US News The Night Sky Will Never Be the Same

This view from the Curiosity Mars rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) shows an outcrop with finely-layered rocks within the "Murray Buttes" region on lower Mount Sharp. The buttes and mesas rising above the surface in this area are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had formed. Curiosity closely examined that layer -- called the "Stimson formation" -- during the first half of 2016, while crossing a feature called "Naukluft Plateau" between two exposures of the Murray formation. The layering within the sandstone is called "cross-bedding" and indicates that the sandstone was deposited by wind as migrating sand dunes.

The galaxy depicted in this picture is a barred spiral known as NGC 7541, seen here as viewed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in the constellation of Pisces (The Fishes). A barred spiral is a galaxy with whirling, pinwheeling, spiral arms, and a bright center that is intersected by a bar of gas and stars. This bar cuts directly through the galaxy’s central region, and is thought to invigorate the region somewhat, sparking activity and fueling myriad processes that may otherwise have never occurred or have previously ground to a halt (star formation and active galactic nuclei being key examples).

Spectacular rainbow cloud in space spawned by cosmic showdown between stars

A stunning rainbow-colored cloud of gas surrounds a pair of stars that duked it out a few hundred years ago.  Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers observed the binary star system called HD101584, revealing a peculiar gas cloud that is believed to be the result of a confrontation between the two stars, according to a statement from the European Southern Observatory. Data from ALMA and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) shows that one of the stars grew so large that it engulfed the other.

NGC 7541 is actually observed to have a higher-than-usual star formation rate, adding weight to the theory that spiral bars act as stellar nurseries, corralling and funneling inwards the material and fuel needed to create and nurture new baby stars. Along with its nearby companion NGC 7537, the galaxy makes up a pair of galaxies located about 110 million light-years away from us. 

This new ALMA image shows the outcome of a stellar fight: a complex and stunning gas environment surrounding the binary HD101584. The colors represent speed, going from blue — gas moving the fastest towards us — to red — gas moving the fastest away from us.

The Cygnus space freighter from Northrop Grumman is pictured moments after its release from the Canadarm2 robotic arm as the International Space Station orbited over the South Pacific just off the West Coast of Chile. Cygnus had completed an 88-day stay attached to the Unity module after delivering nearly 8,200 pounds of research and supplies to the space station on Nov. 4, 2019.

During its 24th close flyby of Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this view of a chaotic, stormy area of the planet's northern hemisphere known as a folded filamentary region. Jupiter has no solid surface in the same way Earth does. Data collected by Juno indicate that some of the giant planet's winds run deeper and last longer than similar atmospheric processes on Earth.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano (middle) and NASA astronaut Drew Morgan (left) work on get-ahead tasks during the fourth spacewalk to service the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). Saturday’s spacewalk, which lasted five hours and 55 minutes, was the last in a four-part series to extend the life of the particle physics detector that was not designed to be maintained in space. On this final spacewalk, where Drew held the lead role of EV1, the pair set out to check the tubes that connect the cooling system to the larger instrument for any leaks.

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Tarantula Nebula in three wavelengths of infrared light, each represented by a different color. 

Astronaut Christina Koch lands on Earth after record-setting space station mission

Christina Koch did not set out to break records on her first spaceflight, but with her return to Earth after nearly a year in orbit, her mission is now one for the history books. Koch landed from the space station with Alexander Skvortsov and Luca Parmitano.Christina Koch did not set out to break records on her first spaceflight, but with her return to Earth after nearly a year in orbit, her mission is now one for the history books.

The magenta-colored regions are dust composed of molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are also found in ash from coal, wood and oil fires on Earth. PAHs emit in multiple wavelengths. The PAHs emit in multiple wavelengths, so the magenta color is a combination of red (corresponding to an infrared wavelength of 8 micrometers) and blue (3.6 micrometers). The green color in this image shows the presence of particularly hot gas emitting infrared light at a wavelength of 4.5 micrometers. The stars in the image are mostly a combination of green and blue. White hues indicate regions that radiate in all three wavelengths.

