The image features the interacting galaxy pair IC 1623, which lies around 275 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). The two galaxies are in the final stages of merging, and astronomers expect a powerful inflow of gas to ignite a frenzied burst of star formation in the resulting compact starburst galaxy.

In this June 2021 image, our Sun's glint beams off the Indian Ocean as the International Space Station orbited 269 miles above south of western Australia.

Spacewalkers Shane Kimbrough of NASA (left) and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency worked to install new roll out solar arrays on the space station.

NASA Expedition 65 astronaut Shane Kimbrough is pictured during the Friday, June 18, 2021, spacewalk.

As millions of people across the United States experienced a total eclipse as the umbra, or moon’s shadow passed over them, only six people witnessed the umbra from space. The space station crossed the path of the eclipse three times as it orbited above the continental United States at an altitude of 250 miles.

Cassini gazes across the icy rings of Saturn toward the icy moon Tethys, whose night side is illuminated by Saturnshine, or sunlight reflected by the planet.

This striking Jovian vista was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward the night side of Saturn's moon Titan in a view that highlights the extended, hazy nature of the moon's atmosphere.

Dwarf galaxy NGC 5949 sits at a distance of around 44 million light-years from us, placing it within the Milky Way’s cosmic neighborhood.

The thin sliver of Saturn's moon Prometheus lurks near ghostly structures in Saturn's narrow F ring in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik photographed Super Typhoon Noru on August 1, 2017, as the International Space Station passed overhead. He shared images of the massive storm on social media, writing, "Super Typhoon #Noru, amazing the size of this weather phenomenon, you can almost sense its power from 250 miles above."

This mini-panorama combines two photographs taken by Apollo 15 lunar module pilot Jim Irwin, from the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) site, at the end of the second Apollo 15 moonwalk on August 1, 1971. Mission commander David R. Scott is leaning to his right and is putting down the Apollo Lunar Surface drill.

The Soyuz MS-05 rocket is launched with Expedition 52 flight engineer Sergei Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos, flight engineer Randy Bresnik of NASA, and flight engineer Paolo Nespoli of ESA (European Space Agency), Friday, July 28, 2017 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

This false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft gazes toward the rings beyond Saturn's sunlit horizon.

Tucked away in the small northern constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs) is the galaxy NGC 4242.

This photograph of the Lunar Module at Tranquility Base was taken by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission, from the rim of Little West Crater on the lunar surface. Armstrong's shadow and the shadow of the camera are visible in the foreground. This is the furthest distance from the lunar module traveled by either astronaut while on the moon.

When astronauts return to Earth from destinations beyond the moon in NASA’s Orion spacecraft and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, they’ll still need to safely get out of the spacecraft and back on dry land. Using the waters off the coast of Galveston, a NASA and Department of Defense team tested Orion exit procedures on July 10-14, 2017.

AS-203 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The Apollo AS-203 mission was an uncrewed test of the vehicle’s second stage, the S-IVB stage, and the instrument unit of the Saturn V to obtain flight information under orbital conditions.

NASA astronaut Jack Fischer photographed the SpaceX Dragon capsule as it reentered Earth's atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California at 8:12 a.m. EDT, July 3, 2017. Fischer commented, "Beautiful expanse of stars-but the “long” orange one is SpaceX-11 reentering!"

Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA photographed the glowing nighttime lights of an aurora from his vantage point in the International Space Station's cupola module on June 19, 2017. Part of the station's solar array is also visible.

By combining the power of a "natural lens" in space with the capability of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made a surprising discovery—the first example of a compact yet massive, fast-spinning, disk-shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the big bang.