Photos of the Day

First Family encounters the final frontier

Astronaut Janet Kavandi leads President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, beneath the shuttle Atlantis' underbelly during an April 29 tour of an Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Obamas visited the space center in hopes of seeing the shuttle Endeavour's final launch, but liftoff was delayed due to a technical glitch. Atlantis' launch, scheduled in July, will close out the 30-year space shuttle program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Into the clouds

Photographers track the space shuttle Endeavour's ascent into the clouds over Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 16. Endeavour's 16-day mission brought a $2 billion cosmic ray detector and tons of additional supplies to the International Space Station.

Godspeed, Endeavour!

Spectators react as the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 16. Hundreds of thousands of onlookers watched NASA's second-to-last space shuttle launch.

Up from the clouds

Stefanie Gordon captured this remarkable picture of the shuttle Endeavour's ascent on May 16 while she was on a commercial airline flight from New York to Palm Beach, Fla.

Spacemen at work

NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff and Endeavour commander Mark Kelly work in the orbiter's middeck on May 17 during their trip to the International Space Station.

Hanging on

NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff holds a handrail during the fourth spacewalk conducted by the shuttle Endeavour's crew at the International Space Station. During the seven-hour, 24-minute spacewalk on May 27, Chamitoff and astronaut Michael Fincke (visible in the reflections of Chamitoff's helmet visor) moved a 50-foot-long inspection boom to the station, officially completing U.S. station assembly.

Voyage through darkness

Backdropped by a nighttime view of Earth and the starry sky, the space shuttle Endeavour is seen docked to the International Space Station on May 28.

The East Coast at night

As metropolitan areas expand in both physical area and population, they typically aggregate to form linked entities known as conurbations. The term "megalopolis" has also been used. This picture of the U.S. East Coast shows a segment of the Atlantic Seaboard Conurbation stretching from New York at far right to Norfolk, Va., at lower left. The picture was taken from the International Space Station on April 6 and released by NASA on May 23.

Ablaze with X-rays

This image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, released May 24, shows the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region 7,500 light-years away in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way. Chandra has detected more than 14,000 stars in this region, shrouded in a diffuse X-ray glow. The observations provide strong evidence that massive stars have already self-destructed in this nearby supernova factory.

Easy does it!

Ground personnel help NASA astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman get into a chair shortly after the May 24 landing of a Russian Soyuz transport in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz brought Coleman, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli back to Earth from the International Space Station.Coleman spent six months in the station's zero-G environment and thus needed some time to readjust to Earth's gravity.

A Martian mystery

This picture from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter shows Nili Fossae, a system of deep fractures around the Red Planet's giant Isidis impact basin. Some of these incisions in the Martian crust are more than a quarter-mile (500 meters) deep. The readings for the picture were acquired in February 2008, and the resulting photo was released on May 6. Scientists have detected heightened concentrations of methane at Nili Fossae and suspect there may be geological or even biological activity at work.

SpaceShipTwo does the twist

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane puts its wings into their "feathered" configuration for the first time during a test glide on May 4. The wings are designed to twist upward to help the craft slow down its descent after its rocket-powered rise to the fringes of outer space. Virgin Galactic could begin commercial space tours as early as 2012.

Before and after the flood

The same floods that prompted authorities to breach a levee near Cairo, Illinois, forced residents to leave their homes farther south along the Mississippi River. These images from NASA's Aqua satellite show how the floods changed the character of the river between Cairo and Memphis, Tenn. The upper frame shows the view on May 5, 2010, and the lower frame shows the same area one year later.

Tower of ash in Iceland

An ash plume rises from the erupting Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland, as seen in this May 22 image from NASA's Aqua satellite.

Jetman in the air

Yves "Jetman" Rossy flies over the Grand Canyon West in Arizona on May 7. Rossy rocketed across a portion of the western end of the canyon owned by the Hualapai Indian Reservation. Rossy's backers at Breitling, a Swiss watch manufacturer, waited three days to announce that he had successfully performed the jet-powered feat.

Milky Way mosaic

Astrophotographer Nick Risinger stitched 37,440 night-sky exposures together into this spectacular, panoramic view of the Milky Way and the universe beyond.

Solitary stunner

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile focuses on a bright star known as VFTS 682 in this picture, which was released May 20. The "superstar" in the Large Magellanic Cloud shines 3 million times brighter than the sun. Similar superstars have been found in star clusters, but this brilliant beacon shines in solitary splendour. The origin of this star is mysterious: Did it form in isolation or was it ejected from a cluster? Either option challenges astronomers' understanding of star formation.

Picture perfect

The Hubble Space Telescope is renowned for its breathtaking images, and this snapshot of the galaxy NGC 634 is definitely that. The galaxy's fine detail and perfect spiral structure make it hard to believe that this picture, released May 30, is a real observation and not an artist's impression.

A warm Lagoon

This portion of the Lagoon Nebula was imaged in three filters sensitive to optical and far-infrared light by Argentinean astronomers Julia Arias and Rodolfo Barba, using the Gemini South telescope in Chile with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph. The picture was released May 2.

Ready for the finale

Atlantis crew members Rex Walheim, Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley and Sandy Magnus pose for photographs during the shuttle's rollover from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 17. Atlantis is scheduled to lift off in July on the final space shuttle mission.