Innehållsförteckning för October 2025 från National Geographic Magazine

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORERS These contributors have received funding from the National Geographic Society, which is committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers at natgeo.com/impact. Babak Tafreshi, p.112 The Boston-based Explorer visited four continents for this month’s feature pairing his photographs with those made by astronaut Don Pettit from aboard the International Space Station. He is a past winner of the Royal Photographic Society’s Award for Scientific Imaging. Prasenjeet Yadav, p.16 An Explorer since 2014, Yadav spent nearly 14 months reporting and photographing this issue’s story on efforts to preserve genetic diversity in India’s tiger reserves. For his last National Geographic assignment, he captured incredible images of snow leopards in the Indian Himalaya. Marina Koren, p.112 A former Atlantic staff…

IN ONE VIEW, Vanguard 1 is space junk: an antennaed aluminum ball that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dismissively compared to a grapefruit. The United States launched it in March 1958, and the satellite returned radio signals until May 1964. Defunct since, it’s the oldest human-made object in orbit. But to space historian Matt Bille, that grapefruit is “one of the most precious objects” of the early space age, deserving of a place in the Smithsonian. And scientists, he says, could glean much from it about long-term exposure to space. Bille, along with a few like-minded engineers and historians, made this case at a recent conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, presenting detailed plans for a hypothetical mission to deorbit Vanguard 1 and bring it home. The idea…

IT MIGHT NOT BE WHAT YOU THINK. AT 11:30 A.M. ON May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stepped onto the summit of Mount Everest. Affixed to Norgay’s ice axe were four small flags—of Nepal, the United Nations, Great Britain, and India—and as the Sherpa mountaineer held the axe above his head under a clear blue sky, the flags flapped wildly in fierce winds. In the 30 years prior, at least 75 others had tried to reach that summit, more than a dozen dying in the attempt, and Hillary and Norgay’s successful ascent is still considered one of history’s most monumental feats. The reason is obvious, right? Because in 1856, British surveyors declared Everest the planet’s tallest peak: the roof of the world, Earth’s most impressive mountain. But what…

NAIROBI’S PANARI HOTEL sits alongside a highway between the city center and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. On the second floor, across from a Chinese restaurant and next to a movie theater, is a small skating rink that serves as the home base for the Kenya Ice Lions, the only ice hockey team in equatorial Africa. On a recent Wednesday, the arena echoed with the thud of hockey sticks and bodies colliding with the boards. From the bench, players shouted at their teammates in Swahili as they faced off in a five-a-side scrimmage on a rink just a quarter of the size of a regulation National Hockey League rink. A vast divide exists in Kenya between the rich and poor, but here in Nairobi ice hockey is helping to bridge the…

NATURE “It felt like a scene you might see in a documentary about the Serengeti but on a small scale and photographed in a FLOWER FIELD along a busy road in densely populated Holland.”THEO BOSBOOM, photographer CULTURE “They grew up in this river. Watching them explore WHO THEY ARE and who they will become through movement was a beautiful thing.”SILVANA TREVALE, photographer WILDLIFE “All around them, there were pups nursing restlessly, wriggling, stretching their limbs and being CURIOUS AND PLAYFUL. This pup seemed safe and calm under its mother’s wings.”KATE NEWMAN, photographer HEALTH “He told me that he would like to be a doctor or maybe an engineer, but for now he only HOPES to finish high school.”MARCO GARRO, photographer and National Geographic Explorer OCEANS “I never expected to be…

IT TOOK 50 DAYS of searching before the jungle revealed its biggest secret to us. Fifty days of jostling along gravel roads in the Similipal Tiger Reserve, in India’s eastern state of Odisha, scanning between trees in the semievergreen forest, hoping for a glimpse of an elusive tiger called T12, whose striking appearance has made him a symbol of a population at a perilous crossroads. My partner in the quest, Raghu Purti, a staffer with the regional forest department, had never set eyes on T12. Most of his colleagues had only ever seen the tiger in images from camera traps set up to study animal movements throughout the reserve. But actually laying eyes on Similipal’s tigers lets forest officials look for physical ailments that cameras may not capture—and also provides…

TELEVISION THE PLANE, a Cessna sixseater, went down in a stretch of Colombian rainforest that might have challenged even the most prepared jungle trekkers. The crash killed the pilot and two passengers, including Magdalena Mucutuy, a member of the Huitoto community who was relocating to Bogotá from her home on Indigenous reserve land in the Colombian Amazon. The only survivors: Mucutuy’s 11-month-old baby and three older children, ages 13, 9, and 5. What followed is an incredible story of resilience and hope, told by National Geographic Explorers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, along with Juan Camilo Cruz, in the new documentary Lost in the Jungle. Just as inspiring as the Mucutuy children’s courage is the unprecedented rescue effort coordinated by the Colombian military and searchers from Indigenous communities—groups long at odds,…

The trip began at the easternmost edge of the continental United States: Lubec, where the country’s first light of day illuminates the West Quoddy Head Light. Shrouded in fog, the early morning was accompanied by a dreamlike stillness—an apt prelude to kayaking the pristine waters of Cobscook Shores. Not long after, on a whale-watching tour in Eastport, Muller encountered eagles overhead, porpoises beneath his boat, and whales surfacing offshore, all within moments of leaving the dock. After immersing himself in the water, Muller turned his attention to Maine’s cultural and culinary traditions. He ventured into Raye’s Mustard, the country’s last traditional stone-ground mustard mill, and explored the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, which celebrates the region’s creative legacy. Eastport’s small-town blend of working heritage and contemporary culture reflected a…

After being decimated by hunting and habitat destruction, India’s tiger population has begun to recover in protected reserves. But in less connected areas like Similipal, sometimes called tiger islands, inbreeding has become an issue. For reserves like Tadoba-Andhari, interconnected habitats and wildlife corridors help diversify the population—and may offer a solution for tiger islands. LANDSCAPE OF THE TIGER Forests provide spaces for tigers to rest and breed, along with ample prey. Although agricultural lands interrupt forest cover, tigers can move across them between reserves. But highways and urban areas remain difficult barriers. A THE BENEFITS OF LINKED RESERVES In reserves with good connectivity like Tadoba, tigers roam hundreds of miles along corridors to find mates among neighboring populations. B THE PITFALLS OF A TIGER ISLAND Tigers in reserves with no…

FIVE WAYS TO MEASURE A MOUNTAIN Elevation above sea level Mean sea level is one baseline, but if you’re gazing at a summit from anyplace other than the coast, it likely means that much of a peak’s height is measured beneath your feet and not above you. Advantages: Mountains atop plateaus Disadvantages: Coastal ranges Distance from the center of Earth Our planet isn’t a perfect sphere: Centrifugal force from its rotation causes a bulge at the Equator. A mountain rising from this bulge sits up to 13 miles farther from Earth’s center than a peak near the poles with a similar elevation above sea level. Equatorial peaks Summits nearer the poles Topographic prominence Popular with mountaineers, prominence measures a mountain’s relative height above its surroundings. How much elevation must you lose while…