Space Station
Backdropped by the blackness of space and Earth's horizon, the updated International Space Station is seen from Discovery as the two spacecraft begin to separate after undocking on Nov. 5. The newly relocated P6 truss with its solar arrays, repaired during a dramatic spacewalk on Nov. 3, is seen in its permanent location at left.
STS-120 mission specialist Scott Parazynski
STS-120 mission specialist Scott Parazynski participated in the second of five scheduled spacewalks as construction continues on the International Space Station. During the 6-hour, 33-minute spacewalk Parazynski and Daniel Tani, Expedition 16 flight engineer, worked in tandem to upgrade the space station.
Earth's Horizon
Airglow above Earth's horizon and solar array panels add color to this scene of a portion of the International Space Station as the orbiting complex is docked with the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Space Shutle Discovery
A close-up view of Discovery's tail section is featured in this image that was taken during a backflip maneuver as the shuttle approached the International Space Station. The image provides views of the shuttle's main engines, orbital maneuvering system pods, vertical stabilizer and the Harmony node in the payload bay.
LSRA taking off
Taking off on a flight from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, is NASA's Landing Systems Research Aircraft, a modified Convair (CV) 990. A new landing gear test fixture representative of the shuttle's landing gear system had been installed in the lower fuselage of the CV-990 test aircraft between the aircraft's normal main landing gear.
Space shuttle Discovery, Sept. 30
Space shuttle Discovery arrived at Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, resting on the hardstand by 1:15 p.m. The shuttle began its slow 3.4-mile journey to the pad atop the crawler transporter at 6:47 a.m., leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building in the early morning darkness.
Also at the pad is the payload canister containing the Harmony module that the STS-120 crew will deliver to the International Space Station. Harmony will be installed in Discovery's payload bay as launch preparations continue at the pad.
Discovery and its seven astronaut crew are targeted to launch Oct. 23 on the STS-120 mission to the International Space Station.
Landing of Mercury-Atlas 8 spacecraft (1962)
Landing of Mercury-Atlas 8 spacecraft with parachute extended.
High Speed Research/Part Task Simulator
Side view of the simulator. Construction phase of the simulator. Aft enclosure, cockpit and XVS structure is shown. In building 1268 D.
STS-118
The STS-118 crew recently took a break from traing to pose for their official portrait. Pictured from the left are Rick Mastracchio, Barbara R. Morgan, pilot Charles Hobaugh, mission commander Scott Kelly, Tracy Caldwell, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dave Williams and Alvin Drew.
Shuttle on 747
NASA operates two commercial Boeing 747 airplanes modified to carry a space shuttle on their backs. Designated officially as Shuttle Carrier Aircraft or SCA, NASA bolstered the commercial 747s with struts, stabilizers and electronic monitors. Pictured above, the space shuttle Atlantis is shown being ferried to NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida in September 1998.
Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Soyuz
Backdropped by a cloud-covered part of Earth, Space Shuttle Atlantis was photographed by the Expedition 15 crew after it undocked from the International Space Station on June 19, 2007, in preparation for the journey home. The STS-117 astronauts completed about eight days of joint operations with the station crew. The docked Soyuz spacecraft is visible at left.
Suni's reflection
Expedition 14 flight engineer Suni Williams uses a digital still camera to expose a photo of her helmet visor during a February 2007 spacewalk. Also visible in the reflections in the visor is a solar array wing. During the spacewalk, Williams and mission commander Michael Lopez-Alegria reconfigured the second of two cooling loops for the Destiny laboratory module, secured the aft radiator of the P6 truss after retraction and prepared the obsolete Early Ammonia Servicer for removal this summer.
During her stay aboard the space station, Williams set a new record for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman, surpassing Shannon Lucid's mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996.
STS-117
Astronauts Jim Reilly and John Olivas (visible among Reilly's helmet reflections), both STS-117 mission specialists, participate in the mission's first planned session of extravehicular activity, resuming construction on the ISS. Among other tasks, Reilly and Olivas connected power, data and cooling cables between S1 and S3.
Saturn
Surely one of the most spectacular sights the solar system has to offer, Saturn sits enveloped by the full splendor of its stately rings.
Taking in the rings in their entirety was the focus of this particular imaging sequence. Therefore, the camera exposure times were just right to capture the dark side of its rings, but longer than that required to properly expose the globe of sunlit Saturn. Consequently, the sunlit half of the planet is overexposed.
Between the blinding light of day and the dark of night, there is a strip of twilight on the globe where colorful details in the atmosphere can be seen. Bright clouds dot the bluish-grey northern polar region here. In the south, the planet's night side glows golden in reflected light from the rings' sunlit face.
Saturn's shadow stretches completely across the rings in this view, taken on Jan. 19, 2007, in this mosaic composed of 36 images taken over the course of about 2.5 hours.
The images in this natural-color view were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.23 million kilometers (764,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 70 kilometers (44 miles) per pixel.
First Launch from Cape Canaveral
A new chapter in space flight began on July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.: the Bumper 2. Shown above, the Bumper 2 was an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a WAC Corporal rocket. The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 400 kilometers, higher than even modern space shuttles fly today.
Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, the Bumper 2 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere. Bumper 2 rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. Seven years later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and II, the Earth's first artificial satellites.
Barbara Morgan Meets with Students
NASA's first educator astronaut and former Idaho school teacher Barbara Morgan, set to fly in space this summer, met with of students during "Meet an Astronaut Day" at Space Center Houston on Jan. 19. Morgan talked about her role on the crew of space shuttle mission STS-118, an International Space Station assembly flight targeted for launch June 28. Commanded by Scott Kelly, the mission will continue space station construction by delivering a third starboard truss segment.
Out in space!
In this, the first extravehicular activity, or spacewalk, of the STS-116 mission, astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr. participates in activities to rewire the station's power system as construction resumes on the International Space Station.
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