This illustration shows a newly discovered dwarf nova system, in which a white dwarf star is pulling material off a brown dwarf companion. The material collects into an accretion disk until reaching a tipping point, causing it to suddenly increase in brightness. Using archival Kepler data, a team observed a previously unseen, and unexplained, gradual intensification followed by a super-outburst in which the system brightened by a factor of 1,600 over less than a day.

International Space Station commander Luca Parmitano and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan work on the spacesuits they will wear during the fourth and final #SpacewalkForAMS scheduled for 25 January. During this spacewalk, the duo will finalise thermal repairs on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an astrophysics device searching for evidence of dark matter and antimatter on the International Space Station's Starboard-3 truss structure.

This new multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula combines X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blue) with visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope (in yellow) and infrared light seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope (in red). This particular combination of light from across the electromagnetic spectrum highlights the nested structure of the pulsar wind nebula.

ESA has signed a deal with space engineering company COMEX in France to develop an innovative double-rover architecture for lunar surface exploration, based on a tractor and trailer concept. TRAILER is a two-year project to test a novel architecture of robotic cooperation based on a tandem of two rovers for lunar surface exploration missions.

Massive asteroid Pallas has a violent, cratered past, study reveals

Our best view yet of Pallas, the largest asteroid not yet visited by a spacecraft, reveals an extraordinarily violent history with numerous impacts, most likely due to its unusual orbit, a new study finds. In 1802, Pallas became the second asteroid ever discovered. Named after Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas is the third most massive asteroid ever discovered, comprising an estimated 7% of the mass in the solar system's asteroid belt. This asteroid has an average diameter of about 318 miles (513 kilometers), which is about 15% of the diameter of the moon.Much remains unknown about this large asteroid.

This peculiar galaxy, beautifully streaked with tendrils of reddish dust, is known as NGC 1022, and is officially classified as a barred spiral galaxy. You can just about make out the bar of stars in the centre of the galaxy in this image, with swirling arms emerging from its ends. This bar is much less prominent than in some of the galaxy’s barred cousins and gives the galaxy a rather squat appearance; but the lanes of dust that swirl throughout its disc ensure it is no less beautiful.

In this photograph, a slice of fiery colour streaks along the horizon near Paranal Observatory in northern Chile, bathing the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in a soft, peachy glow.

The Milky Way appears to soar directly up from one of the Unit Telescopes, bounded on either side by a spectacular array of stars — including Sirius, which dazzles at the top of the image. Part of Canis Major (The Greater Dog), Sirius is the brightest star in the sky and is actually a binary system, consisting of a main-sequence star (Sirius A, a star in stable “adulthood” that is burning nuclear fuel) and a white dwarf (Sirius B, the dense corpse of a star that ran out of fuel long ago).

In 2014, NASA's Swift mission detected a record-setting series of X-ray flares unleashed by DG CVn, a nearby binary consisting of two red dwarf stars, illustrated here. At its peak, the initial flare was brighter in X-rays than the combined light from both stars at all wavelengths under normal conditions.

Astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have put together a detailed map of a rare collision between four galaxy clusters. Eventually all four clusters — each with a mass of at least several hundred trillion times that of the Sun — will merge to form one of the most massive objects in the universe.

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the cosmos that are held together by gravity. Clusters consist of hundreds or even thousands of galaxies embedded in hot gas, and contain an even larger amount of invisible dark matter. Sometimes two galaxy clusters collide, as in the case of the Bullet Cluster, and occasionally more than two will collide at the same time.

This bright, blob-like galaxy named NGC 1803, is about 200 million light-years away, in the southern constellation of Pictor (The Painter’s Easel). NGC 1803 was discovered in 1834 by astronomer John Herschel. Herschel is a big name in astronomy; John, his father William, and his aunt Caroline all made huge contributions to the field, and their legacies remain today. William systematically catalogued many of the objects he viewed in the night sky, named many moons in the Solar System, discovered infrared radiation, and more. John took this aforementioned catalogue of night-sky objects and reworked and expanded it into his General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. This was the basis for the cataloguing system still used today by astronomers. This galaxy is one of a galactic pair. It was described by Dreyer as being “faint, small, [and] round”, and located near to a very bright star to the southeast.

