On May 28, 1959, a Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile provided by a U.S. Army team in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, launched a nose cone carrying Baker, A South American squirrel monkey and Able, An American-born rhesus monkey. This photograph shows Able after recovery of the nose cone of the Jupiter rocket by U.S.S. Kiowa.

A squirrel monkey, Able, is being ready for placement into a capsule for a preflight test of Jupiter, AM-18 mission. AM-18 was launched on May 28, 1959 and also carried a rhesus monkey, Baker, into suborbit.

Jupiter (AM-18), suborbital primate flight with Able and Baker as its payload, being ready for launch, May 28, 1959

The capsule ready to be installed in the nose cone of Jupiter, AM-18, for pre-flight test, May 18, 1959. The capsule carried monkeys, Baker and Able, as the payload of AM-18 mission

On May 28, 1958, Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile provided by U.S. Army team in Huntsville, Alabama, launched a nose cone carrying Baker, a South American squirrel monkey and Able, an American-born rhesus monkey. Baker, pictured here and commonly known as "Miss Baker", was later given a home at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center until her death on November 29, 1984. Able died in 1958. (Photo - Courtesy of Huntsville/Madison County Public Library)

This image of the dark side of the Jovian moon Ganymede was obtained by the Stellar Reference Unit star camera aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft during its June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon. Usually used to the spacecraft on course, the navigation camera was able to obtain an image of the moon's dark side (the side opposite the Sun) because it was bathed in the dim light scattered off Jupiter; the camera operates exceptionally well in low-light conditions. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24682

NASA's Psyche spacecraft captured multiple star and planet images in late January 2025 that include notable appearances by Mars, Jupiter, and the Jovian moons Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. The planned observation by Psyche's imaging instrument was part of a periodic maintenance and calibration test for the twin cameras that make up the imager instrument. Scientists on the imaging team, led by Arizona State University, also took images of the bright stars Vega and Canopus, which have served as standard calibration sources for astronomers for decades. The team is also using the data to assess the effects of minor wiggles or "jitter" in the spacecraft's pointing system as it points the cameras to different places in the sky. The observations of Jupiter and Mars also help the team determine how the cameras respond to solar system objects that shine by reflected sunlight, just like the Psyche asteroid. The starfield pictures shown here are long-exposure (five-second) images captured by each camera. By over-exposing Jupiter to bring out some of the background stars in the Taurus constellation, the imagers were able to capture Jupiter's fainter Galilean moons as well. The image was captured by the Psyche mission's primary camera, Imager-A, on Jan. 30. The image was obtained using the camera's "clear" filter, to provide maximum sensitivity for both bright and faint stars and solar system objects. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26563

This image from NASA's Juno spacecraft provides a never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter's south pole. The JunoCam instrument acquired the view on August 27, 2016, when the spacecraft was about 58,700 miles (94,500 kilometers) above the polar region. At this point, the spacecraft was about an hour past its closest approach, and fine detail in the south polar region is clearly resolved. Unlike the equatorial region's familiar structure of belts and zones, the poles are mottled by clockwise and counterclockwise rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes. The south pole has never been seen from this viewpoint, although the Cassini spacecraft was able to observe most of the polar region at highly oblique angles as it flew past Jupiter on its way to Saturn in 2000. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21032

This representation depicts how NASA's Juno mission obtained gravity science data of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The Juno spacecraft flew twice over the crimson vortex in 2019 at low altitudes with the goal of picking up its subtle gravitational signal. The concentration of mass related to the powerful winds surrounding the Great Red Spot induced a minute Doppler shift in the spacecraft's radio signals that could be measured by a NASA's Deep Space Network tracking antenna on Earth. With Juno traveling at about 130,000 mph (209,000 kph) over Jupiter's cloud deck, mission scientists were able to measure velocity changes as small 0.01 millimeter per second This enabled them to constrain the depth of the Great Red Spot to about 186 miles (300 kilometers) below the cloud tops. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24820

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- At Astrotech, photographers dressed in clean-room suits are able to shoot the Dawn spacecraft in its entirety before it is prepared for launch. Seen on each side are the folded solar array panels. At the top is the high gain antenna, covered by a sun shade. Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch by investigating in detail the largest protoplanets that have remained intact since their formations: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. They reside in the extensive zone between Mars and Jupiter together with many other smaller bodies, called the asteroid belt. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

JunoCam, the public engagement camera aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft, captured these views of Jupiter's moon Ganymede during a close pass on June 7, 2021. JunoCam was able to obtain significantly higher quality images compared to those taken by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1979 (upper left). In these images, JunoCam revealed 12 paterae – broad, shallow bowl-shaped features on a planetary body's surface – only two of which are evident in the Voyager data. These features were likely formed by late-stage volcanic processes. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25721

