Stellary Starry Universe

Backdropped by a night time view of the Earth and the starry sky, the Space Shuttle Endeavour is photographed docked at the International Space Station on May 28, 2011. The STS-134 astronauts left the station the next day on May 29, after delivering the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and performing four spacewalks during Endeavour’s final mission. Image Credit: NASA

A fish-eye lens attached to an electronic still camera was used to capture this image of NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff during the mission’s fourth STS-134 spacewalk. During the spacewalk, Chamitoff and fellow astronaut Michael Fincke stowed the 50-foot-long boom and added a power and data grapple fixture to make it the Enhanced International Space Station Boom Assembly, which extends the reach of the space station’s robotic arm. The docked space shuttle Endeavour is visible at top right. Image Credit: NASA

A team of NASA-funded researchers has measured for the first time water from the moon in the form of tiny globules of molten rock, which have turned to glass-like material trapped within crystals.

NASA has selected Fibertek of Herndon, Va., to design, develop, fabricate, test and deliver laser systems to be used for the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission scheduled to launch in 2016.

Tiny crystals of a green mineral called olivine are falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, according to observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.