The Sun's light will become SUPERCHARGED when it dies, making it strong enough to obliterate the Solar System's asteroid belt, study finds - but it won't happen for six billion years

A new study suggests that when a star's life ends, its luminosity increases ten-thousand-fold and the radiation is strong enough to obliterate the asteroid belt the orbits it into small dust particles.When our Sun dies it will take the Solar System's asteroid belt with it.

An aurora blankets the Earth beneath a celestial night sky as the International Space Station orbits 261 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch is tethered to the International Space Station's Port-6 truss structure during a spacewalk to finalize upgrading power systems on the truss structure.

The Milky Way contains many regions of starbirth — areas where new stars are springing to life within collapsing clumps of gas and dust. One such region, named Gum 26, is shown here as imaged by the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Gum 26 is located roughly 20,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). It is something known as an HII region or emission nebula, where the intense ultraviolet radiation streaming from newly-formed stars ionises the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to emit a faint pinkish glow. 

A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from pad 39A during a test flight to demonstrate the capsule's emergency escape system at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Jan. 19.

A multitude of swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval. This color-enhanced image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Oct. 29, 2018, as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles from the planet's cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north. 

Artist's impression of the fairing encapsulating Solar Orbiter being released following launch on an Atlas V 411. Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Its mission is to perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. 

In this artist's rendering of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space, the background is shown in infrared light. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. 

NASA astronaut Jack Fisher is seen here using a wet wipe on the surfaces of the European Cupola module of the International Space Station. Doubling as both Station maintenance and science experiment, Jack collected microbes living on the surfaces of his orbital home for ESA’s Extremophiles experiment. Headed by Dr. Christine-Moissl Eichinger from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, the experiment studies how microbes settle into the harsh environment of space.

On Jan. 16, Ariane 5 flight VA251 lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana and delivered two telecom satellites, Konnect and GSAT-30, into their planned orbits.

In this image taken from NASA video NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch work to finish upgrades to the International Space Station's power grid, on Jan. 15. It was the second pairing of Meir and Koch outside the orbiting lab.

This satellite photo provided by Maxar Technologies shows wildfires spreading in the area south of Eden and Twofold Bay, shown in black, in New South Wales state of Australia, on Jan. 12.

Image taken by ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano from outside the International Space Station on the first spacewalk to service the cosmic ray detecting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02). The image shows the Japanese Kibo module left and the solar arrays in the distance over Earth.

Luca and his spacewalking partner NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan were on the first of several spacewalks in the complex series to maintain AMS-02 on Friday, Nov. 15, 2019. It was the first time a European astronaut has held the leading role in a spacewalk known as EV1. The spacewalk went so well that the pair even managed to complete some tasks scheduled for the next spacewalk in the series. The image released on Jan. 10.

This ALMA image shows a detailed view of the star-forming region AFGL 5142. A bright, massive star in its infancy is visible at the centre of the image. The flows of gas from this star have opened up a cavity in the region, and it is in the walls of this cavity, shown in colour, that phosphorus-bearing molecules like phosphorus monoxide are formed. The different colours represent material moving at different speeds.

This image shows part of the ice cap sitting at Mars’ north pole, complete with bright swathes of ice, dark troughs and depressions, and signs of strong winds and stormy activity. The landscape here is a rippled mix of color. Dark red and ochre-hued troughs appear to cut through the icy white of the polar cap; these form part of a wider system of depressions that spiral outwards from the very centre of the pole. Visible to the left of the frame are a few extended streams of clouds, aligned perpendicularly to a couple of the troughs.

These are thought to be caused by small local storms that kick up dust into the martian atmosphere, eroding scarps and slopes as they do so and slowly changing the appearance of the troughs over time. This image comprises data gathered on  Nov. 16, 2006 during orbit 3670. The ground resolution is approximately 15 m/pixel and the images are centred at about 244°E/85°N. This image was created using data from the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The nadir channel is aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, as if looking straight down at the surface. North is to the upper right. The image released on Jan. 13.

