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Lunar Starship (the Starship Human Landing System, or HLS, for NASA's Artemis program) is in active development but remains several years from its first crewed lunar landing. As of early April 2026, the program has made substantial progress on hardware testing and subsystem qualification, yet key challenges like in-orbit propellant transfer, long-duration flights, and an uncrewed lunar demonstration are still ahead—contributing to schedule delays. Current Status and Major Achievements SpaceX has completed 49 contractual milestones for the HLS contract with NASA (out of many total), with most achieved on or ahead of schedule. These cover: Life support and thermal control...

The human population has already grown too large and demanding for Earth to sustainably support at current consumption levels, a new study warns. Based on more than two centuries of population data, a team led by Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia found humanity is living well beyond the bounds of what our planet can support long-term. Ecologists describe the ability of an environment to sustain a species' population as its "carrying capacity". It's an estimate of the number of individuals from any given species that can survive long-term, based on the resources at hand and the rate at...

Artemis II began its historic flyby of the moon Monday in what is the mission’s showstopper event — giving its crew and Earthlings back home their first glimpses ever of parts of the lunar dark side. The capsule began the flyby around 2:45 p.m. ET, and will spend just over six hours arcing around the moon with its windows pointed toward the far side of the lunar surface. All four crew members will become the first people in history to see certain swaths of the far side — since most it remained in shadow when the Apollo missions orbited the...

It’s keeping scientists up at night. Scientists around the world are sounding the alarm over an ambitious plan to install thousands of mirrors and myriad satellites in space, claiming that it will impact sleep and various ecosystems on a global level. “The proposed scale of orbital deployment would represent a significant alteration of the natural night-time light environment at a planetary scale,” leaders of the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the Japanese Society for Chronobiology and the Canadian Society for Chronobiology declared in letters to the US Federal Communications Commission The Guardian reported....

Situation in eastern Iran, and spreading up the Helmand River into Afghanistan, are the ruins of dozens of archaeological sites. This is the lost Helmand Civilization. The Historian's Craft explores the Helmand civilization, a lost Bronze Age culture spanning modern Iran and Afghanistan. Tracing sites like Shahri Sukhteh and Mundigok, this overview examines evidence of advanced trade, massive urban planning, and mysterious, widespread fires that led to the civilization's eventual decline. Helmand: Iran's Lost Civilization You've (possibly) Never Heard Of | 10:58 The Historian's Craft | 132K subscribers | 13,784 views | March 11, 2026

Explanation: Why doesn't Artemis II land on the Moon? The main reason is that Artemis II is primarily a test mission designed to make a future Artemis missions -- which will land humans on the Moon -- better prepared. Similarly, NASA's Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 went right near the Moon as tests before Apollo 11 -- which landed. As the trajectory in the featured animated video shows, Artemis II will loop around both the Earth and the Moon before returning to the Earth about 10 days after launch. The Artemis II mission will take humans outside the Earth's magnetosphere...

The AFP reports that a 600-year-old grape seed recovered from a medieval waste pit in northern France is genetically identical to grapes used today to make pinot noir wine. A team of researchers led by Ludovic Orlando of the French National Center for Scientific Research sequenced the genomes of 54 grape seeds dating from about 2300 B.C. to the medieval period. The oldest grapes in the study were found to have come from wild vines. The scientists determined that early farmers began using clonal propagation techniques as early as 625 to 500 B.C., when domesticated grapevines were grown in southern...

According to a Gizmodo report, analysis of residue samples taken from an incense burner previously unearthed near Pompeii has identified an offering used in ancient Rome. "We've long known from ancient writers that the Romans burnt frankincense in their sacrifices," said Johannes Eber of the University of Zurich. "Preserved ashes and traces of fragrant resins from a domestic shrine near Pompeii provides tangible proof and a striking reminder of just how globalized the ancient world truly was," he added. The terracotta censer, decorated with an appliqué of a reclining woman, came from a domestic shrine at a rural villa north...

Explanation: The party is still going on in spiral galaxy NGC 3310. Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 likely collided with a smaller galaxy causing the large spiral galaxy to light up with a tremendous burst of star formation. The changing gravity during the collision created density waves that compressed existing clouds of gas and triggered the star-forming party. The featured image from the Gemini North Telescope shows the galaxy in great detail, color-coded so that pink highlights gas while white and blue highlight stars. Some of the star clusters in the galaxy are quite young, indicating that starburst...

Near-Earth asteroid Apophis is a potentially hazardous asteroid that will safely pass close to Earth on April 13, 2029. It will come about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from our planet’s surface — closer than the distance of many satellites in geosynchronous orbit (about 22,236 miles, or 36,000 kilometers, in altitude).

