Hailey,Hannah 2/17/09 Period 4

A new Progress cargo carrier launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday

The sun blazes with energy. On its surface, magnetic forces create loops and streams of gas that extend tens of thousands of miles or kilometers into space. This image was made by photographing ultraviolet radiation given off by atoms of iron gas that are hotter than 9 million degrees F (5 million degrees C).

The planet Mercury was first photographed in detail on March 29, 1974, by the U.S. probe Mariner 10. The probe was about 130,000 miles (210,000 kilometers) from Mercury

The surface of Venus was scanned with radar waves beamed from orbiting space probes to produce this image. The colors are based on photos taken by probes that landed on Venus

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet.

The planet Mars, like Earth, has clouds in its atmosphere and a deposit of ice at its north pole. But unlike Earth, Mars has no liquid water on its surface. The rustlike color of Mars comes from the large amount of iron in the planet's soil. Image credit:

The layers of dense clouds around Jupiter appear in a photograph of the planet taken by the Voyager 1 space probe. Image credit: JPL Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has more mass than the other planets combined. Like the other Jovian planets, it has gaseous outer layers and may have a rocky core. A huge storm system called the Great Red Spot in Jupiter's atmosphere is larger than Earth and has raged for hundreds of years.

Saturn is encircled by seven major rings. In this photograph, a section of the rings is hidden by the planet's shadow. The Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997 to study Saturn and its rings and satellites, captured this natural color image as it approached the planet in 2004.

Uranus was the first planet discovered with a telescope. German-born English astronomer William Herschel found it in He at first thought he had discovered a comet. Almost 200 years later, scientists detected 10 narrow rings around Uranus when the planet moved in front of a star and the rings became visible. Voyager 2 studied Uranus and its rings and moons close-up in 1986.

The blue clouds of Neptune are mostly frozen methane. The other object shown is Neptune's moon Triton. Image credit: NASA/JPL Neptune was first observed in 1846 by German astronomer Johann G. Galle after other astronomers predicted its position by studying how it affected Uranus's orbit. In 1989, Voyager 2 found that Neptune had a storm system called the Great Dark Spot, similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. But five years later, in 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope found that the Great Dark Spot had vanished. Neptune has four narrow rings, one of which has clumps of matter. Neptune's moon Triton is one of the largest in the solar system and has volcanoes that emit plumes of frozen nitrogen.

Pluto is so far from Earth that even powerful telescopes reveal little detail of its surface. The Hubble Space Telescope gathered the light for the pictures of Pluto shown here. Image credit:

The moon's surface shows striking contrasts of light and dark. The light areas are rugged highlands. The dark zones were partly flooded by lava when volcanoes erupted billions of years ago.

An illustration, top, depicts the catastrophic destruction of a star by a black hole, an event confirmed by observations from two X-ray Observatories

Astronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are seeing frequent blasts from a stellar remnant 30,000 light-years away.

In 1609, Galileo improved the newly invented telescope, turned it toward the heavens, and revolutionized our view of the universe. In celebration of the 400th anniversary of this milestone, 2009 has been designated as the International Year of Astronomy.

Twenty-five years ago American astronauts performed the first untethered excursions. Read more historical facts in This Month in Exploration.

Composite image of the supernova remnant W49B

NASA studies the universe from the smallest particles of matter and energy to the biggest questions of the evolution and structure of the cosmos.

Engineers from JPL and students at Caltech have designed and tested a versatile, low-mass robot that can rappel off cliffs and travel nimbly over steep and rocky terrain.