This image shows the Perseus galaxy cluster, one of the most massive known objects in the Universe – in X-ray and optical light, as seen by XMM-Newton’s European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) and the Digitized Sky Survey II, respectively. Using XMM-Newton to study Perseus, astronomers spotted the first signs of this hot gas splashing and sloshing around – a behavior that, while predicted, had never been seen before. 

In this Jan. 12, 2020, image made available by Himawari-8 IR satellite via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows the eruption of Taal volcano, south of Manila, Philippines. The small volcano near the Philippine capital that draws tourists for its picturesque setting in a lake erupted with a massive plume of ash and steam Sunday, prompting the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and forcing Manila's international airport to shut down.

This Picture of the Week, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a close-up view of a galaxy named NGC 2770. NGC 2770 is intriguing, as over time it has hosted four different observed supernovae (not visible here).  Supernovae form in a few different ways, but always involve a dying star. These stars become unbalanced, lose control, and explode violently, briefly shining as brightly as an entire galaxy before slowly fading away.

One of the four supernovae observed within this galaxy, SN 2015bh, is especially interesting. This particular supernova initially had its identity called into question. When it was first discovered in 2015, astronomers classified SN 2015bh as a supernova imposter, believing it to be not an exploding star but simply an unpredictable outburst from a massive star in its final phase of life. Thankfully, astronomers eventually discovered the truth and the object was given its correct classification as a Type II supernova, resulting from the death of a star between eight and 50 times the mass of the Sun.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano snapped this image of snowy field and mountain. When he shared on social media, he captioned it "Natural symmetries, human geometries." Luca was launched to the International Space Station for his second mission, Beyond, on July 20, 2019. He will spend six months living and working on the orbital outpost where he will support more than 50 European experiments and more than 200 international experiments in space. Follow Luca and his Beyond mission on social media on his website and on his blog. Image released on Jan. 10.

A multitude of swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval. This color-enhanced image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Oct. 29, 2018, as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles from the planet's cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. The image released on Jan. 15.

Each of these Hubble Space Telescope snapshots reveals four distorted images of a background quasar (an extremely bright region in the center of some distant galaxies) and its host galaxy surrounding the core of a foreground massive galaxy. The gravity of the massive foreground galaxy acts like a magnifying glass by warping the quasar's light in an effect called gravitational lensing. Quasars are extremely distant cosmic "streetlights" produced by active black holes. Such quadruple images of quasars are rare because of the nearly exact alignment needed between the foreground galaxy and background quasar.

These images come from a study in which astronomers used the gravitational lensing effect to detect the smallest clumps of dark matter ever found. The clumps are located along the telescope's line of sight to the quasars as well as in and around the foreground lensing galaxies. The presence of the dark matter concentrations alters the apparent brightness and position of each distorted quasar image. Astronomers compared these measurements with predictions of how the quasar images would look without the influence of the dark matter clumps. The researchers used these measurements to calculate the masses of the tiny dark matter concentrations. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 captured the near-infrared light from each quasar and dispersed it into its component colors for study with spectroscopy. The images were taken between 2015 and 2018. The combined image released on Jan. 8.

Another pair of eyes provides a sobering perspective on the fires ravaging Australia. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano took images such as this one on Jan. 12, from his vantage point of the International Space Station. From satellite imagery tracing smoke and pollution, to images from the ground depicting apocalyptic red skies, there is no denying the fires’ devastating effect. Starting in New South Wales and extending into Victoria, the ferocious bushfires have been raging since September and are fueled by record-breaking temperatures. 

A new communication technology experiment satellite is launched by a Long March-3B carrier rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 7. The satellite will be used in communication, radio, television and data transmission, as well as high throughput technology test.

This sequence of four images from NASA's Juno spacecraft reveals the first views of the north polar region of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Juno is the first mission to directly image this part of Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the solar system, larger even than the planet Mercury. Ganymede is also the only known moon with its own magnetic field. Scientists have even found evidence for an underground ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt created this image using data from the JunoCam camera.

The images were acquired on Dec. 25, 2019, between 6:10 and 7:00 p.m. PST (9:10 and 10 p.m. EST), during Juno's inbound approach of its 24th close flyby of Jupiter. The images were taken when Ganymede was at a range of 60,695 - 68,002 miles (97,680 - 109,439 kilometers) from the spacecraft as it flew by. The image released on Jan. 9.

This wide-field view shows the region of the sky, in the constellation of Auriga, where the star-forming region AFGL 5142 is located. This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have seen that the famous giant black hole in Messier 87 is propelling particles at speeds greater than 99% of the speed of light.

In this composite image of the Omega Nebula, SOFIA detected the blue areas (20 microns) near the center, revealing gas as it's heated by massive stars located at the center, near the bend, and the green areas (37 microns) that trace dust as it's warmed both by massive stars and nearby newborn stars. The nine never-before-seen protostars were found primarily in the southern areas.

Galaxy UGC 2885 may be the largest one in the local universe. It is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars. This galaxy is 232 million light-years away, located in the northern constellation of Perseus.

TOI 700, a planetary system 100 light-years away in the constellation Dorado, is home to TOI 700 d, the first Earth-size habitable-zone planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

Compared to their more intricate spiral cousins, elliptical galaxies resemble soft, hazy clouds. These galaxies have smooth, undefined boundaries, and bright cores surrounded by a fuzzy, diffuse glow. However, looks can be deceiving. At least 10% of ellipticals extend much further out into the cosmos than you might expect, and possess a range of far finer structures than first meets the eye — features such as loops and shells.  Located around 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Pisces (The Fish), the galaxy to the upper-left of this image is named NGC 474.

The International Space Station was orbiting 260 miles above northeastern Syria at the time this photograph of Baghdad, Iraq was taken on Jan. 7.

Smoke from bushfires blankets the southeast coastline of Australia as the International Space Station orbited 269 miles above the above the Tasman Sea on Jan. 4.

This artist’s concept illustrates a catastrophic collision between two rocky exoplanets, turning both into dusty debris.

A waxing crescent moon is pictured as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above the north African country of Algeria on Jan. 1.

This satellite image made available by NASA Worldview shows smoke originating from bushfires in Australia (top left) drifting over New Zealand on Jan. 1. Smoke from bushfires in the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales has created a haze across New Zealand, thousands of miles away.              

Stars glitter in the night sky above an atmospheric glow blanketing city lights in northern Iran, as the International Space Station crossed over the Caspian Sea.

A galaxy about 23 million light years away is the site of impressive, ongoing fireworks. Rather than paper, powder and fire, this galactic light show involves a giant black hole, shock waves and vast reservoirs of gas. This galactic fireworks display is taking place in NGC 4258, also known as M106, a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch makes observations from the International space Station's cupola. In October 2019, she was part of the first all-female spacewalk and now she has made history again. On Dec. 28, she broke the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, when she surpasses former Station Commander Peggy Whitson's record.

The bright city lights of Long Island, New York City and the New Jersey area contrast the dark waters of Sandy Hook Bay, the Upper and Lower Bays, the Hudson and East Rivers and Long Island Sound.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano captured this image of our planet from the International Space Station and shared it on his social media channels saying: "My first picture from Cupola, since I’ve been back. Reality beats imagination, and once again my words can’t contain the emotion of admiring my planet from orbit... greeted by the Tierra del Fuego."

The moon totally covers the sun in a rare "ring of fire" solar eclipse as seen from the south Indian city of Dindigul in Tamil Nadu state on Dec. 26.

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, atop an ULA Atlas V rocket, lifts off on an uncrewed Orbital Flight Test to the International Space Station from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Dec. 20.

With Christmas almost here, the red and white of this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image bring a festive feel to this week’s image featuring Tromsø – the largest city in northern Norway. 

The Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco formed as a result of the collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates about 80 million years ago. This collision destroyed the Tethys Ocean. The limestone, sandstone, clay-stone and gypsum layers that formed the ocean bed were folded and crumpled to create the Anti-Atlas Mountains. In this image of southwest Morocco, visible, near infrared and short wavelength infrared bands are combined to dramatically highlight the different rock types, and illustrate the complex folding. The image was acquired on November 5, 2007, by the ASTER instrument on the Terra satellite.

