Video: Reflections on Clyde Tombaugh

The Sun emitted a significant solar flare on Dec. 19, 2014.  

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.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first glimpse of Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989.

This sequence of images shows the Sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere and in order of temperature from the first one at 6,000 degrees C on the surface out to about 10 million deg...

Here is a rover's eye view of driving, scooping and drilling during Curiosity's first year on Mars, August 2012 through July 2013.

Episode 1: What is a dwarf planet?

A mission concept to explore Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus.

Eleven years in the life of the Sun, spanning most of solar cycle 23.

  After decades of exploration, Voyager 1 reaches a historic milestone for mankind, interstellar space.

Actual images of the July 4, 2005 impact of the Deep Impact probe into comet Tempel 1.

On Jan. 22, 2012, the Sun erupted with a solar flare, a coronal mass ejection, and a burst of highly energetic protons known as solar energetic particles.

  Take a virtual ride with Voyager 1 and 2 past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Explore the process that Johannes Kepler undertook when he formulated his three laws of planetary motion.

Edward Stone describes how he was always interested in what was new as a young man and how space physics got his attention.

The sequence of seven images in this animation shows sunspots as viewed by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from June 27 to July 8, 2015. From Mars, the rover was in position to see the opposite sid...

Dr. Bonnie Buratti describes her background as well as her role as a senior research scientist.

Trouble pronouncing Rosetta and Philae's target comet? We called in some expert help.

NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft have new names, thanks to some enthusiastic 4th graders from Montana, who reveal the names in dramatic fashion.

Go, Atlas. Go, Centaur. Go, InSight! NASA's InSight mission launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base for Mars on May 5, 2018—the first interplanetary launch from the West Coast. 

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

This animation shows a color-coded map from NASA's Dawn mission revealing the highs and lows of topography on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres.

Dwarf planet Ceres is shown in these false-color renderings, which highlight differences in surface materials.

This is the first footage of one orbiting robotic spacecraft taken by another orbiting robotic spacecraft at Earth's moon. 

We know what the Red Planet looks like from the outside – but what's going on under the surface of Mars?

In this Voyager Update from the night of the Neptune encounter (25 August 1989), now Voyager Project Manager, Suzy Dodd speaks with such guests as Jay Holberg and Bill Kurth concerning the Voyager ...

In August 2012, a long filament of solar material coalesced in the Sun's atmosphere. 

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft launched toward Pluto in 2006, but the mission can trace its start back to 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh discovered the small planet and opened the door to a new, mys...

Thomas Valdez tells how his early penchant for tinkering with things followed a path that led him to a career as a research engineer

MESSENGER captured this departure sequence of Venus after a close flyby of the planet in 2007.

Mark Hofstadter describes the lure of science -- of discovering something new -- and his path to becoming a planetary scientist.

This animation demonstrates how deformation in the icy surface of Europa could transport subsurface ocean water to the moon’s surface.

Since the 1960’s, scientists have suspected that frozen water could survive in cold, dark craters at the Moon’s poles. 

No one really knew what Vesta looked like until NASA’s Dawn spacecraft decided to drop in on it. Now, images taken by the spacecraft have been stitched together to create a virtual flyover of...

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

Lloyd French talks about the adventures that await in science and in life.

Phillip Chamberlin expresses his enthusiasm for science and describes how he became a research astrophysicist.

The history-making Viking 1 mission launched 35 years ago.

The animation archived on this page shows the geocentric phase, libration, position angle of the axis, and apparent diameter of the Moon throughout the year 2017, at hourly intervals.

This movie shows what it was like for NASA's Stardust spacecraft to fly by comet Tempel 1.

SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event—the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun in 2012.

A large sunspot was the source of a powerful solar flare and a coronal mass ejection (Sept. 6, 2017). The flare was the largest solar flare of the last decade. For one thing, it created a strong sh...

The Helioseismic Magnetic Imager (HMI) aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory takes a series of images every 45 seconds in a very narrow range of wavelengths in visible light of the solar photospher...

Ben Holt tells how he fell in love with the ocean as a teenager and how that lead to a career as a research scientist.

A mission concept to explore Jupiter's intriguing moon system.

Team members reflect on Spirit's six-years of roving Mars.

Sungrazing comets are a special class of comets that come very close to the sun at their nearest approach, a point called perihelion.

The volcanic peak Idunn Mons (at 46°S, 214.5°E) in Imdr Regio. 

An overview video of the OSIRIS-REx mission.

This visualization shows the orbits of NASA-related near-Earth science missions that are considered operational as of March 2017. 

What’s the latest news from Mars? NASA’s InSight lander and MarCO CubeSats are on their way to the Red Planet, a tiny helicopter will hitch a ride with the Mars 2020 rover mission, and ...

The four changes of the seasons, related to the position of sunlight on the planet, are captured in this view from geosynchronous Earth orbit by EUMETSAT's Meteosat-9 satellite. 

This movie shows Mercury's globe as it rotates. 

This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images tak...

Celebrate Earth Day 2018 with these images of Earth from afar.

  This animation of Vesta is made from images taken with Dawn's framing camera.

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.

In this movie, strung together from a series of images provided by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft, we see a full rotation of Vesta, which occurs over the course of roughly five ho...

  This video drops in on mission control for NASA's Voyager spacecraft as Voyager 1 sends back data from the far reaches of our solar system.

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

This simulated voyage over the surface of Neptune's large moon Triton was produced using topographic maps derived from images acquired by NASA's Voyager spacecraft during its August 1989 fl...

Six years of exploration through the 'eyes' of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.

Bob Anderson describes his work as a geologist who helps design and uses robots to collect data about Mars.

NASA's Director of Planetary Science, Jim Green, discusses the Jan. 20 Astronomical Journal science paper that points to the possibility of a new "Planet 9" in our solar system beyond...

For hundreds of years, this gaseous giant planet appeared shrouded in colorful bands of clouds extending from dusk to dawn, referred to as zones and belts.

As millions of people observed the total lunar eclipse on October 8, 2014, MESSENGER was also watching from Mercury.

Everyone likes to check the weather in a far away destination before they travel there. This is especially true for spaceflight, where the destination may be where no one has gone before.

This data visualization represents twenty years' worth of data showing the abundance of life both on land and in the sea. 

The flight over Charon begins high over the hemisphere New Horizons saw on its closest approach, then descends over the deep, wide canyon of Serenity Chasma. 

This video takes viewers on a virtual tour of Vesta's south polar basin, the 'snowman' set of craters and a crater called Oppia.

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