Is that a footprint on Mars? Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. However, scientists have found a strange feature unlike anything they've seen before on the Red Planet's surface.

What is it?

While NASA's Perseverance rover is the newest addition to the agency's robotic Red Planet fleet, its cousin Curiosity is still going strong and finding strange and unusual things on Mars 14 years after landing.

In new observations captured on Mars' Mount Sharp, the Curiosity team has identified "features unlike quite anything we have seen in the past," Michelle Minitti, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), said in a statement.

These mysterious features are a bunch of broad, shallow pits scattered across the Martian bedrock.

Why is it incredible?

While little pits and divots are common to find on the Martian surface, these wide, shallow pits that researchers saw with Curiosity are quite different from surface features that have been seen before.

"The pits of this week were much broader and shallower than past features and were not accompanied by obvious objects that were once in the pits," Minitti said.

The team collected as much data as they could on the strange pits using Curiosity's various instruments, including MAHLI, the Mastcam camera, ChemCam (the Chemistry and Camera complex) and APX (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer).

They have so far found interesting layers in the pit material that seems chemically different from the main bedrock.

But we will have to wait and see what else researchers might be able to learn about these odd pits. How did they form? How long have they existed? What can they tell us about the history of Mars?

If this summer felt hotter than usual, you're not alone. As it turns out, this past summer was the hottest on record in the United States.

This is the hottest that summer in the U.S. has been in at least 132 years. Specifically, the temperatures rose to 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.67 degrees Celsius) above average, beating out the most recent record set in 2021 of 0.4 degrees F (0.22 degrees C) above average, according to a new report from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And looking month-to-month, this was also the hottest August we've ever seen.

The record-breaking season saw unmatched temperature highs across the contiguous U.S. (all of the adjoining states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii which just aren't a part of this record) from June through August. But scorching temperatures aren't all that this new record reveals, as this summer was also one of the driest on record for the contiguous U.S., with more than half of the country in a drought by September. The summer of 2026 saw both extreme precipitation highs and lows across the country, too. From droughts to heavy rain, there was nothing average about the precipitation seen across the U.S. this summer.

A closer look

Digging into some of the details, the full summer was 3 degrees F above the average for the season, 74.4 degrees F (23.5 degrees C). August was 3.5 degrees F (1.94 degrees C) above average for the month at 75.6 F (24.2 C). And while most of the contiguous U.S. experienced well above average temperatures this summer, some locations felt the heat the most. The Southwest, the southern Rockies, the southwestern Plains, southern Florida, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado hit particularly high temperatures this August.

Looking at the summer's unusual precipitation levels, the total precipitation across the contiguous U.S. was 0.32 inches (0.8 centimeters) below average, making this past summer the third driest on record, and the driest summer since 2000. By Sept. 1, 59.1% of the country was in drought. There was drought across the West, the upper Midwest, the Deep South and more. Over 75% of Puerto Rico lie in drought conditions as well, with 40% being in "extreme drought." And while summer might be ending, a lot of this drought is projected to continue, according to the report from NOAA. When it comes to drier lands, that also means an increased risk of wildfire.

Though these temperature differences might seem small or relatively mild at face value, they have massive consequences. As climate change progresses primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities like transportation and manufacturing, we continue to see a whole host of its effects across the world. This ranges from rising average temperatures and glacial ice loss to sea level rise and worsening natural disasters. Those natural disasters include events like flooding, hurricanes, wildfires and cyclones.

While different areas of the world will experience different effects of global warming, one thing remains true for all: The consequences will only continue to worsen as our planet warms.

If we just look at this past August 2026 in the U.S., not only did we see record-high temperatures, but also weather and climate disasters of all varieties. Fires broke out over 10,000 acres of eastern Washington, even spreading across the state and into Oregon. More fires, in fact, spread across Nevada and Alaska while wind gusts up to 111 miles per hour (178.6 kilometers per hour) tore across South Dakota. A heatwave brought sweltering temperatures to south Florida and Hurricane Lala brought intense winds, rain and flooding to Hawaii;. And these are just a few of the many examples — from just this last month.

Everyone needs a helping hand from their friends now and again  — even space stations. Recently, the International Space Station got an orbital boost from the docked Cygnus XL spacecraft, helping the station get to the correct altitude.

What is it?

On Aug. 27, while attached to the International Space Station's Unity module, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft turned its engines on and fired them.

This planned maneuver lifted the space station's orbit, pushing it into a higher altitude. This image snapped from orbit shows Cygnus, named for the swan constellation, as it's attached to the station for this planned push.

But why lift the space station to a higher altitude above Earth?

Next week, the space station will receive a new visitor: the Progress 96 resupply spacecraft. This altitude shift allowed the space station to shift into a position that will allow Progress 96, the 96th cargo mission in a series of Russian Progress cargo missions, to rendezvous and dock with the station.

Why is it incredible?

This maneuver was routine, but emblematic of the incredible progress we've made in space. Not only can we build spacecraft and send them into orbit, but we can control these spacecraft well enough that they help each other out, boosting each other when necessary.

And while Progress 96 might seem like a run-of-the-mill cargo ship carrying cargo like water, fuel, food, scientific instruments and additional supplies to the station, it is also the 96th Progress mission to a space station. In fact, the first Progress mission took place way before the International Space Station even existed. This first mission sent cargo to the Soviet Salyut 6 station all the way back in 1978 and with 96 on the verge of liftoff, the Russian Progress missions are going strong to this day.

Together, the combination of this lift maneuver and this 96th cargo mission show how incredibly well we as humans have worked together to build a sustainable presence in orbit and how that has happened with the aid of international collaboration between nations like the U.S. and Russia.

Are those purple, wavy, alien thumbprints? Or perhaps an otherworldly ocean? Nope! It's actually a dune field on Mars, colored purple.

What is it?

Across the Martian surface are all sorts of unique features in the rocky, dusty surface material. In this false-color image, snapped by the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can see the incredible and strange ripples of a dune field on Mars.

"Our science goal for this observation is to observe any changes from a previous image we acquired in 2011," a statement sharing the image reads. "For this footprint, the target enlarged and centered more over the dune field, which is located on the floor in the northern half of an unnamed impact crater."

Why is it incredible?

Spacecraft like MRO, with its HiRISE camera, have opened our eyes to the incredible features across the Martian surface.

From dune fields like we see here to craters and ancient riverbeds, these views have helped scientists piece together the planet's incredible, dynamic history. For decades, observations from orbit around Mars and by rovers on the planet's surface have helped to solve at least part of the mystery of what Mars was once like.

Researchers are still looking for signs that unequivocally point to life once existing on the planet. But so far, observations have showed that, billions of years in the past, Mars had abundant surface water — lakes, rivers perhaps even a huge ocean. In analyzing the material in and near ancient waterways on the planet with NASA's Perseverance rover, researchers have already found evidence that could possibly link to biosignatures.

While this image might look like a strange but beautiful purple-colored desktop background, photos like it this can be essential clues for scientists hunting for answers.