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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it seems to come up in my life weekly:
1. NASA images *are not* in the public domain;
2. They *are* generally free to use for most non-commercial, educational, & informational purposes without permission, but acknowledgement of NASA is needed (which true PD would not require);
3. For commercial use, no endorsement by NASA can be implied;
4. Images featuring people, e.g. astronauts, need explicit permission for commercial use.
I don’t mean this as any criticism of NASA at all – quite the opposite. Their policies are very good.
Equally, it’s right that they retain some control over the use of their images, logo, & other identifiers, to give credit & avoid endorsement of products.
However, the “NASA images are public domain” argument is often used to criticise ESA, whose images are (also) not PD.
Many are now available under Creative Commons licences which are pretty permissive as well.
The usual CC licence used by ESA these days is CC BY-SA, which is essentially the same as “use freely as long as you give credit” as NASA requires, but with the added restriction of “if you adapt the image, you must make your adaptation available under the same licence.”
This deters some commercial use, for obvious reasons, but you can always ask ESA directly (spaceinimages@esa.int) for explicit permission under the ESA standard licence.
When Marco Trovatello & I worked to introduce CC licensing to ESA about ten years ago, we wanted to use the CC BY licence as the default.
ESA’s lawyers wanted to use CC BY-SA-NC, to add a restriction against commercial use without explicitly asking for permission. The ESA convention explicitly rules out association with tobacco & alcohol, for example, so there is some sense to this.
But we persuaded them that CC BY-SA would block most commercial use, which it does.
The reason we wanted that as the minimum compromise is that Wikipedia will not allow images any more restrictive than CC BY to be used in their articles.
As I was getting pretty sick of seeing articles about ESA spacecraft illustrated by NASA renders, not our own, we insisted on CC BY-SA & got it.
An anomaly here is that ESA issues Hubble & JWST images under a more permissive CC BY licence.
That’s because Hubble images used to be issued by the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility in Garching, co-located with the European Southern Observatory HQ.
When ESO adopted CC BY licensing, they applied it to the Hubble images as well, without asking ESA if that was ok.
As I was in favour of CC BY anyway, I let it slide from my role as being responsible for ESA science outreach then.
ST-ECF closed 15 years ago & responsibility for issuing HST images for Europe moved to a team based at STScI in Baltimore, separate from my ESTEC-based team.
There’s some ugly history & internal ESA turf battles behind that decision, mainly ESA HST people saying they didn’t trust us, the ESA science comms team at ESTEC, to do a decent job.
That self-serving criticism continued even after 2014 when we showed how good we could be with the Rosetta comms campaign 
Anyway, the separate ESA HST team continued with CC BY & applied the same to JWST images when they started to be released in 2022.
This is why you’ll see ESA issuing some images as CC BY & others as CC BY-SA.
But again, CC BY as used by ESA HST & JWST, ESO, NOIRLab, & others is *not* public domain either.
It allows use in all legal circumstances but requires that acknowledgement be given using the prescribed credit line.
PD means “do what the frak you like with my stuff” – very different.
To repeat, ESA images are not in the public domain, but neither are NASA images.
You wouldn’t believe how many people, including commercial publishers (not mine, I hasten to add) have convinced themselves that NASA images are public domain, never actually reading NASA’s image rights text, which explicitly says that’s not true.
And equally, many people, including in Europe, still use this myth to beat ESA with, saying “look how much better NASA is in this regard”.
Which is annoying.
The classic example of this is “hey, why do I see people wearing NASA t-shirts all the time & not ESA ones? Must be thanks to the NASA logo being public domain – ESA should stop being such tight-arses if they want the public to recognise them.”
There are many reasons why people wear the NASA logo & not the ESA one, & yes, ESA could do better at pushing the boat out.
But image use rights & public domain logos are not the reason, so stop repeating this canard.
Thank you. <rant mode off>
@markmccaughrean To be fair, NASA's statement on image use is both lengthy and highly confusing, especially the bit that says that NASA imagery is "generally ... not subject to copyright".
I can see why many people conclude that it is equivalent to public domain in practice (except for the logo).
@galaxy_map Perhaps, although I can understand why this level of detail is needed.
But the PD myth probably explains why the very first thing on their webpage says:
NOTE:
The NASA Insignia, Logotype, identifiers, and imagery are not in the public domain. The use of the Insignia, Logotype and NASA identifiers is protected by law, and imagery is made available for use consistent with Media Usage Guidelines.
(Images are mentioned right there in the first sentence along with the logo.)
@markmccaughrean Right, that is why I said in practice. Most people will equate "not subject to copyright" with public domain.