Terra launched 20 years ago in December 1999, beginning a new era in the study of Earth. Terra, flagship of the agency’s Earth Observing System, was built to last for six years and 30,000 orbits.​ But, 20 years later Terra and its five on board instruments continue on a mission of discovery, providing data about the planet we call home.

The International Space Station orbits 267 miles above the Earth as the sun's glint beams over the Philippine Sea highlighting the clouds and their shadows during an orbital sunrise.

This swirling mass of celestial gas, dust, and stars is a moderately luminous spiral galaxy named ESO 021-G004, located just under 130 million light-years away. This galaxy has something known as an active galactic nucleus which means that astronomers measure a lot of radiation at all wavelengths coming from the center of the galaxy.

The rim of this ice-rich crater catches the early morning sunlight in the high northern latitudes of Mars, imaged onboard ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter on 26 October 2019. This image features a simple 7 km-wide bowl-shaped crater. The sunlight falling on the ice deposits on the crater’s north-facing walls causes the ice to appear extremely bright. Ice fills much of the crater floor, and coats part of the surrounding terrain. 

The SpaceX Dragon capsule arrives at the International Space Station on Dec. 8. The Dragon capsule arrived at the orbiting outpost, delivering "mighty mice," pest-killing worms and a smart, empathetic robot. 

Jupiter's moon Io casts its shadow on Jupiter whenever it passes in front of the Sun as seen from Jupiter. Many pictures have been taken of Io's shadow on Jupiter, but this is the first from such a close distance. The shadow looms extraordinarily large because the Juno spacecraft was just 8,450 miles (13,600 kilometers) above the cloud tops when this image was acquired. When seen from this close, the vast expanse of Jupiter curves away over the horizon, and Io's shadow dominates the scene. 

"A mind of limits, a camera of thoughts" is the name of this contribution from citizen scientist Prateek Sarpal. 

The map of Mars shows Jezero Crater, where NASA's Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to land in February 2021. Also included are the locations where all of NASA's other successful Mars missions touched down. 

The Canadarm2 robotic arm with the Dextre robotic hand attached seemingly protrudes from the side of the International Space Station as the orbiting complex soared 263 miles above the South Pacific Ocean.

Soft pastels enhance the rich colors of the swirls and storms in Jupiter's clouds. 

NGC 3175 is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump). The galaxy can be seen slicing across the frame in this image, with its mix of bright patches of glowing gas, dark lanes of dust, bright core, and whirling, pinwheeling arms coming together to paint a beautiful celestial scene. The galaxy is the eponymous member of the NGC 3175 group, which has been called a nearby analogue for the Local Group. The Local Group contains our very own home galaxy, the Milky Way, and around 50 others — a mix of spiral, irregular, and dwarf galaxies. The NGC 3175 group contains a couple of large spiral galaxies — the subject of this image, and NGC 3137 — and numerous lower-mass spiral and satellite galaxies. Galaxy groups are some of the most common galactic gatherings in the cosmos, and they comprise 50 or so galaxies all bound together by gravity.

As the holiday season approaches, people in the northern hemisphere will gather indoors to stay warm. In keeping with the season, astronomers have studied two groups of galaxies that are rushing together and producing their own warmth. Most galaxies do not exist in isolation. Rather, they are bound to other galaxies through gravity either in relatively small numbers known as “galaxy groups,” or much larger concentrations called “galaxy clusters” consisting of hundreds or thousands of galaxies. Sometimes, these collections of galaxies are drawn toward one another by gravity and eventually merge.

Illustrations of NASA's Curiosity and Mars 2020 rovers. While the newest rover borrows from Curiosity's design, each has its own role in the ongoing exploration of Mars and the search for ancient life. JPL is building and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on June 28, 1971, to Maye, a model and nutritionist, and Errol, an engineer, pilot and sailor.

At the age of nine, Musk taught himself computer programming. Three years later, he created a space-themed video game - "Blastar." The source code for the BASIC-based game was published in South African magazine "PC and Office Technology" for $500.

In 1995, when he only 24 years old, Musk began reading for a Ph.D. in Applied Physics and Materials Science from Stanford University in California, U.S. He left - after two days - to pursue an entrepreneurial career in the then-emerging software industry.

