Scott Kelly's Post-Flight Visit to Washington

Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly speaks about his historic mission aboard the International Space Station during an event at the United States Capitol Visitor Center, Wednesday, May 25, 2016, in Washington.
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Great Barrier Reef Near Whitsunday Islands

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station used a powerful lens to photograph these three reefs in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef on Oct. 12, 2015. Reefs are easy to spot from space because the iridescent blues of shallow lagoons contrast sharply with the dark blues of deep water.
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The Little Fox and the Giant Stars

New stars are the lifeblood of our galaxy, and there is enough material revealed by this Herschel infrared image to build stars for millions of years to come.
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The Dark Side of Pluto

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this stunning image of Pluto only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image was obtained at a high phase angle –that is, with the sun on the other side of Pluto, as viewed by New Horizons. Seen here, sunlight filters through and illuminates Pluto’s complex atmospheric haze layers.
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Hubble Rocks with a Heavy-Metal Home

This 10.5-billion-year-old globular cluster, NGC 6496, is home to heavy-metal stars of a celestial kind! The stars comprising this spectacular spherical cluster are enriched with much higher proportions of metals — elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are curiously known as metals in astronomy — than stars found in similar clusters.
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Space Station View of Noctilucent Clouds

Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Tim Peake of the European Space Agency photographed rare, high-altitude noctilucent or "night shining" clouds from the International Space Station on May 29, 2016. Noctilucent clouds form between 76 to 85 kilometers (47 to 53 miles) above the Earth’s surface, near the boundary of the mesosphere and thermosphere.
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Frosted Dunes on Mars

Sand dunes cover much of this terrain, which has large boulders lying on flat areas between the dunes. It is late winter in the southern hemisphere of Mars, and these dunes are just getting enough sunlight to start defrosting their seasonal cover of carbon dioxide. Spots form where pressurized carbon dioxide gas escapes to the surface.
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New Mission Studying Neutron Stars On Track for Launch

A view of the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray Timing Instrument without its protective blanketing shows a collection of 56 close-packed sunshades. NICER, an upcoming NASA astrophysics mission, will uncover the physics governing the ultra-dense interiors of neutron stars.
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Beams of Light on a Golden Lake

This stunning Earth image taken by the Expedition 47 crew on May 31, 2016, from the International Space Station looks from northwestern China on the bottom into eastern Kazakhstan. The large lake in Kazakhstan with golden sun glint is the crescent-shaped Lake Balkhash, the second largest lake in Central Asia.
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Hubble Uncovers a Mysterious Hermit

The drizzle of stars scattered across this image forms a galaxy known as UGC 4879. UGC 4879 is an irregular dwarf galaxy — as the name suggests, galaxies of this type are a little smaller and messier than their cosmic cousins, lacking the majestic swirl of a spiral or the coherence of an elliptical.
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NASA Honors Orlando Victims

The American flag flies at half staff at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building in the background. On Sunday, June 12, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. flags flown at half staff “as a mark of respect for the victims of the act of hatred and terror” at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
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Orion Dives Deep for the Sake of Safety

A test version of the Orion spacecraft is pulled back like a pendulum and released, taking a dive into the 20-foot-deep (6.1 meters) Hydro Impact Basin at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
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Cygnus Cargo Craft Released From Space Station

Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo craft is released from the International Space Station in this June 14, 2016, photograph by ESA astronaut Tim Peake. Once Cygnus reached a safe distance, ground controllers at NASA's Glenn Research Center initiated the sequence for an experiment design to better understand how fire spreads in a microgravity environment.
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Sunset From the International Space Station

Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams of NASA captured a series of photos for this composite image of the setting sun reflected by the ocean.
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Counting Down to Juno's Arrival at Jupiter

A model of the Juno spacecraft is seen at a news briefing on Thursday, June 30, 2016, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Juno mission will arrive at Jupiter July 4, 2016, to orbit the planet for 20 months and collect data on the planetary core, map the magnetic field, and measure the amount of water and ammonia in the atmosphere.
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NASA's X-57 Electric Research Plane

With 14 electric motors turning propellers and all of them integrated into a uniquely-designed wing, NASA will test new propulsion technology using an experimental airplane now designated the X-57 and nicknamed “Maxwell.” This concept image illustrates NASA's X-57 plane in flight.
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Expedition 47 Soyuz Landing

The Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 47 crew members Tim Kopra of NASA, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency, and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Saturday, June 18, 2016. Kopra, Peake, and Malenchenko are returning after six months onboard the International Space Station.
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Space Station View of the Full Moon

Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA took this photograph on June 21, 2016, from the International Space Station, writing, "A spectacular rise of the full moon just before sunset while flying over western China."
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Pervasive Ice Retreat in West Antarctica

Along the Bellingshausen Sea coast of West Antarctica, ice has been retreating inland being lost to the sea. Scientists knew this, but they lacked a full picture of the scale. Now a team of researchers has compiled a Landsat-based data set and found that such losses have been going on for at least the past four decades.
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Europe's robots to become 'electronic persons' under draft plan

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Europe's growing army of robot workers could be classed as "electronic persons" and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution.

Reuters: Science News