NASA Clips

NASA’s Lucy mission is heading to the Jupiter Trojans – two swarms of unexplored asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit. Lucy made a picture-perfect launch on October 16, 2021, but when the spacecraft began to unfurl its solar arrays, it encountered an anomaly. One of the arrays failed to fully deploy and latch shut, putting the mission at risk. For months, Lucy’s flight operations team worked meticulously to address the issue and put Lucy back on its solar-powered journey to the Jupiter Trojans.

Animation of the assembly of Gateway elements in sequential order.

Paul Smith is a night-sky fanatic and photographer. His obsession is sprites: immense jolts of light that flicker high above thunderstorms. Last October, he guided NASA scientist Dr. Burcu Kosar through the backroads of Oklahoma to catch one herself. Although she’d studied sprites for more than 15 years, she hadn’t yet chased one.

After months aboard the International Space Station, the astronauts of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission are returning home. Traveling back to Earth inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, along with ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. During their time aboard the orbiting laboratory, these crew members contributed to ongoing and new scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, work that is helping to prepare humans for future space exploration missions and generating innovations and benefits for humanity on Earth.

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, will be the first spacecraft to fly a unique orbit around the Moon intended for NASA’s future Artemis lunar outpost Gateway. Its six-month mission will help launch a new era of deep space exploration. Multiple partner businesses contributed to CAPSTONE with support from NASA's small business programs. The spacecraft was built and tested by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc., a Terran Orbital Corporation, operated and managed by Advanced Space, and will be launched by Rocket Lab USA, Inc.

virtual tour of the Moon in all-new 4K resolution, thanks to data provided by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. As the visualization moves around the near side, far side, north and south poles, we highlight interesting features, sites, and information gathered on the lunar terrain. Music Provided By Killer Tracks: "Never Looking Back" - Frederick Wiedmann. "Flying over Turmoil" - Benjamin Krause & Scott Goodman.

Science gets scaled up with the first 8K ultra high definition (UHD) video from the International Space Station. Get closer to the in-space experience and see how the international partnership-powered human spaceflight is improving lives on Earth, while enabling humanity to explore the universe.

Water in space behaves… differently. Surface tension and capillary flow can be harnessed to move fluids in more efficient ways. What looks like fun could actually help us improve systems for moving fluids in microgravity, in things like fuel tanks for space travel.