NASA Video Gallery

OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to collect samples from an asteroid and deliver them to Earth. On September 24, 2023, the spacecraft will release a capsule containing material from near-Earth asteroid Bennu for a landing in Utah’s West Desert. OSIRIS-REx team members will recover the capsule and bring its contents to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where the Bennu samples will be curated and made available for scientists around the world to study for decades to come.

It’s hard to imagine what the surface of a dark, distant asteroid might look like, but NASA’s “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” brings us on a journey to see this landscape up close. The video, which was released in October 2020, uses elevation data and high-resolution imagery from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to provide viewers with stunning 3D vistas of Bennu’s rugged terrain. On August 9 and 11, 2021, “Tour of Asteroid Bennu” will be featured in the SIGGRAPH awards electronic theater. Producer Dan Gallagher and data visualizer Kel Elkins discuss the making of the video, and how data-driven animation is enabling viewers to explore new worlds like Bennu.

Immerse yourself in the soothing rhythms of space while staying focused and productive with a hand-crafted instrumental chill playlist inspired by the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2). This celestial Lofi mix is enhanced by vocal samples from the ICESat-2 mission, adding an atmospheric touch to your study session. Tune in and let the stars guide your concentration as you explore the depths of tranquility with the wonders of the universe. This piece was created by students of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), through a collaborative student program between ICESat-2 and SCADpro under NASA Grant 80NSSC22K1721. Music Produced by SCAD Student Caleb Green (Hapollo) Music Samples by Vignesh Vishwanathan (Vig) 00:00 01. Juno (prod. Hapollo & VIG) 02:39 02. Pathfinder (prod. Hapollo) 04:56 03. Discovery (prod. Hapollo) 07:45 04. Oppy (prod. Hapollo) 09:47 05. Voyager (prod. Hapollo) 12:14 06. Columbia (prod. Hapollo & VIG) 15:22 07. Mercury (prod. Hapollo) 18:48 08. Galileo (prod. Hapollo) 21:12 09. Pioneer (prod. Hapollo) 23:38 10. Enterprise (prod. Hapollo & VIG) 27:09 11. Apollo (prod. Hapollo & VIG) 30:14 12. Gemini (prod. Hapollo) 32:56 13. Endeavour (prod. Hapollo) 35:24 14. Atlantis (prod. Hapollo) 38:38 15. Genesis (prod. Hapollo & VIG) 42:20 16. Atlas (prod. Hapollo) Illustrator and Concept Artist: Daniela Shuping, Savannah College of Art & Design Animator: Dee Divakaran, Savannah College of Art & Design Supervising Professor: Dr. Deborah Fowler, Savannah College of Art & Design

Summer 2023 Was the Hottest Summer on Record

When the Hubble Space Telescope launched, one of its main goals was to measure the rate at which our universe is expanding. That rate is called the “Hubble Constant” – named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble, who contributed to the discovery of the universe’s expansion. However, the expected value of the expansion rate is different depending on what equipment is being used to determine it. In this video, Nobel Laureate Dr. Adam Riess explains this phenomenon known as “Hubble Tension,” and how important this mystery is to our understanding of the universe.

It’s always shining, always ablaze with light and energy that drive weather, biology and more. In addition to keeping life alive on Earth, the sun also sends out a constant flow of particles called the solar wind, and it occasionally erupts with giant clouds of solar material, called coronal mass ejections, or explosions of X-rays called solar flares. These events can rattle our space environment out to the very edges of our solar system. In space, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, keeps an eye on our nearest star 24/7. SDO captures images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. In this video, we experience SDO images of the sun in unprecedented detail. Presented in ultra-high definition, the video presents the dance of the ultra-hot material on our life-giving star in extraordinary detail, offering an intimate view of the grand forces of the solar system. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona. On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain. Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface. The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.

Space to Ground: Splashdown in the Atlantic: Sept. 8, 2023

Gravitational waves are invisible ripples in the fabric of space-time. They are caused by some of the most violent and energetic events in the universe. These include colliding black holes, collapsing stellar cores, merging neutron stars or white dwarf stars, the wobble of neutron stars that are not perfect spheres and possibly even the remnants of gravitational radiation created by the birth of the universe. In this video, Dr. Padi Boyd explains gravitational waves and how important Hubble is to exploring the mysteries of the universe.

OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission. It launched in September 2016 on a journey to explore a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. In October 2020, the spacecraft ventured to the asteroid’s surface and collected about 250 grams of material for delivery to Earth. Now, two years and four months after leaving Bennu, OSIRIS-REx is closing in on the place where its journey began. The mission’s thrilling finale will take place on September 24, 2023, as a capsule containing the Bennu samples touches down in Utah’s West Desert.

