NASA's Most Incredible Images Are Simply Breathtaking

We have liftoff

Whether it’s sending the first human to the Moon or discovering the mysteries of the universe, NASA has been a pioneer in space research and exploration for over 60 years. From some of history’s most groundbreaking events in science and technology to incredible images showcasing the greatest discoveries from our Milky Way, here we take a look at NASA’s history in pictures.

Apollo 11 launches into history

At 9.32am Eastern Daylight Time on 16 July 1969, a wispy flame signaled lift-off for the Apollo 11 Saturn V space rocket from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida. This mission would be the first spaceflight that successfully landed humans on the moon.

The trio that started it all

This portrait is of Apollo 11's crew: commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin. On 20 July 1969, the crew landed on the Moon, Armstrong stepped off the Eagle’s landing and said: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Heard by millions around the world on TV and radio, Armstrong’s words have become one of the most famous quotes in history.

One small step for man

This incredible photo shows the boot print of astronaut Buzz Aldrin from the Apollo 11 mission. On 20 July 1969, when Apollo 11 landed, American astronauts Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, became the first two people to ever walk on the Moon. The historic triumph saw the US take the lead in the Space Race against Russia’s Soviet Union.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong walks on the moon

Neil Armstrong is shown here walking on the moon near the leg of the Lunar Module during the famous Apollo 11 mission. Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin took this picture using a 70mm Hasselblad camera and it is one of the only few images from Armstrong's mission.

View of Earth from Apollo 11

This beautiful image of Earth was captured during the translunar phase of the Apollo 11 Mission. The view is over Central and North America.

A day of celebration

In August 1969, New York City welcomed back the three Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, from their incredible mission, successfully completing the first-ever manned moon landing. A parade for the astronauts' return stretched down Broadway and Park Avenue and it was the largest ticker tape parade in the city’s history at the time.  

20th anniversary of when man first walked on the moon

Former president George Bush is shown speaking at the National Air and Space Museum’s 20th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1989. It was here that Bush also announced his new Space Exploration Initiative which included completing the space station, returning to the Moon and taking humans to Mars for the first time. The initiative later fell through after Congress resisted due to the sky-high $500 billion budget needed and NASA returned to its earlier program of developing robotics for space travel. 

Neptune

On 25 August 1989, Voyager 2 was the first and only spacecraft so far to fly by the planet Neptune and its two satellites, Triton and Nereid. The planet’s bold blue color is caused by the methane in the atmosphere. Research continues on Neptune’s two largest satellites and the other six that were discovered during Voyager 2’s investigation. 

Free flying in space

This iconic image is of mission specialist Bruce McCandless II, who completed the first-ever untethered spacewalk in 1984. Thanks to the Manned Maneuvring Unit, which is a nitrogen propelled hand-controlled backpack, McCandless went “free-flying” 320 feet (97.5m) away from the spacecraft. It was the furthest away an astronaut had ever ventured from their spacecraft and went down in history.  

The ultimate weather shot

This stunning photograph shows lightning taken aboard the International Space Station by the crew of Expedition 40. Lightning can be seen on both the left and the right of the image, captured from an altitude of 222.5 miles (358km).

An out-of-this-world selfie

Astronaut and ISS science officer Donald Pettit photographed himself during NASA’s Expedition 6 in 2003. In the reflection from Pettit’s visor, his arms, camera and mission commander astronaut Kenneth Bowersox are all visible. The unusual photograph certainly takes selfies to a whole new level.

Satellites for sale

This hilarious shot by astronaut Joseph Allen shows astronaut Dale Gardner holding a ‘For Sale’ sign after completing a major portion of his second expedition outside the spacecraft in 1984. The sign refers to the two satellites, Palapa B2 and Westar 6, that they retrieved from orbit after their Payload Assistant Module (a rocket attached to a satellite) failed to fire. The image depicts Allen in Gardner’s visor as well as the two recovered satellites.

Pioneering spacewalk

In this image, astronauts Bernard Harris, STS-63 payload commander (on the right) and mission specialist Colin Michael Foale are preparing to exit the airlock of the space shuttle Discovery and venture outside. During this particular mission in February 1999, Harris became the first African American to walk in space while Foale became the first British citizen. 

Amazing Earth

This incredible shot is of Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew as they traveled towards the moon in December 1972. The translunar coast image stretches from the Mediterranean Sea area to Antarctica south polar ice cap and was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to capture the south polar ice cap. Most of the continent of Africa is visible, alongside the Arabian Peninsula and the Asian mainland on the horizon towards the northeast.

