The Roman Space Telescope with some mood lighting.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at its media day at NASA Goddard.

Charles M. Duke Jr., pilot of the Lunar Module stands near the Lunar Roving Vehicle, during EVA-2. The gnomon, which is used as a photographic reference to establish local vertical Sun angle, scale, and lunar color, is deployed in the center foreground.

The astronauts performed three extra-vehicular activities, totalling 20 h 14 min, setted up an automated scientific laboratory, and collected a total of 95.71 kg of Moon rock and soil for a geological investigation back on the Earth. The Lunar Module also carried a Lunar Roving Vehicle.

John W. Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, jumps up from the lunar surface as he salutes the U.S. flag.

#OTD in 1972, during the Apollo 16 mission, astronauts John Young and Charles Duke landed in the Lunar Module 11, "Orion", in the Descartes highland region just north of the crater Dolland. It was the fifth successful human lunar landing.

Seeing with Hubble-vision 36 years of science with the Hubble Space Telescope

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 36 years in space this week! 🧪🔭

@esa.int @science.esa.int @eui-euarchives.bsky.social @stsci.edu

Asteroid Donaldjohanson seen by Lucy spacecraft

#OTD one year ago, the Lucy spacecraft flew by the main-belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson.

Starship launch vehicle during its first flight. Several Raptor engines are lost at this point.

Starship moments before destruction

The first integrated flight test of SpaceX Starship took place #OTD in 2023. The liftoff caused significant damage to the launch pad, and the prototype vehicle lost control and was destroyed less than four minutes after lifting off from the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.

TFW you look out the window and see the Earth disappear
🎥 Astronaut Reid Wiseman
📍 Artemis II from the far side of the Moon

A new picture of NGC 3147 from Hubble, comprised of data collected very recently, some of which was taken just a couple of weeks ago. This is in near-infrared and visible light, so the dust lanes look extra reddish. There's a certain transparency to the disk showing reddish background galaxies that I quite like, thanks to the near-infrared wavelengths in the red channel. It's one of those galaxies that fits nicely within the Hubble footprint, so this is a nearly complete picture of the brighter parts of the whole object. I enhanced the saturation and clarity of the whole galaxy, and the center dust lanes have been greatly sharpened. The small hole left where the chip gaps intersected near the nucleus was filled with data cloned 180° from the other side of the nucleus. This image was creating using data from the Proposal That Just Keeps Giving. The Hubble Constant to 1%: Physics beyond LambdaCDM Red: WFC3/IR F160W Green: WFC3/UVIS F814W Blue: WFC3/UVIS F555W North is NOT up. It is 42.64° clockwise from up.

NGC 3147 - From Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/ETMTxh

Salyut 7 station with a docked Soyuz spacecraft

#OTD in 1982, Salyut 7 (DOS-6) Soviet space station was launched. The station was visited by ten crews (six resident and four visiting), and was last inhabited in 1986.

Photo of Salyut 1 in orbit taken probably by Soyuz 11 crew

Soyuz 10 failed to hard-dock and the mission had to be aborted. Soyuz 11 successfully docked and the cosmonauts remained on board for 22 days, but the mission ended in disaster when the crew capsule depressurised during preparations for re-entry, killing the three-men crew on June 29, 1971.

Artist's impression of the Salyut 1 with a Soyuz spacecraft docking

#OTD in 1971, Salyut 1 (DOS-1), the world's first space station, was launched atop a three-stage Proton-K rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The station was visited by two three-member expeditions.

As of 6 January 2026, TESS had identified 7,821 candidate exoplanets, of which 720 had been confirmed.

Artist's impression of the TESS satellite. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

TESS captured this strip of stars and galaxies in the southern sky during one 30-minute period on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018. Notable features include the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and a globular cluster called NGC 104, also known as 47 Tucanae. The brightest stars in the image, Beta Gruis and R Doradus, saturated an entire column of camera detector pixels on the satellite’s second and fourth cameras. Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS

#OTD in 2018, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was launched and placed into a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth. It is designed to search for exoplanets around the brightest dwarf stars in the sky, using the transit method to detect brightness changes.

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating - NASA Science On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

The Low-energy Charged Particles experiment has been operating almost without interruption since Voyager 1 launched in 1977 - almost 49 years. 🧪🔭 #Voyager

science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyage...

Against a dark background, the Sun’s disc is shown in dark orange, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. A thin halo of yellow light surrounds the Sun, giving it a luminous outline against the dark background of space. This yellow outline shows the Sun’s inner corona, as captured by Proba-3. Also in yellow, two solar prominence eruptions are visible, resembling bright yellow wave-like outburst extending outwards from the Sun -- a large one in the top left and a much smaller one in the bottom right.

#PPOD: The Sun’s inner corona, the hottest part of our star's atmosphere, appears faint yellow in this image taken by the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard Proba-3. The image combines data from Proba-3’s ASPIICS coronagraph (inner solar corona in yellow)... 🧪 🔭

Apollo 13 splashes down in the South Pacific on April 17, 1970

The crewmembers of the Apollo 13 mission, step aboard the USS Iwo Jima, prime recovery ship for the mission, following splashdown and recovery operations in the South Pacific Ocean. Exiting the helicopter which made the pick-up some four miles from the Iwo Jima are (from left) astronauts Fred W. Haise Jr., lunar module pilot; James A. Lovell Jr., commander; and John L. Swigert Jr., command module pilot.