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- At Astrotech, photographers dressed in clean-room suits are able to shoot the Dawn spacecraft in its entirety before it is prepared for launch. Seen on each side are the folded solar array panels. At the top is the high gain antenna, covered by a sun shade. Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch by investigating in detail the largest protoplanets that have remained intact since their formations: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. They reside in the extensive zone between Mars and Jupiter together with many other smaller bodies, called the asteroid belt. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

This computer-generated image is based on an infrared image of Jupiter's north polar region that was acquired on February 2, 2017, by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno during the spacecraft's fourth pass over Jupiter. The image shows the structure of the cyclonic pattern observed over Jupiter's North pole: a central cyclone surrounded by eight circumpolar cyclones with diameters ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers) across. JIRAM is able to collect images in the infrared wavelengths around 5 micrometers (µm) by measuring the intensity of the heat coming out of the planet. The heat from a planet that is radiated into space is called the radiance. This image is an enhancement of the original JIRAM image. In order to give the picture a 3-D shape, the enhancement starts from the idea that where the radiance has its highest value, there are no clouds and JIRAM can see deeper into the atmosphere. Consequently, all the other areas of the image are originally shaded more or less by clouds of different thickness. Then, to create these pictures, the originals have been inverted to give the thicker clouds the whitish color and the third dimension as the clouds we normally see here in the Earth's atmosphere. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22336

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- At Astrotech, photographers dressed in clean-room suits are able to shoot the Dawn spacecraft in its entirety before it is prepared for launch. Seen on each side are the folded solar array panels. At the top on the near side is the "box," containing the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, which is designed to measure how much radiation of different "colors" is reflected or emitted by an object. Above it are the framing cameras, which are the scientific imaging system of the Dawn Mission. Dawn's goal is to characterize the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest epoch by investigating in detail the largest protoplanets that have remained intact since their formations: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. They reside in the extensive zone between Mars and Jupiter together with many other smaller bodies, called the asteroid belt. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

These Jupiter photographs are part of a set taken by NASA Voyager 1 on December 10 and 11, 1978 from a distance of 83 million km 52 million miles or more than half the distance from the Earth to the sun. At this range, Voyager 1 is able to record more detail on the giant planet than the very best ground-based telescopes. The highest resolution ever obtained on the Jovian disk was recorded by Pioneer 11 four years ago. Voyager, however, has longer focal-length optics than Pioneer, and while nearly three months from encounter (~ March 1979) was able to achieve higher resolution than that obtained by Pioneer only 24 hours from its encounter on 3 December 1974. Jupiter's colorful and turbulent atmosphere is evident in these photographs. The entire visible surface of the planet is made up of multiple layers of clouds, composed primarily of ammonia ice crystals colored by small amounts of materials of unknown composition. The Great Red Spot, seen to the lower left of 2 and lower right of 3, is now recovering from a period of relative inconspicuousness. An atmospheric system larger than the Earth and more than 100 years old, the Great Red Spot remains a mystery and a challenge to Voyager instruments. A bright convective cloud (center of and right of center in 4) displays a plume which has been swept westward (to the left) by local currents in the planet's equatorial wind system. Below and to the left and right of the Great Red Spot are a pair of white oval clouds; a third can be seen in 1. All three were formed almost 40 years ago and are the second oldest class of discrete features identified in the Jovian atmosphere. Each of the pictures was produced from blue, green, and orange originals in JPL's Image Processing Laboratory. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00454

This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope -- called a spectrum -- tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 209458b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of the first spectra of an alien world. A spectrum is created when an instrument called a spectrograph cracks light from an object open into a rainbow of different wavelengths. Patterns or ripples within the spectrum indicate the presence, or absence, of molecules making up the object. Astronomers using Spitzer's spectrograph were able to obtain infrared spectra for two so-called "transiting" hot-Jupiter planets using the "secondary eclipse" technique. In this method, the spectrograph first collects the combined infrared light from the planet plus its star, then, as the planet is eclipsed by the star, the infrared light of just the star. Subtracting the latter from the former reveals the planet's own rainbow of infrared colors. When astronomers first saw the infrared spectrum above, they were shocked. It doesn't look anything like what theorists had predicted. For example, theorists thought there'd be signatures of water in the wavelength ranges of 8 to 9 microns. The fact that water is not detected might indicate that it is hidden under a thick blanket of high, dry clouds. In addition, the spectrum shows signs of silicate dust -- tiny grains of sand -- in the wavelength range of 9 to 10 microns. This suggests that the planet's skies could be filled with high clouds of dust unlike anything seen in our own solar system. There is also an unidentified molecular signature at 7.78 microns. Future observations using Spitzer's spectrograph should be able to determine the nature of the mysterious feature. This spectrum was produced by Dr. Jeremy Richardson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and his colleagues. The data were taken by Spitzer's infrared spectrograph on July 6 and 13, 2005. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09198