I think NASA could help eliminate the confusion by replacing that web page with a statement that is both shorter and clearer. Perhaps by just adopting one of the Creative Commons licenses.
@galaxy_map I hear you, but the opening line of NASA's webpage explicitly says they're not public domain.
So it's hard to know what to say: if people don't want to read farther, that's fine, but they really shouldn't just say "oh well, same as public domain then".
Of course, I do agree that a more explicit set of CC licensing would make things easier, although some publishers seem terrified by CC. For them life is very black-and-white: either full copyright or full PD.
@markmccaughrean I don't think that the issue is people not reading the page fully. It is that the text is lengthy and very unclear to people who are not copyright lawyers.
@markmccaughrean @galaxy_map It's confusing, because they say their photography is not pubic domain but also that it is generally not under copyright and can be used "for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages." So their nice pictures of space stuff behave as if they're public domain even if they're not.
It's clear that you can't use their logo without permission, though.
@bodhipaksa @galaxy_map No, not really – the NASA usage rights explicitly state that credit must be given (& the credits to NASA images can often be long, especially in astronomy).
Public domain does not require that at all, & allows any usage without any conditions at all. Even to the point where you can take credit for the image.
I would agree that saying "NASA images are not copyrighted" is inconsistent with also saying "not PD". Anything except PD involves a form of copyright.
@markmccaughrean while we are on the subject of image credit, I do think that the CC licenses work much better in print or the web than they do in video or virtual reality. For the latter it does not always make sense to add captions to images and not clear whether a separate credits page is acceptable.
@galaxy_map I agree with that & struggle with it myself. In my book, all the image credits & licences will be collected together at the end of the book, not against each image.
My understanding is that that's ok & could equally apply to your use cases.
The CC wiki says a little about that here:
That criticism can only come from the spectrum of the libertarian right to the far right. Less frequently, because they're awaiting extinction, from some in the shitbag Staliniist far left.
As such, it's only bad faith criticism that should be dismissed. No one who reasons logically and no one who seriously weighs and understands the complex interplay of the legal, moral, ethical, and political concerns is reasonably opposed to either NASA or ESA licencing policy.
@vruz You'd be surprised how many of my professional astronomy colleagues (who can, I suspect, be generally characterised as centre left with a dose of liberalism, not libertarianism) believe this myth.
And how many of them continue, to this day, to berate ESA with it.
That's not to say that bad faith actors don't also weaponise this, but they're generally idiots anyway, so there's no point trying to explain it to them.
I'm sorry for your plight against ignorance.
@vruz Indeed 
As for more important matters, let's hope that yesterday's result was just a blip & that the end of the season is kinder than much else in the world.
I'm positive the merry, merry month of May will, indeed, be
@markmccaughrean It really is surprising how little people are aware of copyright issues in science communication. Years ago I had to point out at a meeting of a science advisory board producing a report that we wanted to be widely shared that the production company had inserted a standard commercial "all rights reserved" notice which rather defeated the purpose.
@Luke_Drury I completely agree.
The trope about “NASA images are public domain, ESA images aren’t; NASA good, ESA bad” is one I’ve heard from so many colleagues who really ought to know better.
They still use it as a stick to beat ESA with, even though the introduction of CC licensing a decade ago fixed most of their historical concerns.
It’s deeply unhelpful & perhaps ever more relevant given the descent of the US government into fascism.
Think people, think.
@markmccaughrean the first line says NASA logos and graphics are not in the public domain, but most of the images they produce are not subject to copyight, as would be generally the case for public material produced by the fedral government.
@maccruiskeen It also explicitly mentions “imagery” in that first sentence as not being in the PD.
And their image guidance says “you must give credit”, which is incompatible with PD.
There’s a spectrum between PD & full copyright, & while indeed NASA does not / cannot assert full copyright, their usage requirements are somewhere along that spectrum, not PD.
Same for ESA images, arguably more explicitly codified by the use of CC licensing.
@maccruiskeen To be clear, CC licenses are a form of copyright, but with certain conditions encoded that allow use without explicit permission of the copyright holder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license
It does then beg the question slightly of how NASA can say their images are not copyright, & yet can assert certain usage conditions (eg credit must be given), that are not compatible with being fully copyright free / PD.
@markmccaughrean Nasa can make any claims they want, but images made by Nasa are PD by federal law. "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government" "A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties."
Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17)
@markmccaughrean And they say on that page "generally are not subject to copyright in the United States"; things not subject to copyright are public domain. You can't say something isn't copyrighted and then add conditions for use. ESA can release image under the Creative Commons copyright if they're allowed to, but Nasa can't slap a license on uncopyrightable works.