I love this photo that dropped into my email box this morning.  According to the NASA News Services:

NASA demonstrated that it can land an unmanned spacecraft on a rugged planetary surface in the pitch dark in a May 28, 2014 free-flight test of the Morpheus prototype lander and Autonomous Landing Hazard Avoidance Technology, or ALHAT. 

Further explanation from NASA:

Project Morpheus tests NASA’s ALHAT and an engine that runs on liquid oxygen and methane, which are green propellants. These new capabilities could be used in future efforts to deliver cargo to planetary surfaces. The landing facility provides the lander with the kind of field necessary for realistic testing, complete with rocks, craters and hazards to avoid. Morpheus’ ALHAT payload allows it to navigate to clear landing sites amidst rocks, craters and other hazards during its descent.

Regardless of how many times I see this photo or ones like it, the view is still awe-inspiring.  To look beyond the moon’s horizon to see our beautiful planet rising in the distance must have been a moving experience for the Apollo astronauts who took the first photos from that perspective.

Thanks, NASA!

The NASA photo of the day shows Neil Armstrong with an X-15 rocket-powered airplane he test-piloted in the early 1960’s, when I was a space-loving little boy.

NASA announced today that the Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA, has renamed the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.

What a view of the earth he has!  

Inside the Cupola, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, an Expedition 36 flight engineer, uses a 400mm lens on a digital still camera to photograph a target of opportunity on Earth some 250 miles below him and the International Space Station. Cassidy has been aboard the orbital outpost since late March and will continue his stay into September.

The NASA Picture of the Day site featured this incredible view of the Milky Way galaxy captured earlier this month over Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

The words of Psalm 8:3-5 come immediately to mind:

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.