Photo Essays
The Space Sorority: Fifty years of Women in Orbit
The first man on the moon was a character in popular culture decades—even centuries, perhaps—before Neil Armstrong actually filled the role. The assumption was...
Cockroaches, Sponges and Snakes: The Top 10 New Species
So the news we report at Ecocentric is often of the doomy sort: overfishing, extinct species, killer heat waves, deadly disasters, that sort of thing. You can’t...
Apollo 13: LIFE With the Lovell Family During ‘NASA’s Finest Hour’
The story of NASA’s Apollo 13 mission has been told so well, so many times, across so many types of media, that there’s little point in rehashing the details...
Home, Sweet Home: In Praise of ‘Blue Marble’
It was not the first jaw-dropping picture of Earth from outer space. That title legitimately belongs to “Earthrise,” a photograph of our lively blue planet...
LIFE With the Astrochimps: Early Stars of the Space Race
On the morning of January 31, 1961, in south Florida, a 5-year-old chimpanzee — dubbed “Ham” by his handlers — ate a breakfast of baby cereal, condensed milk,...
LIFE: Up Close With Apollo 11
No photographer spent more time with the Apollo 11 astronauts — especially in the months leading up to the history-making, world-changing July 1969 mission to...
NASA's New Mars Rover 'Curiosity'
Photos from inside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where technicians and engineers tested the vehicle at the center of NASA's next mission to Mars.
NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour Makes its Final Landing
A gallery of the legendary shuttle's 25th and final landing
NASA's Great Moonbuggy Race
An annual competition challenges students to design and build vehicles that address the same problems faced by the scientists who created the original Apollo...
Window on Infinity: The Month in Space and a Day of Remembrance
There’s a permanence to space that far exceeds the fleeting lives of the people who come to explore it. This never seems truer than when we remember the people...
Forty Years Later: Apollo 17′s Final Footprints
The thinking 40 years ago was simple: After six lunar landings in less than three and a half years, humanity was clearly on its way to becoming a multi-world...
The Ares Rocket Launches
NASA celebrates the successful test of a mission prototype
America's Space Shuttle Program
As NASA prepares for its final shuttle mission, a look at more than three decades of triumphs and tragedies
Patterns of Mars
A high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures the abstract beauty of the Martian landscape
Journey to Saturn
NASA guided its Cassini spacecraft within 30 miles of one of the ringed planet's moons
The X-48B
NASA, Boeing and the U.S. Air Force are teaming up to develop a Blended-Wing Body aircraft for the military
Photos: Striking New Images of Mercury
NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging mission (MESSENGER) delivers striking images of the surface of the planet closest to the sun...
Amateur Chinese Inventor Builds Awesome Apocalypse Capsules
Inspired by Roland Emmerich’s science fiction drama ’2012,’ and just in time for the end of the Mayan calendar, amateur inventor Liu Qiyuan developed an...
Magnificent Seven: America’s Mercury Astronauts
On the anniversary of the April day in 1959 when NASA announced the Mercury 7 to the world, LIFE.com offers a gallery of pictures from the early days, when...
What the Mars Phoenix Lander Saw
After a safe landing in the Red Planet's northern polar region, NASA's probe searched for signs of water — and the possibility of life
