India's Capital As Viewed By Cartosat-2AThis image captured by India's new Cartosat-2A mapping satellite shows the unique hexigon layout of India's capital Delhi. Prominant Landmarks are labled in yellow. Photo Credit: ISRO
Galaxies Collide in NGC 3256 Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 3256 actually shows a current picture of two galaxies that are slowly colliding. Quite possibly, in hundreds of millions of years, only one galaxy will remain. Today, however, NGC 3256 shows intricate filaments of dark dust, unusual tidal tails of stars, and a peculiar center that contains two distinct nuclei. Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies will directly collide, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. NGC 3256, part of the vast Hydra-Centaurus supercluster of galaxies, spans over 100 thousand light-years across and is located about 100 million light-years away. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA) - ESA/Hubble Collaboration, & A. Evans (UVa, NRAO, SUNYSB)
Cyclone Nargis seen from spaceEnvisat captured Cyclone Nargis making its way across the Bay of Bengal just south of Myanmar on 1 May 2008. The cyclone hit the coastal region and ripped through the heart of Myanmar on Saturday, devastating the country. More Images Are In The Robotic Spaceflight Section Photo Credit: ESA
GLAST Moves To Hazardous Processing Facility At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., technicians check various parts of NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, spacecraft after its transfer to a transporter. The spacecraft is being prepared for its move to the Hazardous Processing Facility for fueling. The GLAST is a powerful space observatory that will explore the universe's ultimate frontier, where nature harnesses forces and energies far beyond anything possible on Earth; probe some of science's deepest questions, such as what our Universe is made of, and search for new laws of physics; explain how black holes accelerate jets of material to nearly light speed; and help crack the mystery of stupendously powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts More Photos Can Be Found In The Robotic Spaceflight Section Photo Credit: NASA
Chilean volcano captured blasting ashChile’s Chaiten Volcano is shown spewing ash and smoke (centre left of image) into the air for hundreds of km over Argentina’s Patagonia Plateau in this Envisat image acquired on 5 May 2008. The 1000 m-high volcano had been dormant for thousands of years before erupting on 2 May, causing the evacuation of thousands. Chaiten Volcano is located in southern Chile 10 km northeast of the town of Chaiten on the Gulf of Corcovado. Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument processed this image at a resolution of 1200 m. Credit: ESA
STS-124 TCDT Payload InspectionOn Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, STS-124 crew members get a close look at the orbital docking system in space shuttle Discovery's payload bay. Seen from left are Mission Specialists Ron Garan, Mike Fossum and Greg Chamitoff. The payload bay walkdown is part of the launch dress rehearsal called the terminal countdown demonstration test. TCDT provides astronauts and ground crews with an opportunity to participate in various simulated countdown activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training. On the STS-124 mission, the crew will deliver and install the Japanese Experiment Module – Pressurized Module and Japanese Remote Manipulator System. Discovery's launch is targeted for May 31. More Photos Can Be Found In The Manned Spaceflight Section Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Progress M-64 Is Erected On The Launch PadInternational Space Station is seen here being erected on the launch pad. Progress M-64 is set to launch at 4:20 pm EDT on May 25 More Photos Can Be Found Inside The ISS Section (Click Manned Spaceflight) Photo Credit: Roscosmos
Sea Launch Prepares To Launch Galaxy 18With the Zenit-3SL rocket on the Odyssey Launch Platform, the team rolls it out of the hangar to the launch pad at the stern of the launch deck on the transporter-erector. Then the erector arm lifts the rocket into a vertical position, where a final series of tests are performed Following these tests, the rocket is then lowered back onto the transporter and returned to the hangar, for the transit to the launch site. More Photos Can Be Found In The Copmmercial Spaceflight Section Source: Sea Launch
Transporters at ChajnantorHeavyweights at 4000m altitude: this photo shows the two ALMA antenna transporters during the final phase of the acceptance testing in April on the road between the ALMA OSF at 2900m altitude and the AOS at 5000m. The first transporter ("Otto") is travelling unloaded, while the second one ("Lore") is carrying the 115-ton antenna dummy. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), will be a single research instrument composed of up to 80 high-precision antennas, located on the Chajnantor plain of the Chilean Andes in the District of San Pedro de Atacama, 5000 m above sea level. ALMA will enable transformational research into the physics of the cold Universe, regions that are optically dark but shine brightly in the millimeter portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Providing astronomers a new window on celestial origins, ALMA will probe the first stars and galaxies, and directly image the formation of planets. Photo: Stefano Stanghellini (ESO).
Layered Rock in Noctis Labyrinthus This MRO scene is the floor of a trough in Noctis Labryinthus, a region of chaotic terrain located between the Tharsis Rise and Valles Marineris. Its eastern extent leads into the start of Valles Marineris, a canyon that is about as wide as the continental United States. The trough has a depression which contains dunes and exposed layers. It is possible that the wind is sculpting out the depression and revealing the layers or it could be continued cracking and pulling apart of the ground. These layers might be the same as those seen in the canyons of Valles Marineris; their origin is currently unresolved. More Photos Are In The Robotic Spaceflight Section. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Ground-based Optical Tracking of WMAP Supports Guia MissionThree images taken on 5 April 2008 at time intervals of a few minutes were added up to create this composite frame, showing the NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite as it moved across the sky. The obervations were made with the ESO 2.2m telescope at La Silla, Chile, that allowed the imaging of WMAP's position by the sunlight reflecting of the satellite's sunshield. The exercise was set up to test the ground-based optical tracking concept envisaged for ESA's Gaia mission, that like WMAP will be located at the second Earth-Sun Lagrange point L2. Before superposition, the three images (actually black-and-white images) were artificially coloured red, green and blue. For the stars, these three colours added up to neutral white. In contrast, the WMAP satellite shows up as the string of coloured points - since it is the only object having moved between the times the three images were taken. In addition to WMAP and a number of stars, a faint galaxy is visible as a slightly fuzzy blob at top centre of the picture. The main goal of the Gaia mission is to make the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy. To this end Gaia will survey the entire sky to detect and very accurately measure the position and motion of each star down to mV~20 that passes its field of view. Photo Credit: ESO
35th Anniversery Of The Launch Of SkylabThe Skylab space station, America's first space station,is seen here launching aboard the only Saturn V booster ever configured as a payload lifter. Photo Credit: NASA
35th Anniversery Of The Launch Of SkylabThis photo shows the Skylab 2 Saturn 1B launch vehicle just following tower roll back. Photo Credit: NASA
35th Anniversery Of The Launch Of SkylabThis photo shows the Skylab 4 Apollo Command and Service Module docked to the Skylab space station. Photo Credit: NASA