This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope -- called a spectrum -- tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 209458b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of the first spectra of an alien world. A spectrum is created when an instrument called a spectrograph cracks light from an object open into a rainbow of different wavelengths. Patterns or ripples within the spectrum indicate the presence, or absence, of molecules making up the object. Astronomers using Spitzer's spectrograph were able to obtain infrared spectra for two so-called "transiting" hot-Jupiter planets using the "secondary eclipse" technique. In this method, the spectrograph first collects the combined infrared light from the planet plus its star, then, as the planet is eclipsed by the star, the infrared light of just the star. Subtracting the latter from the former reveals the planet's own rainbow of infrared colors. When astronomers first saw the infrared spectrum above, they were shocked. It doesn't look anything like what theorists had predicted. For example, theorists thought there'd be signatures of water in the wavelength ranges of 8 to 9 microns. The fact that water is not detected might indicate that it is hidden under a thick blanket of high, dry clouds. In addition, the spectrum shows signs of silicate dust -- tiny grains of sand -- in the wavelength range of 9 to 10 microns. This suggests that the planet's skies could be filled with high clouds of dust unlike anything seen in our own solar system. There is also an unidentified molecular signature at 7.78 microns. Future observations using Spitzer's spectrograph should be able to determine the nature of the mysterious feature. This spectrum was produced by Dr. Jeremy Richardson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and his colleagues. The data were taken by Spitzer's infrared spectrograph on July 6 and 13, 2005. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09197

Photographed on 09/22/1960. -- An examination of the Aerojet-General "Aerobee 150A" propulsion system in February 1960. James Hansen described this as follows: "As for the technical definition of the rocket...the Langley engineers tried to keep developmental costs and time to a minimum by selecting components from off-the-shelf hardware. the majority of Scout's components were to come from an inventory of solid-fuel rockets produced for the military, although everyone involved understood that some improved motors would also have to be developed under contract. By early 1959, after intensive technical analysis and reviews, Langley settled on a design and finalized the selection of the major contractors. The rocket's 40-inch-diameter first stage was to be a new "Algol" motor, a combination of the Jupiter Senior and the navy Polaris produced by the Aerojet General Corporation, Sacramento, California. The 31-inch-diameter second stage, "Castor," was derived from the army's Sergeant and was to be manufactured by the Redstone Division of the Thiokol company in Huntsville, Alabama. the motor for the 30-inch-diameter third stage, "Antares," evolved under NASA contract from the ABL X248 design into a new version called the X254 (and subsequently into the X259); it was built under contract to NASA by ABL, a U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance facility operated by the Hercules Powder Company, Cumberland, Maryland. the final upper-stage propulsion unit, "Altair," which was 25.7 inches in diameter (34 inches at the heat shield), amounted to an improved edition of the X248 that was also manufactured by ABL." -- Published in James R. Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center From Sputnik to Apollo, NASA SP-4308, pp.200-201.

This computer-generated image shows the structure of the cyclonic pattern observed over Jupiter's south pole. Like in the North, Jupiter's south pole also contains a central cyclone, but it is surrounded by five cyclones with diameters ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 miles (5,600 to 7,000 kilometers) in diameter. Almost all the polar cyclones (at both poles), are so densely packed that their spiral arms come in contact with adjacent cyclones. However, as tightly spaced as the cyclones are, they have remained distinct, with individual morphologies over the seven months of observations detailed in the paper. The data used in generating this image was collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard the Juno spacecraft during the fourth Juno pass over Jupiter on Feb. 2, 2017. JIRAM is able to collect images in the infrared wavelengths around 5 micrometers (µm) by measuring the intensity of the heat coming out of the planet. The heat from the planet is radiated to space and it is called radiance. This image is an enhancement of the original JIRAM image. In order to give the picture a 3-D shape, the enhancement starts from the idea that the radiance has its highest value where there are no clouds and JIRAM can see deeper into the atmosphere. Consequently, all the other areas of the image are originally shaded more or less by clouds of different thickness. Then, to create these pictures, the originals have been inverted to give the thicker clouds the whitish color and the third dimension that we see with normal clouds here in the Earth's atmosphere. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA22337

