The Week in Space

NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al); Radio (NRAO/AUI/NSF); Optical (NASA/STScI)

A glimpse at the early cosmos? Stars form in Henize 2-10, a dwarf starburst galaxy located about 30 million light years from Earth. (That's what's giving the star clusters in this galaxy their blue appearance.) Astronomers believe the conditions resemble that found during the Universe's earliest days.

Solar eruptions on the sun as a filament on its left side became unstable and erupted, while a a coronal mass ejection on the right shot into space.

About 1,600 light-years away AM78 is nestled in the nebula-rich constellation Orion.

NASA/IRTF/JPL-Caltech/University of Oxford

NASA released these side-by-side images of particle debris in Jupiter's atmosphere (bright smudges at lower left) after an object hurtled into the atmosphere on July 19, 2009. The image at left was captured July 20, 2009; at right, Aug. 16, 2009.

NASA, ESA, M. Regan & B. Whitmore (STScI), & R. Chandar (U. Toledo)

The Hubble Space Telescope imaged the spiral galaxy M51 in infrared light to highlight the dust that traces the dense gas that best forms stars. This was part of a larger investigation into the process by which galaxies form stars.

Opportunity took this photo of the Challenger Memorial Station, at Meridiani Planum, Mars. The color balance has been set to approximate the colors that a human eye would see. Opportunity is celebrating its seventh anniversary on the Red Planet, having landed on Jan. 25, 2004

Ripples form on supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists still don't have a good answer to explain the ripples.

Artist's illustration of NASA's NanoSail-D which unfurled a thin, 10 square meter reflective sail on January 20th, becoming the first solar sail spacecraft in low Earth orbit

The south pole of Phobos, the closest moon to Mars. Visible on the small moon's unusually dark surface are many circular craters, long chains of craters, and strange streaks.

Over 20 million light-years away,NGC 660 lies near the center of this skyscape within the constellation Pisces.

Mars' Apollo 1 HillsAn image taken from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's PanCam at the spacecraft's landing site shows the nearby hills named after the crew of Apollo 1--Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. The crew perished in flash fire during a launch pad test of the spacecraft at Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 27, 1967.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden participates in a wreath-laying ceremony as part of NASA's Day of Remembrance, Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011, at Arlington National Cemetery.