Exploration
at Goddard
At Goddard, exploration is a system that builds outward, grounded in understanding Earth, extending through the space environment, and enabling safe and sustained missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
The Sciences and Exploration Directorate (SED) brings together complementary scientific disciplines that work in concert to make exploration possible. Each contributes in a distinct way, while collectively forming a unified exploration enterprise.
Earth Sciences
The Earth Sciences Division is the nation's technical innovator and essential data provider to support national infrastructure, scientific leadership, and economic resilience.
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Astrophysics
The Astrophysics Science Division leads America's quest to answer our most profound scientific questions, developing technologies with transformative applications in medicine, national security, and intelligence.
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Heliophysics
The Heliophysics Science Division advances understanding of the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, providing the foundational science that drives space weather research and solutions in collaboration with government, industry, and academia.
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Solar System
The Solar System Exploration Division powers space missions and leads human space exploration to the Moon and Mars through revolutionary research that charts the frontiers of our solar system and deepens our understanding of planetary system formation and evolution.
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The Sky Turns Above Paranal
At the latitude of ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, about 25 degrees south, Earth's rotation moves the planet's surface eastward at over 1,500 kilometers per hour. And while that's faster than the speed of sound at sea level, the motion is imperceptible. Still, that motion can be revealed in the apparent rotation of the night sky by photographing star trails. This star trail image was composed from a digital stack of 300 consecutive 25-second exposures made with a camera fixed to a tripod to trace the star trail arcs. The graceful arcs are concentric and centered at the south celestial pole, the southern hemisphere extension of Earth's axis of rotation into space. One of the observatory's operating 1.8 meter auxiliary telescopes, AT 3, appears beneath the south celestial pole, faintly illuminated in the foreground of this well-planned scene from a rotating planet. Growing Gallery: Lunar Eclipse of 2026 August 28 APOD's main NASA site is moving: From apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod