NASA has shared back-to-back images captured by two of its spacecraft in deep space. On November 25, the agency released imagery by the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft from its recent Earth flyby followed by a picture from the Europa Clipper spacecraft that captured planet Uranus from a distance of 3.2 billion kilometres.
While OSIRIS-APEX is on its way to study the asteroid Apophis, Europa Clipper is off to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa which has a sub-surface ocean.
OSIRIS-APEX’s Earth flyby
The first views are from the OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Apophis Explorer) spacecraft which flew within 3,438 km from Earth on September 23.
Hope you didn’t blink!
On Sept. 23, @NASA‘s OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft made a quick flyby, passing 2,136 miles above Earth. Along the way, OSIRIS-APEX turned to look home. https://t.co/wexOWQZ8h0 pic.twitter.com/vs3s1LrIxt
— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) November 25, 2025
During the flyby, the probe captured Earth’s images and other data to calibrate its science instruments. NASA says the images were collected using the MapCam imager about nine hours after OSIRIS-APEX’s closest approach to Earth, when it was 2,28,000 km away. At a distance of 5,95,500 km, the spacecraft captured a second picture on September 24 using the StowCam, featuring the Moon and the Earth.
OSIRIS-APEX has been repurposed from OSIRIS-REx, which launched in September 2016 and delivered samples of the asteroid Bennu in 2023. After dropping the sample capsule, the spacecraft was rerouted toward Apophis which will have its closest encounter with Earth in April 2029. NASA wants to study the asteroid’s physical changes that will result from the rare encounter.
Europa Clipper spots Uranus
Europa Clipper photographed Uranus while the mission team was experimenting with one of its two cameras used for maintaining orientation.
We love a good cameo 📹
En route to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft captured this image of a starfield that includes the planet Uranus from a distance of about 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) away!
Read more about it here:… pic.twitter.com/RR0cUDo2tJ
— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) November 25, 2025
In a seemingly dark and blurry picture, which represents just 0.1% sky area around Clipper, Uranus is marked as a bright dot next to several background stars.
NASA says Clipper was 3.2 billion km from Uranus when it took the picture.
The spacecraft is scheduled to reach Europa in 2030. It will conduct about 50 flybys of the icy Moon and use its suite of advanced instruments to determine the thickness of Europa’s icy shell and its surface interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterise its geology. The objective of this mission is to find potentially habitable regions in locations other than the Earth.
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