NASA Image of the Day

Helen Ling was a supervisor for the computing group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. She was influential in the inclusion of women in STEM positions at JPL. Ling encouraged women within the computing group to attend night school in order to obtain degrees that would allow them more professional opportunities within JPL. A pioneer for women's rights in the workplace, Helen Ling was so admired in the computing group that those who worked under her lovingly referred to themselves as "Helen's girls." Many of them went on to become computer scientists and engineers within JPL thanks to the mentorship and guidance of Helen Ling.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins places a sample marker in the soil before collecting a sample during a nighttime simulated moonwalk in the San Francisco Volcanic Field in Northern Arizona on May 16, 2024. A sample marker provides a photographic reference point for science samples collected on the lunar surface.

Present-day Island of Hawai'i coastal flood risk, with higher risk indicated in dark blue, was modeled to help the County of Hawai'i in their shoreline setback plan. Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly data from 2022 Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) indicate low temperatures in the East (red) to high in the West (orange). Inland, high probability locations of wetlands are shown in bright yellow and could aid in climate adaptation planning.

Nighttime, ground-level view of the Apollo 10 space vehicle on Pad B, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center. This photograph of the 363-feet tall Apollo/Saturn V stack was taken during pull back of the mobile service structure. The Apollo 10 crew was astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, and Eugene A. Cernan.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a triple-star star system.

"For the girls or women in science — or in any profession or job — opportunities are more abundant than they were previously. Sometimes you need to take bold steps. Just a little push, and then you will get there." — Dr. Yihua (Eva) Zheng, Space Physics and Space Weather Scientist, Heliophysics Science Division, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

An illuminated waning gibbous moon contrasts the deep black of space as the International Space Station soared 270 miles over the Southern Ocean.

The aurora turns the sky near Malad City, Idaho, red, purple, and green in this 8-second exposure taken on May 11, 2024.

An American Flamingo takes a sip of water in the Indian River at Haulover Canal on Merritt Island on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. The American Flamingos are more common in Mexico and Cuba but the winds from Hurricane Idalia relocated them to Florida in September 2023. Kennedy Space Center in Florida shares a border with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where more than 310 species of birds inhabit the refuge.

This image of the Andromeda galaxy uses data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope. Multiple wavelengths are shown, revealing stars (in blue and cyan), dust (red), and areas of star formation.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this oblique photograph of the Sulaiman Mountains in central Pakistan. The range resulted from the slow-motion collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates that began about 60 million years ago. Peaks rise to more than 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level in the northern portion of the mountain range, shown in this photograph.

This image of Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1, 2018, as Juno performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was 15,379 miles (24,749 kilometers) to 30,633 miles (49,299 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet.

During a mission dress rehearsal, NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronaut Suni Williams flashes a thumbs up in her Boeing spacesuit inside the crew suit-up room inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, April 26, 2024. As part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore are the first to launch to the International Space Station aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 10:34 p.m. ET Monday, May 6.

The Moon, left, Jupiter, right, and Saturn, above and to the left of Jupiter, are seen after sunset with the Washington Monument, Thurs. Dec. 17, 2020, in Washington. The two planets drew closer to each other in the sky as they headed towards a “great conjunction” on Dec. 21, where the two giant planets appeared a tenth of a degree apart.

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer was launched on April 28, 2003. Its mission was to study the shape, brightness, size and distance of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history.

In a historic first, all six radio frequency antennas at the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex – part of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) – carried out a test to receive data from the agency's Voyager 1 spacecraft at the same time on April 20, 2024. Known as "arraying," combining the receiving power of several antennas allows the DSN to collect the very faint signals from faraway spacecraft. A five-antenna array is currently needed to downlink science data from the spacecraft's Plasma Wave System instrument. As Voyager gets further way, six antennas will be needed.

"What you eventually realize is that your success as a leader is not really yours, it’s the team’s. You’re not successful without the team, so it’s your ability to support, motivate, and guide the team that allows us to accomplish amazing things." — Dana Weigel, International Space Station Program Manager, NASA’s Johnson Space Center