Animated Spacecraft

Following critical mirror alignment steps, the Web team is confident the observatory will meet or exceed its science goals.

My name is Mana. Europa is my favorite It is that it is one of the very few places in our solar system that could potentially have life.

This 4K visualization shows the Moon's phase and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2022, as viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. 

A short film from 1969 showing Ranger 9 images as it approached the Moon.

What astronomy highlights can you see in the sky in May 2020? Venus, Sirius and the Milky Way.

Have burning questions about asteroids? Our experts have answers! (Spoiler Alert: none of them will hit Earth.) Our solar system is littered with asteroids and comets and sometimes they get a littl...

The bright crescent of Saturn's moon Enceladus slides past distant Rhea in this mutual event, or occultation, movie from Cassini.

Flight across Titan

See all the planets, plus mission updates from comet and asteroid missions Dawn and Rosetta.

Spacecraft at JPL

Unveiling Rogue Planets

This movie created from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows a propeller-shaped structure created by a hidden, embedded moon moving through one of Saturn's rings.

With fingers crossed and eyes wide open, sci-fi fans and scientists savor the joys of discovery...at Iapetus.

This colorized movie from NASA's Cassini mission shows a polar projection of the curious six-sided jet stream at Saturn's north pole known as "the hexagon" in the infrared.

Meet Lucy as she prepares for the first ever journey to the Trojan asteroids, a population of primitive small bodies orbiting in tandem with Jupiter.

Lucy will be the first mission to explore the Trojan asteroids – small bodies left over from the formation of the solar system.

Hello from Saturn, essentially on the opposite side of the sun as seen from Earth! This annual occurrence called solar conjunction, when Saturn (and Cassini) nearly disappear behind the sun.

Explore NASA’s 70-meter deep space communications antenna located at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in Barstow, California. 

February 2022 skywatching highlights: Jupiter stands alone after sunset, Venus is brilliant in the morning, and the Orion Nebula is well placed for evening skywatchers.

This artist's concept shows the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent sequence.

October 2021 skywatching highlights: Find the Moon with Venus and Arcturus after sunset, and Regulus and Mercury before sunrise. And get to know Vega and Deneb, two of the brightest stars in the No...

On October 15, 1997, the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft was launched on an almost 7-year journey to the Saturn system.

NASA’s Psyche mission is preparing for a 1.5 billion-mile (2.4 billion-kilometer) trip to a metal-rich asteroid with the same name.

OSIRIS-REx has imaged Bennu in higher resolution than we have Earth and our own Moon. Since its arrival at the asteroid on Dec. 3, 2018, the spacecraft has discovered boulders the size of buildings...

At approximately 4:16 p.m. EDT on May 10, 2021, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will fire its main thrusters for seven minutes and start its long journey home with more than 60 grams (2.1 ounces) of a...