This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope -- called a spectrum -- tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 189733b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of the first spectra of an alien world. A spectrum is created when an instrument called a spectrograph cracks light from an object open into a rainbow of different wavelengths. Patterns or ripples within the spectrum indicate the presence, or absence, of molecules making up the object. Astronomers using Spitzer's spectrograph were able to obtain infrared spectra for two so-called "transiting" hot-Jupiter planets using the "secondary eclipse" technique. In this method, the spectrograph first collects the combined infrared light from the planet plus its star, then, as the planet is eclipsed by the star, the infrared light of just the star. Subtracting the latter from the former reveals the planet's own rainbow of infrared colors. Astronomers were perplexed when they first saw the infrared spectrum above. It doesn't look anything like what theorists had predicted. Theorists thought the spectra of hot, Jupiter-like planets like this one would be filled with the signatures of molecules in the planets' atmospheres. But the spectrum doesn't show any molecules, and is instead what astronomers call "flat." For example, theorists thought there'd be a strong signature of water in the form of a big drop in the wavelength range between 7 and 10 microns. The fact that water is not detected may indicate that it is hidden underneath a thick blanket of high, dry clouds. The average brightness of the spectrum is also a bit lower than theoretical predictions, suggesting that very high winds are rapidly moving the terrific heat of the noonday sun from the day side of HD 189733b to the night side. This spectrum was produced by Dr. Carl Grillmair of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and his colleagues. The data were taken by Spitzer's infrared spectrograph on November 22, 2006. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09199

This frame from a video depicts artist concepts of each of the seven planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf stars. Over 21 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the drop in light as each planet passed in front of the star. Spitzer was able to identify a total of seven rocky worlds, including three in the habitable zone where life is possible. The study established the planets' size, distance from their sun and, for some of them, their approximate mass and density. It also established that some, if not all, these planets are tidally locked, meaning one face of the planet permanently faces their sun. The planets appear in the order of innermost to outermost planets. These artist's concepts were designed as follows: TRAPPIST-1b, closest to the star, was modeled on Jupiter's moon Io, which has volcanic features due to strong gravitational tugs. TRAPPIST-1c is shown as a rocky, warm world with a small ice cap on the side that never faces the star. TRAPPSIT-1d is rocky and has water only in a thin band along the terminator, dividing the day side and night side. TRAPPIST-1e and TRAPPIST-1f are both shown covered in water, but with progressively larger ice caps on the night side. TRAPPIST-1g is portrayed with an atmosphere like Neptune's, although it is still a rocky world. The farthest planet, TRAPPIST-1h, is shown as covered in ice, similar to Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The background stars are what you would see if you were in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Orion passes behind the planets, recognizable but distorted from what we're familiar with, in addition to Taurus and Pleiades. A video is available at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21468

The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa features a widely varied landscape, including ridges, bands, small rounded domes and disrupted spaces that geologists called "chaos terrain." This newly reprocessed image, along with two others along the same longitude (see PIA23871 and PIA23872), were taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on Sept. 26, 1998, and reveal details of diverse surface features on Europa. All three images were captured along the same longitude of Europa as Galileo flew by on Sept. 26, 1998, in the spacecraft's 17th orbit of Jupiter (orbit E17). It was the eighth of Galileo's 11 targeted flybys of Europa. High-resolution images were taken through a clear filter in grayscale (black and white). Using lower-resolution, color images of the same region from a different flyby (orbit E14), technicians recently mapped color onto the higher-resolution images. (Orbit E14 resulted in this global view of Europa (see PIA19048). The color information gathered on that flyby was used to reprocess these new images.) Enhanced-color images like these allow scientists to highlight geologic features with different colors, which are related to chemical compositions of the surface. Areas that appear light blue or white are made up of relatively pure water ice, and reddish areas have more non-ice materials. This image shows a region of blocky chaos terrain, where the surface has broken apart into many smaller chaos blocks that are surrounded by featureless matrix material. Many of the chaos blocks have moved sideways, rotated, or tilted before being refrozen into their new locations, and some larger blocks preserve features of the pre-existing terrain before it was broken up. Using these features as clues, scientists have been able to reconstruct some chaos regions like jjgsaw puzzles to track the motion of blocks. Cutting through the chaos terrain near the bottom, from left to right, is a broad flat band. Called Agenor Linea, it is one of the longest bands on Europa and is distinctive for its two-color appearance, with a bright region at the top and a darker region below. Another rare bright band, Katreus Linea, cuts across the top portion of this image. The image resolution is 243 yards (222 meters) per pixel, and this image depicts an area about 170 miles (280 kilometers) across. This image was produced by Mario Valenti at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23873