In November 1999, Musk used $12 million from the sale of Zip2 to co-found X.com, an online banking company. The following year, it merged with rival firm Confinity and, two years later, it was renamed PayPal. In 2002, PayPal was bought by eBay for a massive $1.5 billion, albeit against Musk’s advice. Nevertheless, the “real-life Iron Man” still made a profit on X.com, turning his initial $12 million to $180 million.

(Pictured) With PayPal co-founder and former CEO, Peter Thiel (L) in 2000.

In 2003, Musk co-founded Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla, Inc.). As a company, Tesla’s stated mission has been to accelerate the world’s transition to a sustainable energy future. On that note, in 2008 Tesla debuted the Roadster sports car.

Powered by electronic motors, Tesla claims the new version (expected to be available in 2020) is “the quickest car in the world,” with a top speed in excess of 250 mph (402 kph). Tesla's other cars include the Model S, the Model X and the Model 3.

(Pictured) At the launch of Tesla Model X all-electric crossover SUV in September 2015.

Musk is also founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX, a space exploration company involved in the development and manufacturing of spacecraft and rockets. Founded in 2002, it took SpaceX only six years to develop and launch Falcon 1 – the first privately-developed liquid-fuel launch vehicle. Four years after that, it created history again – the Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to deliver cargo to and return from the International Space Station (ISS).

Superhero fans will love this – Robert Downey Jr., the actor who brought Tony Stark, the cinematic “Iron Man,” to life – may have been inspired by Musk. In fact, the latter actually made a cameo in “Iron Man 2” (2000), where he meets Stark at a party and tries to discuss the idea of an “electric jet.”

Did you know Musk owns Wet Nellie – a custom-built submarine from the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977)? The movie prop was built around the body of a Lotus Esprit S1 sports car and cost in excess of $700,000 when bought at auction in 2013.

For the record, Musk earns approximately $37,000 per year as CEO of Tesla, Inc. He’d prefer not to draw a salary at all, but California law prohibits earning less than the minimum wage. That said, according to a March 2018 report, Musk stands to earn over $50 billion in stock and awards over the next few years.

Musk believes humanity must expand its frontiers to include building civilizations in space, because the earth will probably become uninhabitable. In an article published in the academic journal New Space, Musk warned of an “eventual extinction event” for humankind, later tweeting: “Humanity is not perfect, but it’s all we’ve got.” 

He thinks Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be the “most serious threat to the survival of the human race.” Speaking at a symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he said: “I'm increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.”

Despite (or perhaps because of) his reservations, Musk is co-founder and co-chairman of OpenAI, a “non-profit AI research company, discovering and enacting the path to safe artificial general intelligence.”

When Musk does hang up his entrepreneur’s boots, he wants to retire to Mars - the Red Planet. No, seriously. In a March 2018 interview, he said: "I will go if I can be assured that SpaceX would go on without me. I've said I want to die on Mars, just not on impact."

Musk provided early concepts and financial capital for the SolarCity Corporation (now a subsidiary of Tesla, Inc.), a firm specializing in solar-powered services. One of the largest solar energy firms in the United States, it was co-founded by Musk’s cousins – Lyndon and Peter Rive – in 2006.

On Feb. 6, 2018, SpaceX successfully launched Falcon Heavy, the company’s largest rocket to date and one regarded as the world’s most powerful since NASA’s Saturn V. Next up for Musk and SpaceX is the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), which is expected to replace the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch rockets and the Dragon spacecraft. More intriguingly, the BFR could ferry large numbers of passengers to Mars.

He is also the founder of The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company billed as providing an alternative to traffic congestion in major cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. And, keen on recycling, Musk plans to use excavated rock and soil to create interlocking Leg-style bricks to build homes.

In 2016, Musk unveiled solar roof tiles that eliminate the need for traditional panels and longer-lasting home battery. “This is sort of the integrated future. An electric car, a Powerwall and a solar roof. The key is it needs to be beautiful, affordable and seamlessly integrated,” Musk said while showcasing the products in Los Angeles. 

