NASA Concept Art and Other Images

[Mr Handlebars]

Some of the most interesting images available on the NASA website are artist renderings of space exploration concepts.

All of these images come from the NASA website and represent a small sample of the available images.

NASA N+3 Supersonic


This artist's rendering shows an advanced concept design of an environmentally friendly supersonic airframe and propulsion system. Credit: Lockheed Martin Corporation.


Click the thumbnail image to get the highest resolution version of each image.

[Mr Handlebars]

Multiple Whirlpools in a Sodium Gas Cloud



This image depicts the formation of multiple whirlpools in a sodium gas cloud. Scientists who cooled the cloud and made it spin created the whirlpools in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology laboratory, as part of NASA-funded research.



Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Stardust



Artist's rendering of the Stardust capsule's return to Earth. The Stardust spacecraft will bring back samples of interstellar dust, including recently discovered dust streaming into our Solar System from the direction of Sagittarius.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Stardust on approach



Artist's rendering of the Stardust spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched on February 7, 1999, from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket. The primary goal of Stardust is to collect dust and carbon-based samples during its closest encounter with Comet Wild 2 -- pronounced "Vilt 2" after the name of its Swiss discoverer.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Odyssey Detecting Ice



This artist's rendering portrays ice-rich layers in the soils of Mars being detected by instruments aboard NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Constellation Program



NASA's Constellation Program is getting to work on the new spacecraft that will return humans to the moon and blaze a trail to Mars and beyond. This artist's rendering represents a concept of a lunar lander, lunar rover and astronauts on the moon's surface. Earth is also visible in this rendering. (Depicts obsolete configuration.)
Image credit: John Frassanito and Associates


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Lunar exploration



An artists's rendering gives a possible preview of 21st century lunar base activity. A lunar surface crane removes a newly arrived habitation module from an expendable lunar lander.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

International Space Station



Computer-generated artist's rendering of the International Space Station as of May 29, 2009.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Hypersonic Flight Vehicle X-43B



An artist's rendering of the air-breathing, hypersonic X-43B, the third and largest of NASA's Hyper-X series flight demonstrators, which could fly later this decade. Revolutionizing the way we gain access to space is NASA's primary goal for the Hypersonic Investment Area, managed for NASA by the Advanced Space Transportation Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.

[Mr Handlebars]

Dusty Beginnings of a Star



This artist's rendering gives us a glimpse into a cosmic nursery as a star is born from the dark, swirling dust and gas of this cloud. Stars form when dark dust from the cloud begins to clump together under the influence of its own gravity. The infalling material forms a disk as it spirals inward, which feeds material onto the forming star at its center. Jets of material that shoot from the inner disk and protostar herald its birth.


Click the thumbnail image to get highest resolution version.