Space Image of the Day Gallery (November 2016)

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Enos the Astro-Chimp

NASA

Tuesday, November 29, 2016: Today marks the 55th anniversary of Enos the chimpanzee's historic trip to orbit. Enos was the second primate to fly to space and the first to achieve orbit. In this photo, Enos is dressed in his spacesuit and preparing to enter his Mercury space capsule. The astro-chimp rode an Atlas rocket to an altitude of about 100 miles (160 km), flew around the globe twice, then splashed down safely just south of Bermuda. This mission paved the way for NASA to send its first human astronaut into orbit. — Hanneke Weitering

Mars Gets a Crystal Clear Close-Up

ESA/Roscosmos/ExoMars/CaSSIS/UniBE

Wednesday, November 30, 2016: Mars is looking mighty sharp in this newly released photo from the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission. The camera aboard the mission's Trace Gas Orbiter, called CaSSIS (short for the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System), took this high-resolution image of a 0.9 mile-size (1.4 kilometers) crater (left-center) on the rim of a much larger crater near the Martian equator. See more new photos of Mars taken by CaSSIS here. — Hanneke Weitering

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Space.com Staff
Space.com Staff
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Space.com is the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news, chronicling (and celebrating) humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier. Originally founded in 1999, Space.com is, and always has been, the passion of writers and editors who are space fans and also trained journalists. Our current news team consists of Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik; Editor Hanneke Weitering, Senior Space Writer Mike Wall; Senior Writer Meghan Bartels; Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd, Senior Writer Tereza Pultarova and Staff Writer Alexander Cox, focusing on e-commerce. Senior Producer Steve Spaleta oversees our space videos, with Diana Whitcroft as our Social Media Editor.