The world's oldest land animal, Jonathan the tortoise, is still alive after a viral hoax falsely claimed he'd died. The confusion began after a post on X falsely claimed the giant tortoise had died at age 193. The account, which impersonated Jonathan’s veterinarian, Joe Hollins, quickly gained traction and sparked concern among fans around the world. That claim, however, was not true. "Yes, he's still alive," the X user wrote hours later. "This was just an April Fools' prank." **SNIP** Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise, continues to live on the island of St. Helena, a remote British territory in the...

She might want to demand a refund on that Ivy League education. A hilarious exchange during the March 28 No Kings Rally in Manhattan went viral after a woke protestor was caught on video condemning society’s treatment of the non-existent “gays of Hormuz.” “Isn’t it a little homophobic that we’re so focused on the straights of Hormuz — and not the gays of Hormuz?” comedian Lionel Leede asked the anti-Trump demonstrator, in a play on words on the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping lane that’s been choked by the war in Iran. Yes,” she proceeded to answer with...

Members of Congress are demanding 46 military videos from the Department of War which insiders say offer convincing proof that advanced, non-human craft are operating on Earth. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) requested the long list of explosively titled files on Wednesday, which include 45 previously unreleased military clips. The presence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena “in and around the sensitive airspaces of US military installations poses a threat to the security of the armed forces and their readiness,” according to the April 1 letter addressed to Secretary Pete Hegseth. Those with knowledge of the long list of videos — which...

Explanation: From pole to pole our fair planet is captured in this snapshot from space, an evocative image from a window of the Orion spacecraft Integrity. From the spacecraft's perspective the Sun is moving behind Earth's bright limb along the lower right. Africa and the Iberian peninsula are in view on the pale blue planet's surface, while aurorae crown Earth's south and north poles at top right and bottom left. Commander Reid Wiseman took the historic picture on Artemis II mission flight day 2 (April 2), after the completion of the planned translunar injection burn. That burn boosted the spacecraft...

A Chinese satellite equipped with a robotic "octopus arm" has passed a key refueling test in low Earth orbit (LEO), according to state-run media. The achievement highlights China's continued leadership with this particular technology, which NASA has not yet caught up with. The experimental spacecraft will eventually deploy a giant balloon in LEO, which could help solve another important issue surrounding satellite "megaconstellations" like SpaceX's Starlink network. The satellite, dubbed Hukeda-2 (also known as Yuxing-3 06 within China), launched March 16 aboard the Kuaizhou-11 rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, according to the website of Jonathan McDowell, a now-retired astronomer...

Explanation: How can we see what is invisible? Black holes are not easy to see in the dark cosmic night, but astronomers can find them by analyzing their gravitational effects on matter, light and spacetime. The featured image shows an illustration that combines a simulation of a black hole binary system in its final "death-dance" with an astrophotography image of the Tarantula Nebula in the background. Even though black holes don't emit light, they distort the path of light rays, acting like a gravitational lens. As a result, the nebula appears extremely distorted, forming Einstein rings and multiple images. Tarantula...

The submarine, launched by the Confederate Army in the last full year of the Civil War, made history when it became the first combat submarine to ever sink a warship. But on the same night when the H.L. Hunley’s torpedo sent the USS Housatonic, along with two of its officers and three of its enlisted crew, to a watery grave in the depths of Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, the Hunley itself—along with its eight-man crew—was also claimed by the waves. snip In a study published in PLOS One in 2017, a team of researchers affiliated with Duke University announced...

The Greek city of Rhodes emerged victorious from a yearlong siege by the Macedonian noble Demetrius Poliorcetes in 304 b.c. To commemorate their city's resilience, the Rhodians built a towering bronze statue of the sun god Helios, their patron deity, who also appeared on their coinage. It took the local sculptor Chares 12 years to construct the Colossus of Rhodes, the tallest sculpture in the ancient world at some 120 feet. Chares created the statue using a revolutionary process known as casting in courses, which no other ancient sculptor is known to have employed. In order to cast each course,...

For a millennium, Gortyn was the most important city on Crete. Its ruins - largely unexcavated - are scattered across a picturesque landscape of stony hills and olive groves. Scenic Routes to the Past | 58.2K subscribers | 4,704 views | March 27, 2026 0:00 Introduction 0:34 Agios Titos 1:09 Law code of Gortyn 2:30 Acropolis 4:33 Unexcavated area 5:35 Two temples 6:48 Praetorium 7:18 Metropolitan basilica 8:11 Baths

ET phone IT! The Artemis II crew’s early tasks were disrupted by an issue with the shuttle’s Microsoft Outlook less than a day after blasting off into Earth’s orbit. Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, reported the problem with the email app to the Houston-based mission control just seven hours after the rocket’s historic launch. “I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working,” Wiseman could be heard saying over dispatch. “If you want to remote in and check the Optimus and those two Outlooks that would be awesome,” he added. Mission control said...