The US space agency announced 12 winning images – four first, second and third place each in the award categories – all taken by its own photographers.
In one of the first shots, NASA photographer and researcher Jim Ross takes a selfie from inside F-15 Eagle fighter jet N897NA, which is being used as a test bed for flight research experiments.
Other images in all categories include a tour of a 120-foot wind tunnel, a walk on a fake lunar surface, and a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at sunrise.
In this snapshot, NASA photographer and researcher Jim Ross takes a selfie from inside F-15 Eagle N897NA, which is used as a test bed for a variety of flight research experiments
MailOnline took a look at some of the best shots, which NASA tweeted and uploaded to its online image library.
In a first shot, NASA scientists Kelsey Young and Tess Caswell don spacesuits during “lunar field geology work” as part of tests at Johnson Space Center’s “Rock Yard.”
Also known as the Planetary Analog Test Site, the Rock Yard is a large multi-acre test site that simulates general characteristics of the lunar and Martian surface terrain.
NASA scientists Kelsey Young and Tess Caswell wear spacesuits during “lunar field geology work” as part of tests at the Johnson Space Center’s “Rock Yard”
It consists of various slopes, gradients, simulated craters and scattered rock conditions to replicate the dust conditions on the Moon and Mars.
In another shot, a crew from the Blue Angels, the US Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, tours the entrance to an 80-by-120-foot wind tunnel test section, taken by NASA photographer Dominic Hart.
The photo was taken in Building N221 at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield, California.
NFAC’s wind tunnels are primarily used for aerodynamic and acoustic testing of rotorcraft and vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft, and for the development of advanced technologies for these vehicles.
The Blue Angels crew is dwarfed by the massive wind tunnel, which looks like a minimalist building facade from a futuristic city.
The Blue Angels crew tour the entrance to NFAC’s 80-by-120-foot wind tunnel test section in building N221, at the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) at NASA’s Ames Research Center
In another image, Ryan Fischer, a NASA technical engineer, is hard at work at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Fischer is pictured turning a “force gauge ring” on a vibration table in preparation for the vibration test of the PACE Earth observation satellite, currently under construction.
PACE, which stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem, will observe global ocean color, biogeochemistry and ecology, as well as carbon cycling, aerosols and clouds.
After launch in 2024, it will improve understanding of how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide and determine the extent and duration of phytoplankton blooms.
Technical Engineer Ryan Fischer twirls the force measurement ring on the vibe table in preparation for the PACE Space Shuttle Vibration Test at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim wears a high-altitude pressure suit worn aboard the WB-57 aircraft, which can fly at altitudes above 60,000 feet
NASA has revealed the winners of its internal ‘NASA Photographer of the Year’ competition, recognizing the best shots from the agency’s own photographers
In a stylized black-and-white shot in the second category, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is shown wearing a high-altitude pressure suit, preparing for a flight in the WB-57 aircraft.
The WB-57 is a long-range aircraft capable of operating for extended periods of time from sea level to altitudes above 60,000 feet, and is thus used by NASA for high-altitude atmospheric research.
The craft can fly for about 6.5 hours, has a range of about 2,500 miles, and can carry up to 8,800 pounds of payload.
Kim is among the astronauts training for a manned mission to the moon as part of NASA’s highly ambitious Artemis space program.
Artemis aims to send the first woman and first person of color to the lunar south pole by 2025 – and mark the first time humans have walked on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Another shot in the second location shows a silver spacesuit being tested in an “anechoic chamber” at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Anechoic chambers have soft, sound-absorbing material on the walls, ceiling and floor, all at odd angles, to stop reflections of sound or electromagnetic waves.
They are said to be “the quietest places on Earth” – so quiet, in fact, that someone standing inside can hear their own heart beating or even their lungs breathing in and out.
A spacesuit is pictured during testing in an ‘anechoic chamber’ – a room designed to stop reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket with the Dual Asteroid Redirect Test, or DART, spacecraft on board is seen at sunrise, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021, at Space Launch Complex 4E, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California
Another third-place photo shows engineer Stanley Ikpe framed by directional optics glass at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia
NASA says it is using anechoic chambers to simulate an open space environment and test how antennas might work in a space suit.
In the third place category, one of the winners shows off the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Base in California last November.
The rocket is pictured on Nov. 23, a day before the launch of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft, a box-shaped space probe created by NASA and the Johns Hopkins Laboratory for Applied Physics.
The US space agency announced 12 winning images – four first, second and third place each in the award categories – all taken by its own photographers
The Photographer of the Year Awards provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at some of NASA’s most ambitious and wacky research projects
Later this year, DART will crash into the small asteroid Dimorphos, which is orbiting a larger asteroid called Gemini at a speed of 13,500 miles per hour (21,700 km per hour).
When it hits Dimorphos, the 1,210-pound space probe will change the speed of the 525-foot-wide space rock by a fraction of a percent.
Although Dimorphos poses no danger to Earth, NASA wants to measure the asteroid’s altered orbit caused by the intentional collision.
Also among the entries is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), before it blasted off from the Guyana Space Center on Christmas Day last year.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched from the Guyana Space Center on Christmas Day and settled into orbit a million miles from our planet last month. Pictured here with its sunshade (a five-layer diamond-shaped structure the size of a tennis court) folded
It is pictured with its sunshield – a five-tiered diamond-shaped structure the size of a tennis court – folded up, surrounded by engineers.
In January, the telescope deployed all its mirrors and a few days later reached its parking spot at the Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a region of balanced gravity between the Sun and Earth.
James Webb will spend more than a decade on L2 exploring the universe in the infrared, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are born.
NASA is set to share the first official deep space images from the $10bn (£7.4bn) observatory later this week.
JAMES WEBB’S TELESCOPE
The James Webb Telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unlock the secrets of our universe. The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even our solar system’s moons and planets. The massive telescope, which has already cost more than $7bn (£5bn), is seen as a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of about 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius). It is the largest and most powerful orbiting space telescope in the world, capable of looking back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang. The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work together for a while. The Hubble Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It orbits the Earth at about 17,000 mph (27,300 km/h) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude.
