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The closer we get to Ceres, the largest object in our solar system’s asteroid belt, the stranger it becomes.

In June, NASA released a photo of Ceres, taken by the Dawn spacecraft from 2,700 miles away, that showed a several-mile high “pyramid” protruding from the dwarf planet’s otherwise generally smooth surface. And a new photo, taken last Wednesday from only 900 miles away, shows the mountain is four miles high and has a perimeter of previously unseen, reflective streaked slopes.

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Over half a century after the dawn of the space age, getting to space remains an epic challenge. Twice this year, the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket met a fiery end on the Atlantic Ocean—both attempts to recover and reuse rockets to reduce launch costs. A third rocket never made orbit, exploding on ascent.

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