Saturn with Moons Tethys and Dione
31.05.1997

Saturn and two of its larger moons - Tethys and Dione - were photographed by the Voyager 1 spacecraft which flew by the planet in November of 1980. This picture gives an indication of Saturn's extensive ring system, which can be seen casting a shadow on the planet, as does Tethys.

Surveyor Hops
12.11.2005

This panorama of the cratered lunar surface was constructed from images returned by the US Surveyor 6 lander. Surveyor 6 was not the first spacecraft to accomplish a soft landing on the Moon ... but it was the first to land and then lift off again!

Painting with Jupiter
7.04.2018

Brush strokes of Jupiter's signature atmospheric bands and vortices form this planetary post-impressionist work of art. The creative image uses actual data from the Juno spacecraft's JunoCam. To paint on the digital canvas, a image with light and dark tones was chosen for processing and an oil-painting software filter applied.

Cassini At Jupiter: Red Spot Movie
23.11.2000

Everything is big on Jupiter, the solar system's reigning gas giant. For example, Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a hurricane-like storm system at least twice the diameter of planet Earth. Approaching Jupiter...

Approaching Asteroid Eros
12.02.2001

Today, at about 3 pm EST, the first human-made spacecraft is scheduled to touchdown on an asteroid. At an impact speed of 8 kilometers per hour, it is most probable that the robot spacecraft NEAR-Shoemaker will not survive its planned collision with 433 Eros.

If You Could Stand on Mars
7.02.1996

If you could stand on Mars - what would you see? Viking 1 robot landers answered this question in 1976 with pictures like the one shown above. The dark rocks, red soil, and green-tinged sky grace this rendition of a normal Martian afternoon. At the bottom corners of the picture are portions of Viking spacecraft.

Surveyor Hops
22.11.1997

This panorama of the cratered lunar surface was constructed from images returned by the US Surveyor 6 lander. Surveyor 6 was not the first spacecraft to accomplish a soft landing on the Moon ... but it was the first to land and then lift off again!

24 Million Kilometers to Saturn
31.05.2004

Next stop: Saturn. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is approaching Saturn and will fire its engines to break into orbit around the ringed giant on July 1. The robot spacecraft was launched in 1997 and rounded Jupiter in 2001.

Io Rotating
31.12.1996

Are any volcanoes on Io currently erupting? To help answer this, scientists instructed the robot spacecraft Galileo to take hourly pictures of this moon of Jupiter prior to its most recent encounter. The most obvious changes in Io are due to the changing amount of sunlight reflected from the moon to the spacecraft.

New Horizons at Jupiter
4.12.2003

Headed for the first close-up exploration of the Pluto-Charon system and the icy denizens of the Kuiper belt, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is pictured here in an artist's vision of the robot probe outward bound.