Where NASA posts its best space images, and how to find them

Last task The Artemis II astronauts’ journey to the Moon was memorable, inspiring, and scientifically important for many reasons. It also brought us a treasure trove of new images and videos ready to be added to NASA’s vast content library.

Consider this image of Earth from more than 250,000 miles away, for example, taken from the far side of the moon. Or these widely circulated images of our planet from inside the Orion capsule, taken using iPhone 17 Pro Max phones. It’s truly out-of-this-world footage, but captured using a device many of us have in our pockets.

These photos have been popping up all over social media, but what you may not know is that NASA is making its massive library of photos and videos available for anyone to dig through, like and reshare. Because NASA is funded by the United States government, most published media is released into the public domain.

This is the good news. The bad news is that it’s not immediately clear where this library is located and how you can access it.

If you’re ready to browse decades of NASA’s stunning images and videos—from giant star clusters to spacesuit designs—here’s how to get started. However, a word of warning: it’s easy to get lost for hours within these groups.

NASA image and video library

NASA Comprehensive Library Portal.

Courtesy of David Nield

Let’s start with the largest resource: NASA’s photo and video library. This is where you’ll find every photo, video and audio NASA wants to share, from astronaut photos and space conferences to planetary snapshots and satellite images. By default, you can see your most recent uploads first, but you can also click on them Trending and popular To see content that has been viewed frequently over the years.

Click on the photo or video here for more information about it, including what it shows and when it was taken. Some of the captions here are mini-articles, and a lot of the content on this portal comes with EXIF ​​data, which will be of interest to photographers (or anyone who wants to know which photos were taken with the iPhone 17 Pro Max).

As great as this resource is, it’s also difficult to sift through, unless you know specifically what to look for. You basically rely on the search box at the top, and popular keywords can return dozens and dozens of pages of results. Try to be as specific as possible with your search terms. Also use the keywords found in each photo and video listing to find related content.

NASA photos

Front page of NASA images.

Courtesy of David Nield

In addition to the NASA Photo and Video Library page, there is also NASA Photos – which includes a link to the photo and video library. (Those of you in the back, try to keep up.) NASA images aren’t as comprehensive as the photo and video library, but they’re better organized, and it’s easier to find up-to-date content here.