
The third Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) water landing test conducted at the Hydro Impact Basin at NASA Langley Research Center. This test represented the worst-case scenario for landing -- inversion.

The successful first drop test of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) boilerplate test article, or BTA, July 12, 2011. The BTA, which weighs 22,700 pounds (10,297 kg) was going about 24 mph (38.6 kph) at impact. (mp4)

NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 12:25 p.m. EDT, Aug. 8, 2011, on a five-year journey to Jupiter.

Atlantis lands at NASA's Kennedy Space Center before dawn on July 21, 2011, wrapping up the mission of the space shuttle program.

Atlantis launches on the final space shuttle mission, delivering supplies to the International Space Station.

An idea born in unsettled times becomes a feat of engineering excellence. The most complex machine ever built to bring humans to and from space and eventually, construct the next stop on the road to space exploration.

Unprecedented video shows the station together with the space shuttle, the vehicle that helped build the complex during the last decade.

Endeavour launches on its final mission, delivering the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Ron Garan and Russian cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, April 4.