The Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse was rare in its long, uninterrupted path over land, which provided scientists with a rare chance to investigate the Sun and its influence on Earth in ways that aren’t usually possible. On Dec. 11, researchers discussed initial findings based on observations gathered during the eclipse.

During an engineering flight test of the Cloud-Aerosol Multi-Angle Lidar (CAMAL) instrument, a view from NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s ER-2 aircraft shows smoke plumes, from roughly 65,000 feet, produced by the Thomas Fire in Ventura County, California, around 1 p.m. PST on Dec. 5th, 2017.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik photographed Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo spacecraft at sunrise, prior to its departure from the International Space Station at 8:11 a.m., Dec. 6, 2017. Expedition 53 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA gave the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm the command to release Cygnus.

The Hubble Space Telescope peers into the distant universe to reveal a galaxy cluster called Abell 2537.

Dellingr is a shoebox-sized spacecraft built to show that CubeSat platforms could be cost-effective, reliable and capable of gathering highly robust science.

Orbital ATK's Cygnus resupply ship with its cymbal-ike UltraFlex solar arrays approaches the International Space Station on Nov. 14, 2017.

On November 9, 1967, the uncrewed Apollo 4 test flight made a great ellipse around Earth as a test of the translunar motors and of the high speed entry required of a crewed flight returning from the Moon.

As Cassini hurtled toward its fatal encounter with Saturn, the spacecraft turned to catch this final look at Saturn's moon Pandora next to the thin line of the F ring.

This Hubble infrared image is part of an observing program that imaged 41 massive galaxy clusters to find the brightest distant galaxies for theJames Webb Space Telescope to study.

Saturn's graceful lanes of orbiting ice -- its iconic rings -- wind their way around the planet to pass beyond the horizon in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This Hubble image shows what happens when two galaxies become one. The twisted cosmic knot seen here is NGC 2623 — or Arp 243 — and is located about 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Cancer (The Crab).

Jupiter’s moon Amalthea casts a shadow on the gas giant planet in this image captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Dawn brings the sight of Dream Chaser, Sierra Nevada Corporation's reusable spaceplane, as it sits on the runway at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.

The Apollo 7 Saturn IB launched from the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 34 at 11:03 a.m. October 11, 1968. This image show the tracking antenna on the left and a pad service structure on the right.

In 1973, the second crewed Skylab mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean following a successful 59-day mission in the orbiting laboratory.

The brightly lit limb of a crescent Enceladus looks ethereal against the blackness of space. This image is a composite of images taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 29, 2017, using filters that allow infrared, green, and ultraviolet light.

This picture of a crescent-shaped Earth and Moon - the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft - was recorded Sept. 18, 1977, by NASA's Voyager 1 when it was 7.25 million miles (11.66 million kilometers) from Earth. The moon is at the top of the picture and beyond the Earth as viewed by Voyager.

The Soyuz MS-06 spacecraft launches with Expedition 53 crewmembers Joe Acaba of NASA, Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos, and Mark Vande Hei of NASA from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, (Kazakh time) (Sept. 12, U.S. time).

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows a wave structure in Saturn's rings known as the Janus 2:1 spiral density wave.

The Voyager 1 aboard the Titan III/Centaur lifted off on September 5, 1977, joining its sister spacecraft, the Voyager 2, on a mission to the outer planets.