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The world's largest iceberg, A23a, is stuck again.

For more than 30 years, the giant frozen block — equivalent to the size of Rhode Island — was grounded on the sea floor in Antarctic coastal waters. It finally freed itself in 2020 and started heading to the open ocean this past winter.

But a few months into A23a's journey, onlookers were stunned at what they saw: the iceberg spinning in circles.

Through satellite imagery, British Antarctic Survey noticed the mega iceberg rotating near the South Orkney Islands, about 375 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula, starting in January. According to the Survey, A32a maintains "a chill 15 degrees rotation per day."

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Venus, the closest planet to Earth, has an atmosphere similar to ours, but much more hot and full of corrosive sulfuric acid.

Researchers in England announced last week that powerful space telescopes revealed new signs of phosphine gas in Venus' atmosphere, a finding that has been fiercely debated in recent years. There's a chance any phosphine gas on Venus could be a sign of life because on Earth, the gas comes from decaying organic material. Scientists are also confident there is no other natural chemical process on Venus that could otherwise produce the gas, said Dave Clements, the lead researcher on the project.

"We are not saying we have found signs of life on Venus," Clements told USA TODAY. "We are on the first step of a staircase at the top of which, if all the steps are passed, something might lead to that."

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Dozens of never-before-seen images of cosmic objects from the corners of the universe captured by the world's most powerful X-ray telescope were released on Tuesday.

The breathtaking images, taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, were released by NASA in honor of the 25th anniversary of the telescope's launch into space.

Taken with X-Ray data collected by Chandra, the pictures show a stunning range of phenomena, from the remnants of a supernova, to a nebula thousands of light years from Earth, to the center of the Milky Way galaxy, according to a NASA news release. The recently released images are part of nearly 25,000 collected by Chandra over its time in space.

Chandra observed the cosmic objects for up to thousands of hours, according to the photo gallery released by NASA. For instance, it took the telescope 64 days of observation time and 370 observations over the course of 20 years to capture an image of the Milky Way's center, which is about 26,000 light-years away from Earth.

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The United States Geological Survey did not record any earthquakes in the area around the time, dismissing all speculation that the shaking was caused by an earthquake. USGS, in a statement to USA TODAY said that shaking in northeast New Jersey and Staten Island was reported but "an examination of the seismic data in the area showed no evidence of an earthquake."

"The USGS has no direct evidence of the source of the shaking," the statement said. "Past reports of shaking with no associated seismic signal have had atmospheric origins such as sonic booms or weather-related phenomena."

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A SpaceX rocket has failed for the first time in nearly a decade, leaving the company’s internet satellites in an orbit so low that they're doomed to fall through the atmosphere and burn up.

The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from California on Thursday night, carrying 20 Starlink satellites. Several minutes into the flight, the upper stage engine malfunctioned. SpaceX on Friday blamed a liquid oxygen leak.

The company said flight controllers managed to make contact with half of the satellites and attempted to boost them to a higher orbit using onboard ion thrusters. But with the low end of their orbit only 84 miles (135 kilometers) above Earth — less than half what was intended — “our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites,” the company said via X.

SpaceX said the satellites will reenter the atmosphere and burn up. There was no mention of when they might come down. More than 6,000 orbiting Starlinks currently provide internet service to customers in some of the most remote corners of the world.

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Like a protective parent, one galaxy looms high over the other, seemingly peering down at its neighbor. The two galaxies are designated NGC 2936 and NGC 2937 — but more famously, they’re known as the Penguin and the Egg.

The team behind the James Webb Space Telescope unveiled the new image of the pair on Friday, showing the two galaxies in more clarity than ever — and marking two years since the first image using the advanced telescope's infrared instruments was released.

“Webb is providing insights into longstanding mysteries about the early universe and ushering in a new era of studying distant worlds,” said Mark Clampin, director of NASA's astrophysics division, “while returning images that inspire people around the world and posing exciting new questions to answer.”

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