Friendship 7

On 20 February 1962, John Glenn took off from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 14 and became the first American to orbit the Earth. This image shows Glenn assisting technicians with his Friendship 7 capsule before his historic flight. Over 20 years later in 1998, Glenn returned to space for the STS-95 mission at age 77, making him the oldest person, to date, to go into space.

Carina Nebula

This mystical photo reveals previously unseen details of the mysterious and complex structure of the small dark cloud of molecules and dust within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372). This image is actually a montage of four different April 1999 telescope points courtesy of the Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, using six different color filters. With a diameter of over 200-light-years, the Carina Nebula is one of the most impressive features of the Milky Way.

Astronaut Ed White performs America’s first spacewalk

On 3 June 1965, astronaut Edward White, who was the pilot for the Titan IV space flight in the Gemini IV Mission, is pictured floating during America’s first spacewalk. White spent 23 minutes suspended around his spacecraft attached by a gold-taped cord. In White’s right hand he’s holding a Hand-Held Self Maneuvring Unit, which he used to help him move around space. His gold-plated helmet protects him from the sun’s unfiltered rays. 

Sunlight over Earth

A 35mm camera was used to capture this enchanting image of sunlight shining over a cloud-covered Earth surface by STS-29 crew members aboard the Discovery (orbiter vehicle). The photographic frame was among NASA’s STS-29 photo release on 20 March 1989.

A new era of space travel

After six years without any launches, on 12 April 1981, NASA launched the first space shuttle STS-1, also known as the Space Shuttle Columbia, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From Launch Pad A, Complex 39, the shuttle carried astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen on an Earth-orbital flight scheduled to last 54 hours. The mission was a success, ending with the Space Shuttle Columbia landing at the Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The Southern Lights from the International Space Station

The aurora australis is already a truly magical sight on Earth, but this image taken from space takes the incredible phenomenon to new heights. The International Space Station used a digital camera to take hundreds of images of the colorful ribbons of light as it passed from south of Madagascar to just north of Australia between 5.22pm and 5.44pm Universal Time on 17 September 2011. Auroras are a beautiful symbol of how our planet is electrically and magnetically connected to the sun.

Starry night

Resembling a sparkling snow globe, the Hubble Space Telescope took this beautiful snapshot of hundreds of thousands of stars whirling around in the globular cluster M13. Also known as the Hercules Cluster, it is one of the brightest and best-known globular star clusters visible from the Northern Hemisphere. During winter, M13 can easily be found within the constellation Hercules, even glanced at unaided when the sky is dark enough. Located 25,000 light-years away, it is home to over 100,000 stars, packed closely together in a ball roughly 150 light-years across. 

Jack Fischer preparing for the 200th station spacewalk

NASA astronaut and Air Force colonel Jack Fischer is pictured wearing an American space suit during a fit check in preparation for his first spacewalk, which took place on 12 May 2017. This was also the 200th spacewalk at the International Space Station for maintenance and assembly. The walk, conducted by Fischer and Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson, involved replacing a large avionics box that supplied electricity and data connections for science experiments and lasted just over four hours.

An aurora from space

This magical image of Earth, with a colorful aurora above twinkling city lights while the sun rises over a starry sky, was captured by the members of Expedition 44 on the International Space Station in 2015.

Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space

Taken on 22 October 1992, pictured here is NASA astronaut and engineer Mae Jemison aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-47), working in the Spacelab-K module of the shuttle. Jemison was the first African American woman in space and the first to become an astronaut. 

Bright lights of America

This incredible image of the US at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The image was created by the satellite’s “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, which is used to detect light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared. The satellite used filtering techniques to observe dim signals including gas flares, city lights, wildfires, reflected moonlight and auroras.

Alan Shepard on the moon

Another out-of-this-world image, astronaut Alan Shepard can be seen holding the pole of a US flag on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.

Ready to race

The Lunar Roving Vehicle gets a test drive by astronaut John Young during the first Apollo 16 spacewalk at the Descartes landing site on the Moon in 1972. Captured by fellow astronaut Charles Duke, the image is from a motion picture film exposed by a 16mm Maurer camera. 

Mary Jackson

A legendary mathematician, Mary Jackson became NASA’s first black female engineer in 1958. Despite the segregation and gender bias at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia during the 1950s and 1960s, Jackson played a crucial role in astronaut John Glenn’s launch into orbit and also helped promote opportunities for women in engineering and technology. The biographical film, Hidden Figures (2016) starring Janelle Monáe, Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson is based on Jackson and other African American female mathematicians including Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan.

Colorful star formation

Situated some 23 million light-years from Earth, the NGC 4214 is a dwarf galaxy lit up with new stars forming from its interstellar gas and dust. Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the image was created using exposures taken in several color filters with the telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Dominated by the filigreed clouds of glowing gas surrounding the bright stellar clusters, the NGC 4214 also contains various faint stars which cover most of the frame. Due to their blisteringly high surface temperature, the young stars have a pretty white and blue colored glow in the image. 

