TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
April 8, 2026
Earthset
And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you, from the Moon. We will see you on the other side, said Artemis II pilot Victor Glover on April 6th at 6:44pm ET as 8.3 billion minus four people and one Earth set below the Moon's horizon. The Orion spacecraft, Integrity, then traveled behind the Moon as part of its seven-hour lunar flyby. The crew characterized never-before-seen regions of the far side of the Moon, which is puzzlingly less volcanically active than the near side. New observations of crater peaks, floors, terraces, and rings preserved on the lunar surface will help piece together the impact history of the Solar System. Among many other surface characterizations, the crew observed one of the Moon's best-preserved basins, the Orientale basin, and identified two new craters. As Earth rose above the Moon’s horizon and Integrity began its return home, Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch powerfully summarized humanity’s grander mission: …we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMKSjNOvoTM
Pole Shift Core, Another Comet, Magnetic Biology | S0 News and frens
Apr.8.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbAof5u8-Qg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh8K-TC2d8M (Observers Live #31 - Leaving Breadcrumbs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9SR6vBkTPw (Neet Intel: HFGCS EAM 260408 05:55 UTC [102 CHARACTER MESSAGE])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv-aBnLeN34 (TheEarthMaster: Latest Earthquake activity across the Planet. Tuesday update)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0F2Jn5ZYZc (MrMBB333: ARTEMIS II Crew Takes a Mysterious Picture of Earth)
https://defence-industry.eu/nrl-launches-advanced-experimental-payloads-on-stpsat-7-mission/
https://www1.ru/en/news/2026/04/08/koronalnaia-dyra-zadenet-zemliu-v-piatnicu-10-aprelia.html
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2041878252201886045
https://x.com/DrBeaVillarroel/status/2041812524174033300
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04950
https://meteoagent.com/schumann-resonance-forecast
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/299489/Volcano-earthquake-report-for-Wednesday-8-Apr-2026.html
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/one-year-of-goes-19-goes-east
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/
‘Daytime fireball’ visible to parts of the northeast, NASA says
Apr. 8, 2026 at 4:42 AM PDT
What NASA officials described as a “daytime fireball” was visible to people in the northeastern United States.
NASA said eyewitnesses in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania reported seeing it on Tuesday around 2:30 p.m.
It said it was a meteor.
NASA reported that the first visibility of the meteor was at 48 miles above the Atlantic Ocean, off the shore of Mastic Beach on Long Island.
It moved to the southwest at 30,000 mph and traveled 117 miles through the upper atmosphere before disintegrating 27 miles above the town of Galloway, NJ, north of Atlantic City.
Most of the eyewitness reports in Connecticut came out of Fairfield County. However, NASA said it received sighting reports as far north as the Hartford, Glastonbury, and Manchester areas.
The vast majority of the reports came out of New Jersey.
https://newtownpanow.com/2026/04/08/green-fireball-spotted-over-bucks-county/
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/daylight-fireball-meteor-us-east-coast-1790706
https://www.nj.com/news/2026/04/bright-fireball-seen-streaking-across-afternoon-sky-in-nj-other-eastern-states.html
https://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/skyfalls/events/20260407-183400
https://x.com/NASASpaceAlerts/status/2041659474394411169
https://www.iflscience.com/comet-41p-controversial-harvard-astronomer-is-once-again-pointing-at-comets-and-saying-aliens-83105
other fireballs, meteors, and comets
https://www.space.com/astronomy/comets/watch-comet-maps-destroyed-in-cataclysmic-fragmentation-near-the-sun
https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/04/comet-maps-explodes-in-space-heres-why/
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-the-observed-spin-reversal-of-the-comet-41p-tuttle-giacobini-kres%C3%A1k-a-technological-signature-adab2dc8c096
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/an-orbital-data-center-of-a-million-satellites-is-not-practical-72c2e9665983
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2041886641241862354
https://x.com/dom_lucre/status/2041388320349913296
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TExuM0NbcJw (Avi Loeb: A Comet Just Changed Direction)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKDEcmbsb_I (Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak Timelapse 9 seconds HD 1080p)
Comet 41P: Controversial Harvard Astronomer Is Once Again Pointing At Comets And Saying "Aliens?"
April 8, 2026
The often controversial Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, fresh from speculating whether interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft, is back pointing at another unusual comet and asking whether it could contain alien technology.
Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak, as you might be able to guess from the name, has been discovered no less than three times in the last few centuries.
Horace Parnell Tuttle, an American Civil War veteran and astronomer working at the Harvard College Observatory, was the first to spot the comet on May 3, 1858. Next came Michael Giacobini, who discovered the comet in 1907.
On its third discovery, by Ľubor Kresák in 1951, astronomers finally had enough information about the comet to predict its orbit, and link the several sightings to the same astronomical body.
41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak is now known to be in the Jupiter family of comets, going from a little inside Jupiter's orbit to almost as far as Earth on its 5.4-year orbit.
It is notable for its large outbursts and highly variable brightness. In 1973, the comet was particularly bright following one outburst, reaching magnitude 4.
In May 2017, the comet got a little weirder. Observations by NASA’s Swift spacecraft showed that its rotation had quite abruptly slowed, and was spinning three times slower than it had been when it was observed by the Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona.
In a study published in late March, astronomers tracking the movements of Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak found that it appears to have slowed its rotation, before the direction of its rotation reversed.
"The previous record for a comet spindown went to 103P/Hartley 2, which slowed its rotation from 17 to 19 hours over 90 days," Dennis Bodewits, at the time an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland, said in a 2018 NASA statement.
"By contrast, 41P spun down by more than 10 times as much in just 60 days, so both the extent and the rate of this change is something we’ve never seen before."
Over that time, the comet went from rotating once every 20 hours to once every 53 hours.
In the March 2026 paper, David Jewitt, an astronomer in the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences at UCLA, used archived data from the Hubble Space Telescope to study what happened to the comet following these observations.
Hubble observed the comet from December 11-14, as part of the telescope's General Observer program. Finding 24 useful observations of the comet, Jewitt determined that the rotation of its nucleus continued to change after its closest approach to the Sun, likely leading to a reversal of its spin.
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"The simplest explanation of the changing period is that the nucleus was torqued by recoil forces from anisotropic outgassing, as has been widely demonstrated in other comets," Jewitt explains in his paper, which ha.
"Indeed, ground based observations set an upper limit to the nucleus radius rn ≲ 0.7 km, a size which renders the nucleus susceptible to rapid spin evolution through outgassing torques."
While outgassing is to be expected in a comet, the outgassing seen here is particularly jet-like. What is particularly puzzling about the comet is that it has been determined to be in a stable orbit.
"The lifetime of the nucleus to rotational instability (a few decades) is short compared to the dynamical lifetime (∼103 [years]) in its current orbit," Jewitt adds.
"The continued existence of 41P therefore suggests that either the current level of outgassing activity is substantially larger than on average, and/or that the nucleus is a remnant of a once much larger body."
Further observations could tell us more about cometary rotation, and perhaps how comets are destroyed by their own spin.
“The evidence is that comets just don’t live that long,” Jewitt told Jonathan O’Callaghan, writing for The New York Times. “There’s some other process that destroys the comets, and I think it’s rotation.”
Alternatively, Jewitt suggests that Hubble could have observed the comet during a particularly active period, resulting in overestimates of mass loss and the twisting motion produced by outgassing, as well as underestimating the lifetime of the comet.
"But there is a third possible interpretation. Perhaps 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák is a Trojan Horse with the outside appearance of a natural iceberg but with technology embedded in its belly," Loeb writes on his blog.
"In that case, its spin reversal is a technological signature. Based on my personal experience – if Jewitt have discussed this technological possibility, his paper would have been blocked from publication.
Indeed, this possibility is not mentioned in the published paper, but I am free to mention it here in the absence of gatekeepers – within the safe space of my essay."
While we get the appeal of suggesting aliens – who would not like to have an answer on whether we are alone in the universe? – this suggestion is unnecessary given what we have observed of the comet so far.
Loeb has suggested that other objects may be alien technology in the past – including suggesting 1I/'Oumuamua could be an alien lightsail, 3I/ATLAS could be an alien spacecraft, and asteroid CNEOS 2014-01-08, which crashed to Earth in 2014, could have been sent here by aliens.
None of these hypotheses have shown much signs of promise, with natural explanations favored by almost all astronomers.
