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The city lights of Melbourne, Australia are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 271 miles above.

Nearly four decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987.

A drone camera captures NASA’s mobile launcher 1 atop the agency’s crawler-transporter 2 moving from Launch Complex 39B to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. The mobile launcher has been at the launch pad since August 2023 undergoing upgrades and tests in preparation for NASA’s Artemis II mission.

The Oort Cloud comet, called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, passes over Southeast Louisiana near New Orleans, home of NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. The comet is making its first appearance in documented human history; it was last seen in the night sky 80,000 years ago. The Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet made its first close pass by Earth in mid-October and will remain visible to viewers in the Northern Hemisphere just between the star Arcturus and planet Venus through early November.

An unidentified illustration of NASA's space shuttle. The space shuttle fleet flew 135 missions and helped construct the International Space Station between the first launch on April 12, 1981 and the final landing on July 21, 2011. There were five orbiters: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. After launch, the spacecraft plans to fly by Mars in February 2025, then back by Earth in December 2026, using the gravity of each planet to increase its momentum. With help of these “gravity assists,” Europa Clipper will achieve the velocity needed to reach Jupiter in April 2030.

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was about 44 million miles away from Earth in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacific Ocean southeast of New Zealand just before sunrise on Sept. 28, 2024.

On New Zealand’s North Island, a conical snow-capped volcano ringed by dark green forest rises above dairy pasture. The often-snowcapped peak of Mount Taranaki is the centerpiece of Egmont National Park. A circular piece of land—with a 9.6-kilometer (6-mile) radius from the volcano’s summit—was first formally protected as a forest reserve in 1881. With some subsequent additions, it became New Zealand’s second national park in 1900.

Dr. David Baker of the University of Washington, creator of Rosetta@home, has won the 2024 Nobel prize in Chemistry. Congratulations!

"It took years but it felt like all of the sudden, I was here and everything, the entire time, was preparing me for my role on the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now, I share a place in history next to a Curation team full of the most talented, intelligent and hard-working individuals in the world and all that we have accomplished is, and will be, a part of NASA forever." —Salvador Martinez III, Lead Astromaterial Curation Engineer, Jacobs Technology, NASA's Johnson Space Center

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, and Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Sant Director, Kirk Johnson, preview the Earth Information Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. The exhibit includes a video wall displaying Earth science data visualizations and videos, an interpretive panel showing Earth’s connected systems, information on our changing world, and an overview of how NASA and the Smithsonian study our home planet.

Flying aboard Voyagers 1 and 2 are identical "golden" records, carrying the story of Earth far into deep space. This gold aluminum cover was designed to protect the gold-plated records from micrometeorite bombardment, but also serves a double purpose in providing the finder a key to playing the record.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station shot this photo of large meanders of the Alabama River while orbiting over the southern United States. The river’s smooth water surface reflects sunlight back toward the astronaut’s camera, producing an optical phenomenon known as sunglint.

Chirag Parikh, Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, left, and NASA Astronauts Frank Rubio, center, and Marcos Berrios, right, speak at a staff engagement event that took place during a White House Hispanic Heritage month on Sept. 30, 2024.

Paris (AFP) Oct 1, 2024
Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected carbon dioxide on the frozen surface of Pluto's biggest moon, Charon, for the first time, research revealed on Tuesday. The discovery of CO2, along with another chemical hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), could shed light on the icy worlds in the mysterious outer reaches of our Solar System. Pluto was long known as the ninth planet fro

Paris (AFP) Oct 1, 2024
A rare exoplanet smaller than Earth has been discovered orbiting one of the closest stars to the Sun, although its surface is far too hot to sustain life, astronomers said on Tuesday. The planet orbits Barnard's Star, which is just six light years away, according to observations made over five years by the Very Large Telescope in the Chilean desert. The astronomers were looking for plan

Puerto San Julian, Argentina (AFP) Oct 2, 2024
An annual solar eclipse will create a rare "ring of fire" phenomenon visible in parts of South America on Wednesday. A "ring of fire" occurs when the Moon lines up between the Sun and the Earth to create a solar eclipse but does not block out the Sun's light entirely. This year, the Moon will be further from the Earth than usual, so those in parts of Chile and Argentina will be able to w

West Lafayette IN (SPX) Sep 30, 2024
Since the first sighting of the first-discovered and largest asteroid in our solar system was made in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, astronomers and planetary scientists have pondered the make-up of this asteroid/dwarf planet. Its heavily battered and dimpled surface is covered in impact craters. Scientists have long argued that visible craters on the surface meant that Ceres could not be very icy.

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 30, 2024
A team of scientists from the University of Maryland has uncovered evidence of a sunken ancient seafloor, dating back to the age of dinosaurs, deep within Earth. This discovery, located at the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic boundary on the southeastern Pacific Ocean floor, challenges existing models of Earth's structure. The findings were published in 'Science Advances' on September 27, 2024.

Washington DC (SPX) Sep 26, 2024
NASA's TBIRD (TeraByte InfraRed Delivery) demonstration and its host spacecraft - the PTD-3 (Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-3) - have completed their technology demonstration. The TBIRD payload spent the past two years breaking world records for the fastest satellite downlink from space using laser communications. NASA's PTD series leverages a common commercial spacecraft to provide a