The image, shared on July 18 by NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and accompanying video were captured aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and show potassium chloride crystals growing in microgravity — the near-weightless environment experienced in orbit.
"[Other] forces start to become far more pronounced than gravity forces," Wilson said, pointing to molecular attraction and polarity as two influences that suddenly take over once gravity fades into the background.
On Earth, growing crystals eventually get heavy enough to sag, break or settle at the bottom of their container. But in microgravity, they keep growing outward from wherever they started.
In microgravity, crystals experience "hopper growth," where the outer edges and corners grow at faster rates than the flat faces, creating a step-like appearance. This timelapse records their growth inside a thin water film. Look closely, and you will see the patterns emerge! pic.twitter.com/iSlqJvke1GJune 6, 2026
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For Wilson, images like this serve another purpose: inspiring curiosity.
ISS astronauts spend a significant amount of their time conducting science experiments that would be near-impossible on Earth. Recently, astronauts used the space station’s newly upgraded Cold Atom Laboratory to create and study an elusive fifth state of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate. And last year, researchers demonstrated how moss spores exposed to space for nine months on the outside of the ISS continued to grow after being returned to Earth.
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