In November 2017, Musk unveiled Tesla’s first electronic truck; he used the occasion to call diesel trucks “economic suicide.” The new truck, which is scheduled to go into production in May 2019, will reportedly offer a range of 500 miles (805 km) when fully loaded and come equipped with “thermonuclear explosion-proof glass” in the windshield.

On March 14, 2018, Musk posted a rather cryptic tweet. It said: “Thud!” and was followed by another that said: “That’s the name of my new intergalactic media empire, exclamation point optional.” The following day, reports confirmed the hiring of six staff members from The Onion, a digital satirical news organization. Quite what he intends to do with “Thud!” though, is anyone’s guess.

In mid-2018, when the young members of a junior football team got trapped in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Thailand, he offered to help out the rescue teams by asking the engineers at SpaceX and the Boring Company to build a mini-submarine, which he personally delivered to the location. By the time the vessel reached Thailand, eight of the 12 children were already rescued and hence, the authorities decided against using it.

On the personal front, Musk married Canadian author Justine Wilson in 2000. Their first child together was born two years later but, sadly, he died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) when he was only 10 weeks old. In 2004, the couple became parents to twin boys – Griffin and Xavier – and triplets – Damian, Saxon and Kai – in 2006. Musk and Justine divorced in September 2008.

In 2010, Musk married English actress, Talulah Riley. The couple were granted a divorce in 2012 but re-married the following year. The applied for a second divorce in 2014, which was withdrawn, and a third in 2016, which was granted.

Humans make up only about 40 percent of the Internet traffic; the rest is made by bots: software applications that perform tasks automatically. Of these, there are "good" bots, including search engines and analytical tools, and "bad" bots, including the ones that generate spam. 

Your search engine results are just the tip of the iceberg and are called the "Surface Web." There are millions of secret unindexed websites that require special browsers to access; they are called the "Deep Web" and the pool is at least 500 times larger than Surface Web.

It took the internet just four years to reach the 50-million-user mark. The television took 13 years, the radio 38 years and the telephone 75 years to achieve the same goal.

Pornography continues to be the major source of the internet traffic. One-third of all internet searches are porn-related and a staggering 65 percent of images posted on the net are of nude women.

The concept of the web camera originated in 1993 in Cambridge University where it was used to monitor the fullness, or otherwise, of a coffee pot.

At present, almost 40 percent of the world's total population is connected to the internet.

As of April 2016, Facebook had around 1,590 million monthly active users.

China leads the world in terms of the total number of internet users, with over 721 million people in 2016. Norway, however, has the highest percentage of its population using the internet at 95.05 percent.

A single Google search engine query uses hundreds (or more) servers to throw up results in just 0.2 seconds.

A group of 14 persons belonging to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meet four times every year as part of the "Key Ceremony." Hailing from various countries, each of then holds the key to controlling the way we navigate the internet, as ICANN is responsible for assigning numerical internet addresses to websites and computers and translating them into the normal web addresses that people type into their browsers. The group's job is to verify that each web address is unique and authentic, to prevent proliferation of fake addresses. 

As of May 2016, leading Chinese social networking site Sina Weibo had 261 million active users.

Twitter, on the other hand, has around 313 million monthly users and generates 500 million tweets per day.

The World Wide Web turned 10,000 days old on July 28, 2016. Check the latest age of the internet here.

On an average day, 12 to 16 percent of Google queries have never been asked before. 

On average, cyber criminals compromise around 30,000 websites every day.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether to add internet addiction to the existing list of mental disorders. Called Internet Use Disorder, it is characterized by a person's preoccupation with the internet or internet gaming and the display of withdrawal symptoms when it is no longer available. 

Over 100,000 new dot com domains are registered on the internet every day.

Around 90 percent of all the emails sent around the world daily are spam.

On July 1, 2010, Finland made internet access a legal right for its citizens, becoming the first country to do so.

As of Aug. 3, 2016, there are more than 1.06 billion live websites on the internet.

New York-based librarian Jean Armour Polly coined the phrase "surfing the Internet," through her article of the same title, which was published in the University of Minnesota Wilson Library Bulletin in June 1992.