Space Image of the Day Gallery (June 2016)

Splashdown for Orion

Wednesday, June 15, 2016: A prototype of NASA's Orion space capsule takes the plunge in this photo from a test drop at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia on June 8, 2016.

Over the Rainbow

Thursday, June 16, 2016: A rainbow curves over a radio dish just outside the city of Malargüe, Argentina in this stunning image by Diego Aloi on June 14, 2016. Malargüe's 35-meter installation is the European Space Agency's newest deep-space tracking station and provides links to missions such as Gaia, Mars Express, Rosetta and ExoMars.

-- Tariq Malik

Terminator

Friday, June 17, 2016: British astronaut Tim Peake took this spectacular photo of Earth's limb from the International Space Station as it flew high over the planet on June 14, 2016. "There are a few moments each time we cross the terminator when all we see is this – magical!" he wrote on Twitter.

-- Tariq Malik

Live, from West Texas!

Monday, June 20, 2016: Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard rocket makes a pinpoint landing to end its fourth successful test flight in West Texas on June 19, 2016. In a company first, Blue Origin webcast the New Shepard launch and landing live online via YouTube after announcing the launch the week prior. This flight tested a two-parachute landing for New Shepard's six-person crew capsule. The capsule also performed as expected, according to Blue Origin. You can see our videos from our full launch story here, and our full image gallery here.

-- Tariq Malik

Starry Cluster Close to Home

Tuesday, June 21, 2016: Deep in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor to our Milky Way Galaxy, lies this stunning globular cluster NGC 1854, seen here in a stunning new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope released on June 20, 2016. NGC 1854 is group of brilliant white and blue stars located about 135 000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado, or The Dolphinfish.

-- Tariq Malik

Strawberry Moon of 2016

Tuesday, June 22, 2016: The June full moon is sometimes known as the "Strawberry Moon." This series of images was taken on June 20, 2016, from Duluth, Minnesota's Park Point beach by space photographer Grant Johnson. The Superior Entry Lighthouse can be seen in the foreground. The "Strawberry Moon" of 2016 fell on the summer solstice, a coincidence that last occurred in 1948.

-- Calla Cofield

Glow Below

Thursday, June 23, 2016:NASA astronaut Jeff Williams captured several photos on April 25 that went into this composite view of sunset reflecting off of Earth's ocean. Williams is now commander of the International Space Station; he took command just before the departure of American astronaut Tim Kopra, British astronaut Tim Peake and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko Saturday, June 18. Three new crewmembers will arrive in July, bringing the complement aboard the station back up to six. — Sarah Lewin

Winter on Mars

Friday, June 24, 2016: It's late winter in Mars' southern hemisphere, so the carbon-dioxide coating crystallized on its sand dune surface has begun to defrost. The dark spots form from the escape of pressurized carbon dioxide gas. The image was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera March 27, 2016, at 15:31 local Mars time. — Sarah Lewin

Galileo Meets Ganymede

Monday, June 27, 2016: Twenty years ago today, on June 27, 1996, the Galileo spacecraft (the first space probe to orbit Jupiter) made its first close flyby of the moon Ganymede. This image was created in 2014 using data from Galileo, as well as the Voyager probes, and shows the geologic detail of the moon’s surface.
— Calla Cofield

Rocket Test Forms Blue Glass

Tuesday, June 28, 2016: The test-firing of a booster for NASA's Space Launch System megarocket in March 2015 turned sand on the ground to glass, as this photo shows. A similar test will take place at 10:05 a.m. EDT (1405 GMT) on June 28, 2016; you can watch it live