dusty clouds, lit up by young massive stars.
At Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the Atlas V/Centaur rocket, with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite on top, rolls out to the launch pad on June 17, 2009.