Nasa Space

is always changing and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. SDO's sixth year in orbit was no exception.

New imagery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is revealing details never before seen on Jupiter. High-resolution maps and spinning globes (rendered in the 4k Ultra HD format) are the first products to come from a program to study the solar system’s outer planets each year using Hubble. The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who marked day 300 of a historic year in space on Jan. 21, 2016, shows off another fascinating feature of life in microgravity.

Astronauts on the International Space Station dissolved an effervescent tablet in a floating ball of water, and captured images using a camera capable of recording four times the resolution of normal high-definition cameras.

Once again, astronauts on the International Space Station dissolved an effervescent tablet in a floating ball of water, and captured images using a camera capable of recording four times the resolution of normal high-definition cameras.

the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. During its five-year mission, it will examine the sun's atmosphere, magnetic field and also provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate.

For the first time ever, fresh food grown in the microgravity environment of space is on the menu for NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Join us for a fly-through of the International Space Station.

Precipitation (falling rain and snow) is our fresh water reservoir in the sky and is fundamental to life on Earth. This video shows the most detailed and worldwide view of rain and snowfall ever created and uses satellite measurements from the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory, or GPM, a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Tracking precipitation from space with satellites provides information of where, when, and how much it rains and snows anywhere in the world and gives insight into the behavior of our weather, climate, and ecological systems.

NASA Television’s newest offering, NASA TV UHD, brings ultra-high definition video to a new level with the kind of imagery only the world’s leader in space exploration could provide. Harmonic produced this show exclusively for NASA TV UHD, using time-lapses shot from the International Space Station, showing both the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis phenomena that occur when electrically charged electrons and protons in the Earth's magnetic field collide with neutral atoms in the upper atmosphere.

NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. The International Space Station hosts a variety of payloads and experiments supporting climate research, weather predictions, hurricane monitoring, pollution tracking, disaster response and more.

an active region on the sun’s right side released a mid-level solar flare, captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. This solar flare caused moderate radio blackouts, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Scientists study active regions – which are areas of intense magnetism – to better understand why they sometimes erupt with such flares.

ee Planet Earth from space, it’s stunning; when you’ve spent 534 days in space—more than any other American—it still is! On his most recent trip the International Space Station NASA astronaut Jeff Williams used an Ultra High Definition video camera that he pointed at the planet 250 miles below; here he shares some of those images, and talks about the beauty of the planet, the variety of things to see, and the value of sharing that perspective with everyone who can’t go to orbit in person.

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.

NASA’s Lucy mission tests the deployment of its solar arrays in the thermal vacuum chamber at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Each of the two circular arrays is nearly 24 feet (7.3 m) wide. These arrays will power Lucy on its 12-year odyssey through the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, breaking records for a solar powered mission by traveling 530 million miles (853 million km) from the Sun. These large arrays will capture the sunlight needed to power the spacecraft as it travels through deep space.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory watched as Mercury move across the Sun. The Solar Dynamics Observatory views the Sun in a variety of wavelengths of light in the extreme ultraviolet.

“Sharing the incomparable silent beauty of our planet with all our fellow travelers on this, our Spaceship Earth.”

This time-lapse imagery taken by NASA astronaut Jack Fischer from the International Space Station in 4K Ultra High Defintion takes us over the Pacific Ocean’s moon glint and above the night lights of San Francisco, Calif.

Ever wonder what the spacewalker sees while you’re looking at him or her? Here’s your answer, courtesy of NASA astronaut Jack Fischer. This Ultra High Definition clip shows Fischer outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Expedition 51 in May 2017, and the view from a small camera attached to his spacesuit at the same time.

three minutes to spare for a tour of southern Europe? That’s all the time it takes, when you have a 4K camera orbiting Earth 250 miles up—and we do, on the International Space Station.

The people who get to see the Earth from space marvel at its beauty, the colors, the fragility they feel about the planet 250 miles below them.

chronicles solar activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system. With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 133-day time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona. Compiling images taken 108 seconds apart, the movie condenses 133 days, or about four months, of solar observations into 59 minutes. The video shows bright active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates. The Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days. The loops extending above the bright regions are magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma. These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, which appear as bright flashes as magnetic fields snap together in a process called magnetic reconnection. While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed toward the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. Some of the dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. Other blackouts are caused by instrumentation being down or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground every day.