After months of quiet skies, the Lyrids return with fast, bright meteors and dark, moonless viewing conditions before dawn.
(This is the final part of a series on Cherenkov radiation — the "light boom." Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 first.)
Space News & Blog Articles
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Telescope livestream: Watch the moon pass in front of the Pleiades on April 19
Watch the crescent moon cross the blue-white stars of the Pleiades on April 19 from the comfort of your home.
Synthetic universe allows you to 'see and hear' galaxies evolving from the dawn of time (video)
Scientists have used a synthetic universe to observe how the first galaxies evolved and grew. In fact, it is so close to the real thing that it's tricking some astronomers.
Live Coverage: Third flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket to feature 1st reuse of booster
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands on pad 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, on the eve of its launch with the BlueBird 7 satellite. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now.
Blue Origin plans to launch its third New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station shortly before dawn on Sunday, carrying AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite into low Earth orbit.
"Immature" Lunar Soil Could Be Suitable for Roadways on the Moon
Between the Artemis Program, the ESA's Moon Village, and the Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), the next step in space exploration is clear: We're going back to the Moon, and this time, to stay! This plan requires significant investment, research, development, and strategies adapted to lunar conditions. In particular, mission planners are concerned about the hazard posed by lunar regolith (aka. "Moon dust"). In addition to being electrostatically charged, causing it to stick to literally any surface, it is incredibly fine and easily kicked up by rovers and spacecraft as they land and take off.
Pragmata's tale of AI slop, humanity, & lunar conquest makes it the timeliest sci-fi game of the year
Capcom's new IP is a welcome throwback to simpler action games, but its story and themes are shockingly well-timed and refreshingly optimistic.
How to see the Lyrid meteor shower 2026: Where to look in the night sky
The Lyrids are back! Here's where to look and how to spot these shooting stars.
Artemis 2 and Tiangong space station astronauts set record for farthest distance between humans
For a few moments on April 6, the four Artemis 2 moon astronauts and the three crewmates aboard China's Tiangong space station were farther away from each other than any humans had ever been.
This Week In Space podcast: Episode 206 — I Want to Believe
On Episode 206 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Dr. Brianne Suldovsky of Portland State University to discuss what happens after the discovery of an alien life form.
Don't miss the moon, Venus and the Pleiades align after sunset on April 19
Look out for earthshine on the crescent moon as it shines near Venus and the 1,000-strong Pleiades star cluster.
This life-hunting rover may be SpaceX's 1st-ever Mars launch
SpaceX will launch Europe's life-hunting Rosalind Franklin rover toward Mars in 2028 — but not aboard the company's Starship megarocket.
Blue Origin reuses huge New Glenn rocket for 1st time, lands booster at sea — but deploys satellite into wrong orbit (launch video)
Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket launched into space for the third time ever Sunday morning (April 19) — but, in a first for the company, it soared into orbit powered by a previously flown booster.
SpaceX makes 600th Falcon booster landing during West Coast Starlink mission
File: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket stands at Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of the Starlink 17-31 mission on March 13, 2026. Image: SpaceX
SpaceX completed its 600th Falcon booster landing during a Starlink mission Sunday. The Falcon 9 rocket departed Vandenberg Space Force Base on a south-southwesterly trajectory at 9:03:09 a.m. PDT (12:03:09 pm EDT / 1603:09 UTC).
How the 'Project Hail Mary' book walks the line between hard and speculative science fiction… and why the film did not
Two different ways to tell the same story.
New moon of April 2026 brings incredible views of the constellation Hydra, Jupiter, Venus and more this week
The new moon is the perfect time to spot faint constellations, galaxies and a quartet of planets in the dawn sky.
How a Black Hole and a Shredded Star Could Light Up a Galaxy
In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers were pretty excited, partly because they thought it might get torn apart by Sag A*'s intense gravitational pull. That didn't happen, and the event turned out to be a cosmic fizzle. G2 skipped around the black hole, survived the flyby, and continued on a shortened orbit. Various observations showed that it wasn't just a gas cloud. It was likely a dusty protostellar object encased in a dusty cloud. Or perhaps several merged stars.
Small Trojan Asteroids Defy Expectations
Understanding the beginning of the solar system requires us to look at some very strange places. One such place is at the so-called “Trojan” asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit in front of and behind it. But for a long time, these cosmic time capsules have held a mystery for astronomers: why are they color-coded? The populations of larger asteroids are very clear split into two distinct groups - the “reds” and the “less reds”, because apparently they’re all red to some extent. A new paper from researchers in Japan tried to solve this mystery by taking a close look at even smaller asteroids, and their findings, published in a recent edition of The Astronomical Journal, actually brings up a completely different question - why don’t smaller Trojan asteroids have the same color-coding?
'Tall waves moving in slow motion': Here's how oily oceans on Saturn's giant moon Titan may behave
The size of waves on alien worlds will depend as much on the characteristics of the liquid as well as the gravity.
Life Beyond Biosignatures: A New Method In The Search For Life
Two factors dominate our search for life and habitability elsewhere in the galaxy. The first is liquid water, which, as far as we know, is necessary for life. When we find exoplanets, scientists try to determine if they're in their stars' habitable zones. Under the right atmospheric conditions, liquid water could persist there.
