ALT NASA’s Space Launch System carrying the Orion spacecraft lifts off the pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 16, 2022. A fish-eye lens wraps the image in a ring of fire as the white solid rocket boosters ignite. The viewpoint is from the base of the rocket looking up. The sky is black in the background. The word "NASA" appears in red letters on the side of one of the boosters. Credit: NASA/Chris Coleman and Kevin Dav

ALT The last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, taken by the DRACO imager on NASA’s DART mission from ~7 miles (12 kilometers) from the asteroid and 2 seconds before impact. The image shows a patch of the asteroid that is 100 feet (31 meters) across. Ecliptic north is toward the bottom of the image. This image is shown as it appears on the DRACO detector and is mirror flipped across the x-axis from reality. The entire image is filled completely with the the grey surface of Dimorphus, textured with sharp and jagged rocks. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

ALT The luminous, hot star Wolf-Rayet 124 (WR 124) is prominent at the center of the James Webb Space Telescope’s composite image combining near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light. A clumpy cloud of material surrounds this central star, with more material above and below than on the sides, in some places allowing background stars to peek through. The cloud material is a dark yellow closer to the star, and turns a pinkish purple at its outer edges. Combined together, the central star and its cloud resemble the delicate petals of a cherry blossom. The black background features many smaller white stars scattered throughout. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

ALT On flight day 12 of the Artemis I mission, the inside of Orion shows the display of the Callisto payload. Callisto is Lockheed Martin’s technology demonstration in collaboration with Amazon and Cisco, testing voice-activated and video technology that may assist future astronauts on deep space missions. Commander Moonikin Campos, a manikin wearing the orange Orion Crew Survival Suit, sits in the commander's seat with his back to the viewer. The interior of the spacecraft in the background is bathed in green light. Credit: NASA

ALT The background of space is black. Thousands of galaxies appear all across the view. Their shapes and colors vary. Some are various shades of orange, others are white. Most stars appear blue, and are sometimes as large as more distant galaxies that appear next to them. A very bright star is just above and left of center. It has eight bright blue, long diffraction spikes. Between 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock in its spikes are several very bright galaxies. A group of three are in the middle, and two are closer to 4 o’clock. These galaxies are part of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and they are warping the appearances of galaxies seen around them. Long orange arcs appear at left and right toward the center.