ALT A periodic table titled “Origins of the Elements” depicts the astronomical origins of each chemical element. The table includes 103 boxes, each with the name, atomic number, and letter symbol of an element, plus one or two images indicating the objects or events that created it. Eight boxes provide a key: a purple burst represents “the big bang,” a fiery orange star represents “dying low-mass stars,” a small white star pulling material off a larger yellow star represents “white dwarf supernovae,” a ball of red and blue particles with one flying off represents “radioactive decay,” a shower of white streaks represents “cosmic ray collisions,” a white exploding star represents “dying high-mass stars,” two small blue stars swirling together represents “merging neutron stars,” and a blue beaker represents “human-made.” Below the table, text reads “This period table depicts the primary source on Earth for each element. In cases where two sources contribute fairly equally, both appear.”
ALT A panoramic image of a desert landscape. The robotic Curiosity rover is visible in the immediate foreground at the bottom center of the frame. In the background, a rocky desert floor is dominated by long, linear ridges, with hills of layered stone in the distance. Wheel tracks appear in the dust near the rover.
ALT This insignia commemorates 25 years of continuous human presence aboard the International Space Station—a global partnership enabling groundbreaking research, commercial innovation, and exploration beyond Earth—that began on Nov. 2, 2000, when Expedition 1 crew members William Shepherd of NASA and Sergey Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, both from Roscosmos, docked to the orbital outpost aboard their Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft.
ALT Expedition 30 crew members (from row from left) Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos and Dan Burbank of NASA with (back row) Don Pettit from NASA, Anatoly Ivanishin from Roscosmos, Andre Kuipers of ESA (European Space Agency), and Anton Shkaplerov from Roscosmos celebrate Christmas Day in 2011.
ALT Expedition 50 crew members (from left) Shane Kimbrough of NASA, Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, Andrei Borisenko of Roscosmos, Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, and Peggy Whitson of NASA are check their Christmas stockings on Christmas Eve in 2016.
ALT NASA astronaut Kayla Barron is pictured seemingly juggling Christmas presents in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station during Expedition 60 in 2021.
ALT NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. The stars are seen here as blue and white lights surrounded by swirls of gas—the “pine needles” of the tree—with green representing light in the visible spectrum.