Searches for technological signatures on 3I/ATLAS and 1I/'Oumuamua have both come up with nothing, and both objects (whilst interesting, and different to Solar System objects) have shown little signs of doing anything out of the ordinary, let alone using Jupiter in braking maneuver, a possibility suggested by Loeb that failed to emerge.
As for 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak, the comet will dip back into the inner Solar System in 2028, giving us further opportunities to observe this cosmic oddity, and pin down what is going on with it.
We wouldn't hold our breaths for signs of aliens, given we have observed a grand total of zero (0) alien artifacts so far.
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Artemis II Flight Day 7: First Return Correction Burn Complete + EXTRA
April 7, 2026 9:54PM
At 8:03 p.m. EDT, the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, ignited its thrusters for 15 seconds, producing a change in velocity of 1.6 feet-per-second and guiding the Artemis II crew toward Earth.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen reviewed procedures and monitored the spacecraft’s configuration and navigation data.
During today’s mission status briefing, NASA officials shared the first images received from the crew during the lunar flyby and confirmed that the USS John P. Murtha has left port and is headed to the midway point toward the recovery site in the Pacific Ocean.
The agency will provide updates on recovery operations and weather during the daily Mission Status briefings.
Looking ahead, the crew will settle in for a full night’s rest before a busy day of flight test objectives and return to Earth tasks on Wednesday, April 8.
Going with the blood flow
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, along with Koch and Hansen, are scheduled to test an orthostatic intolerance garment.
During the test, the crew will evaluate the garments — specialized equipment designed to help astronauts maintain blood pressure and circulation during the transition back to Earth’s gravity.
Piloting Orion
Following the garment testing, the crew will take manual control of the spacecraft, using Orion’s field of view to center a designated target before guiding the spacecraft to a tail to Sun attitude and comparing Orion’s control modes.
The manual piloting demonstration will begin at 9:59 p.m.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/07/artemis-ii-flight-day-7-first-return-correction-burn-complete/
extra Artemis II
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-artemis-ii-crew-beams-official-moon-flyby-photos-to-earth/
https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/lunar-flyby/
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-to-host-media-call-with-artemis-ii-crew-on-way-home-from-moon/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/04/07/station-crew-talks-to-artemis-ii-crew-amid-busy-research-schedule/
https://www.nasa.gov/general/experience-the-rollout-of-sls-hardware-for-artemis-iii/
https://www.cbs19news.com/pinprick-of-light-artemis-crew-witnesses-meteorite-impacts-on-moon/article_4620e08d-8181-58f5-8395-861289a06968.html
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-artemis-crew-flying-home-thrilled.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/space/5820871-artemis-ii-observations-nasa-jose-hernandez/
https://x.com/NASAArtemis/status/2041881085424930840
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2041878252201886045
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/the-artemis-2-space-toilet-is-actually-working-fine-but-there-is-another-problem
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/moon-music-heres-a-spotify-playlist-of-the-artemis-2-crews-wakeup-songs
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/moon-milestones-a-rundown-of-artemis-2s-many-spaceflight-firsts
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/moon-memorial-artemis-2-astronauts-name-lunar-bright-spot-after-mission-commanders-late-wife
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3HyJSInSWc (Artemis II Flight Day 7 Highlights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RNpkGjQhQc (Angry Astronaut: UFOs spotted on the Moon? What did Artemis astronauts just see??)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICAMa10OYvU (Dobsonian Power: ARTEMIS 2 ASTRONAUTS ACCIDENTALLY SHOW SOMETHING… THEN HID IT!)
https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-artemis-ii-pilot-victor-glover-reframes-race-question.html
Christian Artemis II pilot Victor Glover reflects on God's creation from space
Wednesday, April 08, 2026
Victor Glover, the Christian U.S. Navy captain piloting NASA’s Artemis II mission, is being lauded for glorifying God in space and for his response to a question about his race.
On Easter Sunday, Glover reflected on God's creation and the Bible, saying in part, "As we are so far from Earth and looking back at the beauty of creation, I think, for me, one of the really important personal perspectives that I have up here is that I can really see Earth as one thing. … You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together."
Ahead of the April 1 mission, a reporter asked how he felt about becoming the first African American to fly around the moon. Glover replied that the mission belonged not just to “black history” or "women's history," but to human history.
Glover said he hopes that one day people will look past race. “I hope we push that one day,” he said in a Spectrum News video posted on X by Eric Daugherty of RightLineNews.