This video uses data gathered from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft to recreate some of the stunning views of the Moon that the Apollo 13 astronauts saw on their perilous journey around the farside in 1970. These visualizations, in 4K resolution, depict many different views of the lunar surface, starting with earthset and sunrise and concluding with the time Apollo 13 reestablished radio contact with Mission Control. Also depicted is the path of the free return trajectory around the Moon, and a continuous view of the Moon throughout that path. All views have been sped up for timing purposes — they are not shown in "real-time."

New time-lapse movies from NASA’s NEOWISE mission give astronomers the opportunity to see objects, like stars and black holes, as they move and change over time. The videos include previously hidden brown dwarfs, a feeding black hole, a dying star, a star-forming region, and a brightening star. They combine more than 10 years of NEOWISE observations and 18 all-sky images, enabling a long-term analysis and a deeper understanding of the universe. 0:44 – NEOWISE all-sky scan animation 1:03 – Feeding black hole 1:14 – Pulsing star reaches the end of its life 1:21 – Protostars in star-forming region 1:34 – Brown dwarf moves across the sky 2:00 – Unexplained stellar brightening The NEOWISE mission uses a space telescope to hunt for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. Launched in December 2009 as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, the space telescope was originally designed to survey the sky in infrared, detecting asteroids, stars and some of the faintest galaxies in space. WISE did so successfully until completing its primary mission in February 2011. Observations resumed in December 2013, when the telescope was taken out of hibernation and re-purposed for the NEOWISE project as an instrument to study near-Earth objects, or NEOs, as well as more distant asteroids and comets.

Our Webb Space Telescope captures a cosmic ring, the team behind our upcoming Psyche mission, and the unique thing about a star that was ripped apart by a black hole … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

A new NASA and Durham University simulation puts forth a different theory of the Moon’s origin – the Moon may have formed in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and a Mars sized-body were launched directly into orbit after the impact. The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon’s origins or other giant impacts.

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

In this video, measurements collected by the Waves instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa on Sept. 29, 2022 have been converted to an audible frequency. As the white line moves across the spectrogram, which is a visual way of representing signal strength over time, the variation of frequency of the plasma waves observed near Europa can be heard as the plasma density varies. The video shows data collected over approximately 1.5 hours during the Europa flyby. For more information about NASA’s Juno mission, visit: http://nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.com Details about the Europa flyby can be found at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-juno-will-perform-close-flyby-of-jupiter-s-icy-moon-europa Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/Univ of Iowa

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is filling sample tubes with rocky material on the Red Planet as the agency works on the next steps to get them safely back to Earth. The Mars Sample Return campaign would bring samples collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth for detailed study. The campaign involves an international interplanetary relay team, including the European Space Agency (ESA). These samples could answer a key question: did life ever exist on Mars? Aaron Yazzie, who works on the Mars Sample Return campaign, explains the work being done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to ensure the safe return of the sample tubes. For more information on Mars Sample Return,

In this artist’s rendition, we explore a metallic world named Psyche, an asteroid that offers a unique window into the building blocks of planet formation. The NASA Psyche mission launches in 2023 and will arrive at the asteroid Psyche, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, in 2026. The spacecraft, also named Psyche, will spend 21 months orbiting the asteroid, mapping it and studying its properties. The mission is led by Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies is providing a high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis.

NASA’s Lucy mission is heading to the Jupiter Trojans – two swarms of primitive asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit that may hold clues to the formation of the planets. Lucy launched on October 16, 2021. After a year in orbit around the Sun, it is returning home on its launch anniversary for the first of three Earth gravity assists. On October 16, 2022, Lucy will fly by the Earth like a partner in a swing dance, boosting its speed and elongating its orbit around the Sun. At 7:04 am, Eastern Time, Lucy will make its closest approach at just 219 miles above the planet: lower than the International Space Station. This exceptionally close shave will increase its velocity by four-and-a-half miles per second, setting Lucy on track to gain even more speed when it returns to Earth for its second gravity assist in December 2024

This video chronicles solar activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system.

A new Earth science mission, led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), will help communities plan for a better future by surveying the planet’s salt and freshwater bodies. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will measure the height of water in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the oceans. As climate change accelerates the water cycle, more communities around the world will be inundated with water while others won’t have enough. SWOT data will be used to improve flood forecasts and monitor drought conditions, providing essential information to water management agencies, civil engineers, universities, the U.S. Department of Defense, disaster preparedness agencies, and others who need to track water in their local areas. In this video, examples of how SWOT data will be used in these communities are shared by a National Weather Service representative in Oregon, an Alaska Department of Transportation engineer, researchers from the University of Oregon and University of North Carolina, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist working with the Department of Defense, and a JPL scientist working with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency. :30 - Flood Watches & Warnings - Portland, Oregon 1:08 - Water Management - Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon 2:05 - Protecting Infrastructure - Alaska 2:54 - National Security - Department of Defense 3:24 - Coastal Protection - Mississippi River Delta SWOT is expected to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in December 2022. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. To learn more about the mission, visit: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Thales Alenia Space