Atlantis docked to space station Mir

Photographed by Mir-19 crew members Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin, this incredible image shows the Space Shuttle Atlantis still connected to Russia’s Mir Space Station during the Shuttle-Mir Program. Between 1993 and 1998, Shuttle-Mir involved NASA and the Russian Space Agency working together in space. The collaborative program was filled with many historic firsts in space exploration, including the first Russian aboard an American shuttle (Sergei Krikalev), and astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American aboard the Mir Space Station. 

Astronaut Walter Schirra

This image is of astronaut Walter Schirra, who was one of the original seven astronauts selected in 1959 to be part of NASA’s Project Mercury, the country’s first human spaceflight program. The project ran from 1958 to 1963 during the Space Race against Russia's Soviet Union and the group of astronauts selected were known as the Mercury Seven.  

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as viewed by Voyager 1

Measuring around 89,000 miles (143,200km) in diameter, Jupiter is the largest planet of our solar system and arguably one of the most impressive. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds exceeding up to 400mph (644 km/h) are known to continuously circle the planet’s atmosphere. These winds can cause spinning anticyclones like the Great Red Spot pictured here in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. In 1979, Voyager 1 spacecraft took this close-up of the mystical swirling clouds around Jupiter's Great Red Spot using black and white negatives.

Galaxy NGC 300

Taken by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer in a single orbit exposure of 27 minutes, this image depicts the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300. Situated seven million light-years from our Milky Way in the constellation Sculptor, the structure of NGC 300 is similar to our galaxy so it is often used as a prototype for spiral galaxies by astronomers. It is also home to some of the brightest stars that can be seen in spiral galaxies.

Chris Hadfield

This cool shot shows Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield watching a water bubble as it floats in the International Space Station’s Node 1. The image was taken during Hadfield’s stay on the space station during Expedition 34, a long-duration mission that took place between 2012 and 2013.

Venus' transit across the sun

This composite image is from the SDO satellite which captured the path sequence of the movement of Venus across the face of the sun between 5-6 June in 2012. The last transit took place in 2004 and the next pair of events will not happen again until the year 2117 and 2125.

Expedition 1 crew

Pictured here are the Expedition One crew members cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko, astronaut William Shepherd and flight engineer Sergei Krikalev eating fresh fruit onboard the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station. Launched on 31 October 2000 and ending on 21 March 2001, the trio became the first long-duration crew to live and work aboard the space station. The legendary mission lasted an impressive 136 days and marked a new age of space exploration.

Astronaut samples lunar soil from the moon

Astronaut Alan Bean, who was the Lunar Module pilot for the Apollo 12 Lunar landing, is pictured here holding a container filled with lunar soil from the moon collected during the mission. Bean’s fellow astronaut Charles Conrad, can be seen reflected in his helmet visor.

Where stars are born

Another jaw-dropping shot captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, this image is of a mammoth nebula known as NGC 604, located in the neighboring spiral galaxy M33. This is a site where new stars are being born within a spiral arm of the galaxy. At nearly 1,500 light-years across, this mighty nebula is so large that it can easily be seen in ground-based telescope images. In its heart, there are over 200 hot young stars, some even bigger than the sun.

Space shuttle Endeavour suspended in the sky

This unique silhouette shot was captured by an Expedition 22 crew member before the STS-130 rendezvous and docking operations with the International Space Station. Suspended over Earth’s colorful horizon, the orange layer in the picture is the troposphere, where all of the weather and clouds we typically see and experience are generated and contained. The orange gives way to the whitish stratosphere into the blueish mesosphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere.

International Space Station

Set against the bold black backdrop of deep space and the thin line of Earth’s colorful atmosphere, the Apollo 17 crew captured this beautiful shot of the International Space Station from the Space Shuttle Discovery. 

Ingenuity helicopter captures wreckage of Perseverance rover on Mars

Photographed by NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, this incredible image shows the destroyed backshell of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. During the Perseverance's landing on the red planet in 2021, this piece of equipment detached and shattered to the surface, but it was only during a flight of the Ingenuity helicopter in April 2022 that the sight has been captured on camera for the first time. According to NASA scientists, the images represent a breakthrough as they'll allow us to determine whether current engineering systems work and develop improved technologies. 

Nicole Aunapu Mann

On 5 October 2022, Nicole Aunapu Mann became the first Native American woman to venture into space. Mann is a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and previously served in the US Marine Corps. Pictured here in her Crew Dragon flight suit, the astronaut commanded the SpaceX Falcon rocket flight to the International Space Station as part of a 150-day science mission.

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