Crazy Engineering: Ion Propulsion for the Dawn Mission

At the end of the last Apollo 15 moon walk, Commander David Scott (pictured above) performed a live demonstration for the television cameras.

NASA's Solar System Trek team uses real data to creative flyovers of Valles Marineris on Mars and the Grand Canyon on Earth.

Arrival at Saturn

What might a wet Mars have looked like? This artist's concept attempts to fill in the blanks.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for nearly 13 years, is beginning its Grand Finale — and it's thanks to some Crazy Engineering!  A team of engineers called astrodynamicists use ma...

Known as the "Mother of Hubble," Dr. Nancy Grace Roman was instrumental in taking the Hubble Space Telescope from an idea to reality.

Rotating asteroids have a tough time sticking to their orbits. Their surfaces heat up during the day and cool down at night, giving off radiation that can act as a sort of mini-thruster.

This video from NASA's Dawn mission shows that the gravity field of Vesta closely matches the surface topography of the giant asteroid Vesta.

This movie presents a series of animations showing NASA's Dawn spacecraft traveling to and operating at the giant asteroid Vesta.

This Cassini movie -- the first of its kind -- shows lightning on Saturn's night side flashing in a cloud that is illuminated by light from Saturn's rings.

The Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in June 2004 and is now halfway through its mission. A new photo essay showcases some stunning images returned by the mission.

Rosaly Lopes shares how she was inspired to help the exploration of space and how that lead to her role as a planetary scientist.

This life-like movie sequence captures Saturn's rings during a ring plane crossing--which Cassini makes twice per orbit--from the spacecraft's point of view.

New science, mined from the archives. Data from NASA's Galileo orbiter launched a generation ago yields new evidence of plumes, eruptions of water vapor, from Jupiter's moon Europa.

What's Up for August? This month our main focus is the Perseid meteor shower.

Animations, interviews and mission b-roll available for download.

Clouds move above the large methane lakes and seas near the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan in this movie made from images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This graphic shows a 3-D model of 98 geysers whose source locations and tilts were found in a Cassini imaging survey of Enceladus' south polar terrain by the method of triangulation.

Classic video explaining the history, debate and continuing discussion of the definition of a planet.

A scientist's interpretation and visualization of the January 2005 descent and landing of the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe on Titan.

Cassini scientist Dr. Kevin Baines discusses Saturn's Cyclones.

What's Up for November? Mercury transits across the Sun, and the dimming of the "Demon star," Algol.

What can you see in the February sky? Stars and planets with distinct red and blue colors, like Mars and Sirius.

The moon Tethys is joined by two smaller moons in this movie from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Jupiter is at its biggest and brightest, Mercury and Mars appear ultra-close after sunset for two nights and how you can observe the Moon's tilted orbit.