AMAZAING VIDEOS RIVER

Ten years ago, Atlantis rose from the launch pad on a plume of fire and parted the high clouds on its way to the International Space Station and to its place in history. The 11:29 a.m. EDT liftoff on July 8, 2011, marked the last time a space shuttle would climb from Kennedy's seaside launch complex to soar toward the heavens. The crew of four veteran astronauts aboard Atlantis -- Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim -- set off on the STS-135 mission to deliver a stockpile of supplies and parts to the space station.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts lifted off at 12 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 5, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the International Space Station for the fifth commercial crew rotation mission aboard the microgravity laboratory. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, into orbit to begin a long-duration science mission on the space station. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, will dock autonomously to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 4:57 p.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 6. Join NASA as we go forward to the Moon and on to Mars -- discover the latest on Earth, the Solar System, and beyond with a weekly update in your inbox.

This video 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. On the left side of the frame is the full circle of the Sun. It appears in a golden yellow color but is splotchy and with thin yellow wisps extending from the surface. Some areas are very bright and others are almost black. The whole Sun rotates steadily, with one full rotation taking 12 minutes in this time-lapse. There are usually only a few bright regions visible at a time and they shift and flash like small fires. From these regions, there are wispy loops reaching up above the surface that rapidly change shape and size. On the right side of the frame are two white-outlined squares with enlargements of interesting regions of the Sun.