What Does NASA Do?

NASA's mission is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

To do that, thousands of people have been working around the world—and off of it—for 50 years, trying to answer some basic questions. What's out there in space? How do we get there? What will we find? What can we learn there, or learn just by trying to get there, that will make life better here on Earth?

NASA has been on the forefront within the federal government in embracing the use of social media technologies to enhance communication, collaboration, and information exchange in support of the Agency's mission. Engaging with people on X, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other sites is bringing the story of NASA to new audiences that may not otherwise connect with us.

A list of many of NASA’s social media accounts can be found at www.nasa.gov/social-media/

About NASA Images and NASA on The Commons

Through a competitive process, NASA selected The Internet Archive to organize a comprehensive online compilation of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video on the NASA Image and Video Library under a non-exclusive Space Act agreement, signed in July 2007. The NASA Image and Video Library is already making hundreds of thousands of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content available to the public, and the collection is growing daily at no cost to taxpayers.

All photographs on the NASAcommons Flickr account originate from the compilation of photos from The NASA Image and Video Library and other archived sources.

Image Usage Guidelines

These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA.

For information on usage rights please visit our NASA Media Usage Guidelines

All Images used must be credited.

For more complete coverage of NASA's mission please visit: www.nasa.gov.