NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Sunshield Stacks Up to Test
The Sunshield on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the largest part of the observatory--five layers of thin membrane that must unfurl reliably in space to precise tolerances. Last week, for the first time, engineers stacked and unfurled a full-sized test unit of the Sunshield and it worked perfectly.
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Saturn Imitates the Moon
Saturn appears to Cassini's cameras as a thin, sunlit crescent in this unearthly view. Citizens of Earth, being so much closer to the Sun than Saturn, never get to enjoy a view of Saturn like this without the aid of our robot envoys.
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The Moon Eclipses Saturn
What happened to half of Saturn? Nothing other than Earth's Moon getting in the way. As pictured above on the far right, Saturn is partly eclipsed by a dark edge of a Moon itself only partly illuminated by the Sun.
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The Eagle Prepares to Land
The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle, in a landing configuration was photographed in lunar orbit from the Command and Service Module Columbia. Inside the module were Commander Neil A. Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin.
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Antares Rocket With Full Moon
The full moon rises in the sky to the right of the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard, Saturday, July 12, 2014, launch Pad-0A, NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
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Stellar Birthplace Shaped and Destroyed by Energetic Offspring
The little-known cloud of cosmic gas and dust called Gum 15 is the birthplace and home of hot young stars. Beautiful and deadly, these stars mould the appearance of the nebula from which they formed and, as they progress into adulthood, will eventually also destroy it.
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Swirls in the Waters off France
Springtime brought a substantial and long-lasting bloom of phytoplankton in the Bay of Biscay, off the western coast of France.
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Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
The west-central Africa fire season was underway, and widespread as biomass burning (red dots) appears in this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image from the Aqua satellite captured on January 3, 2003.
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Puffing Sun Gives Birth To Reluctant Eruption
This combination of three wavelengths of light from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows one of the multiple jets that led to a series of slow coronal puffs on Jan. 17, 2013.
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South Pacific Storm System Seen From Orbit
A storm system over the South Pacific is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 40 crew member on the International Space Station, June 9, 2014.