This video captures the breathtaking reality of low Earth orbit, showcasing massive weather patterns over the ocean. It also highlights the incredible engineering that keeps the station running, featuring views of the solar arrays and the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
A wildfire is rapidly burning across hundreds of acres in Arizona, with officials estimating it has grown to 558 acres (22.3 sq km). The blaze remains 0% contained, according to the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management in a post on X.
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.
In July 2020, astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured hundreds of time-lapse photos of Comet NEOWISE rising above Earth’s glowing horizon before sunrise. NASA artists and data scientists later used frame interpolation to generate the missing frames between the images, creating a smooth video of what it would look like to orbit Earth at 17,500 mph with the comet shining in the distance. ☄️
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.
To transport the space shuttle from California back to Florida, NASA used specially modified Boeing 747s called Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Carrying a 170,000-pound shuttle on top drastically changed the aircraft’s aerodynamics and balance, so NASA added extra tail stabilizers to help keep the planes stable and controllable during flight.
Launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager 2 remains one of the greatest exploration missions in human history. It is still the only human-made object ever to visit all four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Along the way, Voyager 2 revealed erupting volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io, helped uncover the complex rings of Saturn, gave humanity its first close-up look at Uranus, and captured the only detailed images ever taken of Neptune and its moon Triton.
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.