At the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called 'John Klein' where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars.

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Hazar...

The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this series of pictures of sand dunes in the north polar region of Mars. Each panel shows ice cracks releasing dark sand as spring progr...

In this new view of the Andromeda, also known as M31, galaxy from the Herschel space observatory, cool lanes of forming stars are revealed in the finest detail yet. M31 is the nearest major galaxy to ...

A Martian rock in the 'Yellowknife Bay' area of Mars' Gale Crater is illuminated by white-light light emitting diodes is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the MAHLI camera at the end ...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft simultaneously peers through the haze in Titan's equatorial region down to its surface and captures the vortex of clouds hovering over its south pole just to the right of the...

This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 is 522,000 light-years across, making it about five times the size of the Milky Way.

This new view of spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5, includes data from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. IC 342 lies 7 million light-years away in the Camelopardali...

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the patch of rock cleaned by the first use of the rover's Dust Removal Tool (DRT). The tool is a motorized, wire-bristle ...

This new view of the historical supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, located 11,000 light-years away, was taken by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. While the star is long dead, its ...

This composite-color view from NASA's Dawn mission shows Cornelia Crater, streaked with dark materials, on the giant asteroid Vesta. You need 3D glasses to view this image.

The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi, a young, large and hot star located around 370 light-years away, is having a 'shocking' effect on the surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer S...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn's shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are...

This is a view of the third (left) and fourth (right) trenches made by the 1.6-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) scoop on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in October 2012 and shows some of the details regardin...

NASA's Curiosity rover used its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture a set of 55 high-resolution images, which were stitched together to create a full-color self-portrait.

This graphic shows results of the first analysis of Martian soil by the CheMin experiment on NASA's Curiosity rover. The image reveals the presence of crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed...

The mission's science team assessed the bright particles in this scooped pit to be native Martian material rather than spacecraft debris as seen in this image from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity as it co...

Smooth surfaces of windblown sand and dust of the 'Rocknest' area signal an appropriate place for NASA's Curiosity to collect and use the mission's first few scoopfuls of soil.

This image shows where NASA's Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a rock known as 'Jake Matijevic.' The red dots are where ChemCam zapped the rock with its laser.