SKIN & GLOW

For generations, Pluto was little more than a faint dot at the edge of the Solar System. Then, in July 2015, a small spacecraft crossed that enormous distance and turned the dot into a place with terrain, texture, and a past.

New Horizons had traveled for 9 years and nearly 3 billion miles before reaching Pluto. Its close approach gave humanity the first detailed views of a world so distant that even its basic surface features had remained hidden.

The images revealed towering mountains rising beside deep valleys, impact craters, and vast frozen plains. The bright heart-shaped region, later named Tombaugh Regio, became one of the most recognizable landscapes ever seen beyond Neptune.

Pluto’s mountains are believed to be made largely of water ice. At Pluto’s surface temperatures, water ice becomes rigid enough to behave more like Earth’s bedrock, allowing it to form steep, rugged peaks rather than flowing like ordinary ice.

Long shadows stretched across the terrain, making the mountains appear even larger and exposing sharp changes in elevation. The spacecraft also observed evidence of glaciers and complex geological activity, surprising researchers who had expected a cold, inactive body.

Pluto was once reduced to a point of light and later reclassified as a dwarf planet, but New Horizons revealed something far richer: a frozen world shaped by mountains, plains, impacts, and time. Even at the Solar System’s edge, geology had left its mark.

There’s a picnic table sitting at the unique meeting point of Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary. The spot marks the borders of all three countries, creating a fascinating place where visitors can sit together at the same table.

People from the three neighboring countries can enjoy a meal there while remaining on their respective sides of the borders. It’s a simple but unusual reminder of how closely these countries meet at one point.

MARS ROVERS ARE ROBOTIC VEHICLES THAT DRIVE ACROSS THE SURFACE OF MARS TO STUDY ITS ROCKS, SOIL, CLIMATE AND POSSIBLE SIGNS OF PAST LIFE.
NASA's first rover, Sojourner, landed in July 1997 with the Mars Pathfinder mission. It weighed only about 10.6 kg and explored the area around its lander for nearly three months. In January 2004, the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived on opposite sides of the planet. They were designed to work for 90 days, but Spirit operated until 2010 and Opportunity lasted until 2018, covering about 45 km and finding clear evidence that liquid water once existed on Mars.
Curiosity, a car-sized rover weighing about 900 kg, landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, using a dramatic sky crane system. It confirmed that the area once had a freshwater lake with the chemical ingredients needed for life, and it is still exploring today. Perseverance, which landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, is about 1,025 kg and is collecting rock samples in sealed tubes for a future mission to bring back to Earth. It also tested making oxygen from the Martian air with an experiment called MOXIE.
Perseverance carried the small Ingenuity helicopter, which made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021, and completed 72 flights before its mission ended in January 2024. China has also sent a rover, Zhurong, which landed in May 2021 and explored Utopia Planitia.

Tonight, an icy traveler makes its closest approach to Earth.

On October 2, 2026, Comet 161P/Hartley–IRAS passes about 46.8 million miles (75.3 million km) from our planet while moving through Aquarius its closest Earth approach of this return.

But don't expect the enormous green fireball shown in illustrations. 161P is a faint telescopic comet, not a naked-eye spectacle making this a night for dedicated skywatchers with optical equipment and dark skies.

One remarkable night near Earth.

One blue cup was the only thing standing between a boy and dehydration, and the internet helped find a solution.

Ben Carter, a teenager with severe autism from England, would only drink from one specific blue training cup he had used since childhood.

When the cup was discontinued and his last one began falling apart, his father made a desperate online appeal.

For Ben, it wasn’t simply a favorite cup. Even tiny changes in shape, color, or texture could make him refuse to drink. His attachment was so strong that he had previously been hospitalized with dehydration after rejecting other cups.

Then the story went viral.

The manufacturer tracked down the original mold, restarted production, and made 500 identical cups just for Ben, giving him what was essentially a lifetime supply.

1 blue cup. 1 worried father. More than a decade after the model was discontinued. 500 replacements made for one boy.

Sometimes the smallest things can mean everything.

The standard model of cosmology makes a strange prediction. Galaxies form inside clumps of dark matter, but below a certain size some clumps should never have made a single star. They would hold a little gas and nothing else: failed galaxies, dark forever, and almost impossible to find.

A few years ago the FAST radio telescope in China picked up a compact cloud of hydrogen near the spiral galaxy M94, 14 million light-years away, nicknamed Cloud-9.

American radio telescopes confirmed it. The gas is cold, it does not rotate, and it holds together, which takes far more mass than the gas itself provides.

Hubble then took a deep look at exactly that spot and found no stars belonging to the cloud, only faint galaxies far behind it.

Published in late 2025, it is the strongest example yet of a failed galaxy: a clump of dark matter that gathered about a million Suns' worth of gas and never lit up.

During severe flooding in Brazoria County, Texas, in May 2016, Randy Wagner bought a water-filled flood barrier after officials issued evacuation warnings. He spent about $8,300 and installed roughly 400 feet of the 30-inch-high barrier around his home with two helpers.

Neighbors doubted the idea, but when floodwater outside reached about 27 inches, the barrier held. Water did not overtop or enter Wagner’s home, while nearby properties flooded. Wagner later said the cost seemed small compared with the potential $150,000 in flood damage.

According to Guinness World Records, the wife of Russian peasant Feodor Vassilyev is credited with giving birth to 69 children, making her the mother associated with the highest recorded number of children. The births reportedly occurred across 27 pregnancies.

The reported total included 16 sets of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets. Guinness also reports that Feodor Vassilyev had another 18 children with a second wife, though the historical details come from old records and should be treated with caution.