u/AstroUpon

Watching the turquoise waters of the Bahamas, the distinct outline of Florida, and the islands of the Caribbean drift by from space never gets old.

Mars has almost no atmospheric pressure compared to Earth, so water doesn’t need to get very hot to boil. On Earth, high pressure keeps water stable until 212°F (100°C), but on Mars the thin atmosphere lets water turn into vapor much more easily.

That means water on Mars could start bubbling and boiling even while it still feels cold. But because Mars is freezing and extremely dry, the water wouldn’t last long before quickly evaporating or turning to ice.

The Appalachian Mountains were once towering peaks that may have rivaled the Himalayas in height. Formed hundreds of millions of years ago during massive tectonic collisions, they were slowly worn down over time by erosion into the rolling mountains we see today. Despite their softer appearance now, they remain one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth.

Underneath the rolling blue grass hills and dense forests of Kentucky lies a hidden, subterranean universe, and it's more extensive than any other on Earth. 🔦🌎

The Bluegrass State officially claims the title for the most known cave systems of any single location. The centerpiece of this subterranean empire is Mammoth Cave National Park, which boasts the single longest known cave system in the world, with over 400 miles of mapped passages. But Mammoth is just the beginning; there are thousands more documented cave systems.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting a mid-May 2026 launch for the 34th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station. A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will launch on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, carrying about 6,500 pounds of supplies, equipment, and science experiments to the orbiting lab.

The mission will deliver several new investigations, including studies on how bacteria behave in space, how charged particles around Earth respond to space weather, how dust particles move in microgravity, how bone cells grow in space, and how astronauts’ red blood cells and spleen change during spaceflight.

These two images of Pluto were both captured by the New Horizons spacecraft as it approached the distant dwarf planet in 2015.

The difference between them? Just a few months.

In the first image, Pluto appeared as nothing more than a tiny blurry speck in the darkness of space. But as New Horizons closed the distance across billions of miles, an entirely new world slowly came into focus — revealing towering mountains made of water ice, vast frozen plains, mysterious haze layers, and the famous heart-shaped region known as Tombaugh Regio.

The mummy of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was placed inside three elaborate coffins nested within one another, creating one of the most astonishing burial chambers ever discovered.

The outer two coffins were crafted from richly decorated wood covered in gold and precious materials, but the innermost coffin was something truly extraordinary, it was made from approximately 110.4 kilograms (243 pounds) of solid gold.

Discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter inside King Tut’s nearly untouched tomb in the Valley of the Kings, the burial remains one of the greatest archaeological finds in human history.

Scientists have found marine fossils near the summit, proving these massive Himalayan peaks were once part of the Tethys Ocean floor.

The Tethys Ocean was an ancient ocean that existed millions of years ago between the supercontinents of Gondwana (which included India, Africa, Antarctica, and Australia) and Laurasia (Europe and Asia).

Over time, the Indian tectonic plate slowly drifted north and eventually collided with Asia around 50 million years ago. That massive collision closed much of the Tethys Ocean and pushed the seafloor upward, creating the Himalayas, including Mount Everest.

This incredible view, captured from a window aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station, shows the Milky Way rising above the glowing layers of Earth’s atmosphere. From nearly 250 miles above the planet, the stars of our galaxy shine beyond the thin blue line that protects all life on Earth.

Saturn’s rings are slowly disappearing through a process called “ring rain.” Ice, dust, and rocky particles from the rings are pulled inward by Saturn’s gravity and magnetic field, causing material to spiral into the planet’s atmosphere. Scientists believe the rings could eventually vanish within about 100 million years — a relatively short time in cosmic history.