u/AstroUpon

For nearly 4,000 years, the Great Pyramid of Giza stood as the tallest man-made structure on Earth, an achievement so extraordinary that no other building surpassed it until the construction of Lincoln Cathedral in 1311 AD.

Near the center of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, a stunning line of galaxies known as Markarian’s Chain stretches across space, forming one of the most famous galaxy groupings in the night sky. These galaxies are bound together by gravity and contain billions of stars, showcasing the immense scale and beauty of the universe.

This incredible footage captures the massive undertaking of stacking SpaceX’s Starship. Once fully assembled, Starship towers nearly 400 feet (120 meters) into the sky, making it the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

The speed of light means we can never see the universe as it exists right now.

Everything we observe is actually the past. The sunlight reaching Earth is about 8 minutes old. The Andromeda Galaxy appears to us as it was 2.5 million years ago.

No matter where we look in space, we are always looking backward in time — seeing the history of the universe, not its present moment.

Astronomers believe there could still be an undiscovered planet lurking far beyond Neptune, sometimes referred to as “Planet Nine.”

Scientists haven’t seen it directly yet, but strange gravitational patterns in distant icy objects suggest that something massive may be hiding in the outer reaches of our Solar System. Some estimates suggest this mysterious world could be several times more massive than Earth and orbit hundreds of billions of miles away from the Sun.

If it exists, one orbit around the Sun could take thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years.

Watch as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docks with the International Space Station, where it will stay in orbit until making its return journey back to Earth later this summer.

The International Space Station is expected to remain in orbit until around 2030 before undergoing a carefully planned deorbit over the Pacific Ocean near Point Nemo, also known as the “Spacecraft Cemetery.” A special vehicle developed with help from SpaceX will guide the massive 420-ton station back into Earth’s atmosphere, where most of it will burn up before any remaining debris falls into a remote ocean region far from populated areas.

Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighboring star, is about 4.24 light-years away from Earth. If you could drive there at 70 mph, the journey would take more than 356 billion years to complete.

That staggering distance is a reminder of just how unimaginably vast the universe truly is. Even the stars closest to us are separated by distances so enormous that they’re almost impossible for the human mind to fully comprehend.

Following a successful CRS-34 Dragon launch to the International Space Station, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster safely returned to Earth, touching down at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral just minutes after liftoff.