La Nuit des temps était à l'origine un scénario destiné à un film d'André Cayatte, envisagé comme une superproduction à l'américaine, avec les moyens nécessaires pour donner vie à un scénario qui relevait de la science-fiction avec effets spéciaux (dont des maquettes). En 1965, la production française, pourtant coutumière des coproductions coûteuses, se refusait à toute forme de projet de science-fiction. Le producteur se désista et Cayatte jeta l'éponge.

A ripple of bright blue gas threads through this galaxy like a misshapen lake system.

The Soyuz MS-09 rocket is launched with Soyuz Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos and astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA on June 6, 2018.

In early Martian summer, at the time NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this image, the dunes are almost free of their seasonal ice cover.

The swirling spiral to the lower left of the frame is far from the most interesting spectacle here — behind it sits a galaxy cluster.

The GRACE Follow-On spacecraft launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Tuesday, May 22, 2018.

When NASA’s Orion spacecraft launches around the Moon later this year, a suited manikin will be its passenger.

Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems and contractor Jacobs lower the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage – the largest part of the rocket – onto the mobile launcher.

In the darkness of the distant universe, these galaxies resemble glowing fireflies, flickering candles, charred embers floating up from a bonfire, and light bulbs softly shining.

The NASA InSight spacecraft launches onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V rocket, Saturday, May 5, 2018, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander designed to study the "inner space" of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.

"Guardian Angel" Pararescue specialists secure a covered life raft during an astronaut rescue training exercise. This exercise is part of preparation, with NASA's commercial partners Boeing and SpaceX, to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station aboard the Starliner and Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA's InSight Mars mission will help scientists understand the processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner solar system (including Earth) more than four billion years ago. InSight, the first planetary mission to take off from the West Coast, is targeted to launch Saturday, May 5 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

As our nearest star, the Sun bathes Earth in a steady stream of energetic particles, magnetic fields and radiation that can stimulate our atmosphere and light up the night sky, like the aurora borealis, or northern lights.

Saturn’s rings display their subtle colors in this view captured on Aug. 22, 2009, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

This colorful image, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting observatory’s 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universe’s extraordinary stellar tapestry of birth and destruction.

The Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph, or CHESS 4, was successfully launched on a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at 12:47 p.m. EDT, April 16 (4:47 a.m. local, April 17) from the Kwajalein Atoll in The Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Auroras are one of the many Earthly phenomena the crew of the International Space Station observe from their perch high above the planet.

These graceful arcs are a cosmic phenomenon known as an Einstein ring - created as the light from distant galaxies warps around an extremely large mass, like a galaxy cluster.

Gullies on Martian sand dunes, like these in Matara Crater, have been very active, with many flows in the last ten years.

Before there were computers and software that could stitch together digital images, they were printed on photo paper, trimmed by hand, and taped in place on a large black board.

TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is the next step in the search for planets outside of our solar system, including those that could support life.

An underlying population of infant stars embedded in the nebula NGC 346 are still forming from gravitationally collapsing gas clouds.

The Soyuz MS-08 rocket launched Wednesday, March 21, 2018, bringing three new crewmembers to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz MS-08 rocket is launched with Soyuz Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos and astronauts Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel of NASA, March 21, 2018, to join the crew of the Space Station.

In late Jan. 2018, NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) instrument was launched into space aboard a commercial satellite.

Just by determining how circular a given crater is – using pi and the crater’s perimeter and area – planetary geologists can reveal clues about how the crater was formed and the surface that was impacted.

Cassini captured this striking view of Saturn’s moon Dione on July 23, 2012.

The crew aboard the International Space Station have grown two batches of mixed greens (mizuna, red romaine lettuce and tokyo bekana cabbage), and are now running two Veggie facilities simultaneously.

Known as the 'Mother of Hubble,' Nancy Grace Roman is shown here at the Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago in 1948, where she was studying for her doctorate in astronomy.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-S) satellite sits on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, backdropped by the setting Sun. GOES-S is slated to lift off on March 1 at 5:02 p.m. EST.

The Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 54 crew members Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei of NASA and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018 (February 27 Eastern time).