NASA concept art

Some of the most interesting images available on the NASA.gov website are artist renderings of space exploration concepts. Here are a few of my favorites...

NASA N+3 Supersonic

This artist's rendering shows an advanced concept design of an environmentally friendly supersonic airframe and propulsion system.

Stardust

Artist's rendering of the Stardust capsule's return to Earth. The Stardust spacecraft will bring back samples of interstellar dust, including recently discovered dust streaming into our Solar System from the direction of Sagittarius.

Odyssey Detecting Ice

This artist's rendering portrays ice-rich layers in the soils of Mars being detected by instruments aboard NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

Lunar exploration

An artists's rendering gives a possible preview of 21st century lunar base activity. A lunar surface crane removes a newly arrived habitation module from an expendable lunar lander.

International Space Station

Computer-generated artist's rendering of the International Space Station as of May 29, 2009.

Hypersonic Flight Vehicle X-43B

Air-breathing, hypersonic X-43B, the third and largest of NASA's Hyper-X series flight demonstrators, which could fly later this decade. 

Dusty Beginnings of a Star

A glimpse into a cosmic nursery as a star is born from the dark, swirling dust and gas of this cloud. Stars form when dark dust from the cloud begins to clump together under the influence of its own gravity. The infalling material forms a disk as it spirals inward, which feeds material onto the forming star at its center. Jets of material that shoot from the inner disk and protostar herald its birth.

Mars exploration

Planners feel the microscopic formations in Mars meteorite ALH84001, found in Antarctica, and the highly diverse samples of rocks believed to have been strewn about by ancient rivers seen at the Mars Pathfinder landing site, provide a strong motive for sending human exobiologists and geologists to the Red Planet.

Constellation Program

NASA's Constellation Program is getting to work on the new spacecraft that will return humans to the moon and blaze a trail to Mars and beyond.

Lunar vehicle

A concept of possible activities during future space exploration missions. It depicts a crew traverse at the lunar south pole.

Eclipsing Pulsar Promises Clues to Crushed Matter

Astronomers using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have found the first fast X-ray pulsar to be eclipsed by its companion star.

Sailing Among the Stars

A four-quadrant solar sail propulsion system, with payload. NASA is designing and developing such concepts, a sub-scale model of which may be tested on a future NMP 
mission.

Subsonic fixed wing aircraft

The potential design for a subsonic fixed wing aircraft that could enter service in the 2030-2035 timeframe (N+3).

21st Century Aerospace Vehicle

Advanced concepts NASA envisions for an aircraft of the future. Called the 21st Century Aerospace Vehicle, and sometimes nicknamed the Morphing Airplane, the concept includes a variety of smart technologies that could enable in-flight configuration changes for optimum flight characteristics.

Prehistoric Black Hole

Lunar Meteor Strike

Small but powerful meteor strike on the surface of the moon demonstrates a key concern for future lunar explorers -- mitigating potential risks from impact "ejecta," or the spray of debris that follows an impact, unimpeded by gravity or atmosphere.

Alien World

A gas-giant exoplanet transiting across the face of its star.

Birth of an Earth-like Planet

Neutron explosion

The IC 10 X-1 black hole

The IC 10 X-1 system, the black hole lies at the upper left and its companion star is on the right. The two objects orbit around a center of gravity once every 34.4 hours.The stellar companion is a type known as a Wolf-Rayet star. Such stars are highly evolved and destined to explode as supernovae. The black hole companion is shedding its outer envelope in a powerful wind, and some of this gas is captured by the black hole’s powerful gravity.