#OTD in 1970, after an explosion of the spacecraft's oxygen tank and looping around the Moon, the crew of Apollo 13 returned safely to Earth. The spacecraft's cabin splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, SE of American Samoa.

The launch of Atlas Centaur D rocket carrying Surveyor III on April 17, 1967.

View of the Surveyor III taken during the second EVA of the Apollo 12 mission.

#OTD in 1967, the Surveyor III spacecraft was launched. On April 20, the probe successfully landed in the Oceanus Procellarum and transmitted 6,326 images of the Moon. Its lunar sampler dug trenches as deep as 18 cm. In November 1969, the lander was visited by the Apollo 12 astronauts.

A view of North America photographed from a window of Apollo 16 spacecraft shortly after the translunar injection on April 16, 1972.

A view of North America photographed from a window of Apollo 16 spacecraft shortly after the translunar injection on April 16, 1972.

The Apollo 16 crew mission portrait. The astronauts are, from left to right, Thomas K. Mattingly II, command module pilot, John W. Young, commander, and Charles M. Duke Jr., lunar module pilot.

Apollo 16 launch on Saturn V SA-511 from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

#OTD in 1972, Apollo 16, carrying a crew of three astronauts: Mission commander John W. Young, Command Module pilot Thomas K. Mattingly II, and Lunar Module pilot Charles M. Duke, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center to begin the fifth crewed mission to land on the Moon.

Virgo Cluster in the first released image from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The deep space image shows numerous galaxies of varying sizes and morphologies scattered across a black background filled with stars. Several large elliptical galaxies appear as smooth, yellowish-white glowing objects, while smaller spiral and irregular galaxies are visible throughout the field. Point-like stars of varying brightness and colors, including some appearing orange and blue, are distributed across the entire frame. The galaxies span different distances, creating depth in the cosmic landscape.

#OTD one year ago, the LSST Camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory captured its first images of the night sky. It is the largest (3.2-gigapixel) CCD digital camera in the world.

The Space Shuttle Orbiter 102 Columbia is within feet of touchdown to complete the STS-1 mission on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. Astronauts John W. Young, crew commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, were aboard the spacecraft.

Space Shuttle Columbia approaching Edwards Air Force Base on mission STS-1 on April 14, 1981.

View of the severely damaged Apollo 13 Service Module photographed from the Lunar Module/Command Module following the jettison of the Service Module prior to Earth reentry. An entire panel on the SM was blown away by the explosion of oxygen tank number two located in Sector 4 of the SM.

#OTD in 1970, the explosion of an oxygen tank no. 2 in the Service Module, and the resulting damage to other systems, caused the Apollo 13 mission to abort before the planned lunar landing could take place. The spacecraft looped around the Moon and the crew returned safely to Earth.

Portrait of Christiaan Huygens by Bernard Vaillant (1686)

Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, physicist, astronomer and inventor, was born #OTD in 1629. He discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn and its largest moon, Titan. Huygens also patented the first pendulum clock and proved by experiment the conservation of momentum.

April 14, 2023: Launch of the Juice mission on an Ariane 5 launcher.

Juice images Earth during lunar-Earth flyby

First radargram from Juice’s RIME instrument

Juice's full path, 3 years into its journey.

Three years since Juice launched on its journey to Jupiter. 🧪🔭

Arriving in 2031, it will explore the giant planet and its icy ocean moons, seeking to study them as both planetary objects and possible habitats.

More info 👇 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

The explosion AT2021lwx captured by a space telescope

#OTD in 2021, AT2021lwx, the most energetic non-quasar transient astronomical event known, was observed by the Zwicky Transient Facility. The explosion is more than ten times brighter than that of any other recorded star and is located 8 billion light-years away.

Yuri Gagarin

Official portrait of STS-1 crew members John W. Young (left) and Robert L. Crippen

The launch of STS-1 mission

#OTD in 1981, the STS-1 mission began, the first flight of the Space Shuttle orbiter Columbia (OV-102) and the first orbital spaceflight of the Space Shuttle program. It was the first American crewed spaceflight since the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

The liftoff of Vostok 3KA No. 3 spacecraft, officially named Vostok 1

Gagarin inside the Vostok cabin during the flight

#OTD 1961 Vostok, the first spacecraft to carry a human, Yuri A. Gagarin, into space, was launched from Baikonur. After completing one orbit of Earth the capsule reentered the atmosphere and landed in Kazakhstan. Gagarin parachuted to the ground separately after ejecting at an altitude of 7 km.

Annibale De Gasparis

High-resolution image of Hygiea. SPHERE imager on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2019: ESO/P. Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS)

#OTD in 1849, asteroid 10 Hygiea was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in Naples. It is the fourth largest object in the main asteroid belt, after Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas, with a diameter of about 433 km.