“It’s about human history, humanity, not ‘black history,’ not ‘women’s history,’ but that it becomes human history,” Glover remarked.
Artemis II is the first crewed test flight in NASA’s Artemis campaign and the first to carry astronauts aboard the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.
The four-person crew will spend 10 days on a loop around the moon to confirm Orion’s ability to operate in deep space before next year’s Artemis III mission.
The Artemis IV mission is planned to land astronauts on the lunar surface, with later flights targeting Mars.
Reid Wiseman is commanding the mission, with Glover serving as pilot.
Christina Koch, a NASA astronaut, is the first woman to pass to the lunar distance, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency is the first Canadian on such a voyage, noted the Daily Citizen.
An elder from Glover’s church said he is praying that God’s name will be glorified, according to The Christian Chronicle.
“He’s just a top-shelf guy and down to earth, but with all the experiences and accolades,” Brent Hankins, an elder at the Southeast Church of Christ in Friendswood, Texas, the congregation about 6 miles from NASA’s Space Center Houston that Glover and his wife, Dionna, call home, said.
Hankins said that as a shepherd, he has come to love and support the Glover family, and to cheer and pray for them.
“It was a rush,” he said of witnessing the launch. “I mean, I think we all had tears in our eyes. When we got to about five seconds in the countdown, the magnitude of that was pretty overwhelming.”
Glover was born in Pomona, California, graduated from Ontario High School in 1994 and holds a bachelor’s degree in general engineering and three master’s degrees.
He served as a test pilot on the F/A-18 Hornet, Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler, logging 3,500 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft, more than 400 carrier landings and 24 combat missions.
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He was selected in 2013 as one of eight members of NASA’s 21st astronaut class and in 2018 was assigned to Crew-1 as pilot. He later served 168 days as a flight engineer on the International Space Station, or ISS. He and his wife have four children.
Glover told The Christian Chronicle in a 2023 podcast interview that his belief and his professional life are “interwoven.”
“My career is fed by my faith,” he said. “Anytime I do something that’s pretty risky, I pray. Before I fly, every time I fly. Definitely when you go sit on top of a rocket ship.”
He added, “In the military, there’s a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.”
He had been in the military for 26 years, and he said that working at NASA frequently produced conversations about creation and faith.
“We talk about our solar system, and I will often refer to the beauty of creation,” he said. “People hear that, and it’s like a trigger word for certain folks. But that’s in church and at NASA.”
He said he doesn't accept that faith and science are in opposition.
“They don’t actually work against each other like some people like to claim that they do,” he said, drawing parallels between the Big Bang account of the universe’s origins and the Genesis creation narrative, saying the two trace a similar sequence.
“Theoretical physics has actually not said that what’s in the Bible is not how the universe began,” he said.
He put the moon’s age at about 4.5 billion years and said biblical genealogies do not need to conflict with that figure, since the Gospel’s power lies not in chronological precision but in its message.
Glover said he carried prepackaged communion supplies to the ISS and received the sacrament each week.
“I was able to worship in space,” he said. He called the experience “special and not special at the same time,” adding that it gave him a new sense of why the ritual held its significance regardless of location.
After returning to Earth, he said the view from orbit had changed his thinking about humanity’s place in the universe.
NASA had searched for life elsewhere and found it only on Earth, he said, a realization that made the planet seem small but profoundly important.
He recalled visiting Israel, where an Arab student addressed him as “brother.” “We are all brothers and sisters,” Glover said.
The last crewed mission to the moon was Apollo 17, which launched on Dec. 7, 1972.
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An astronaut rolled a D20 in space, so yes, you can play D&D in zero gravity
April 8, 2026
Rabea Rogge, the first German woman in space, recently posted a video demonstrating how to roll a twenty-sided die in zero gravity. It's easy to throw dice when you're in polar orbit, as Rogge was, but how do you land one? Magnetized dice trays, maybe?
"We experimented a little," Rogge says, before demonstrating that actually the best solution is the least complicated one.
She flicks the D20 upward, putting a little English on it so it spins, catches it in her fist, and peers through the gap in the top of her hand to check the result. It's a seven, so unfortunately she's failed her Wisdom saving throw and contracted space madness.
"So rejoice," Rogge concludes. "Roleplaying in space is absolutely possible." Which is true, so long as you're not playing Shadowrun or casting a leveled-up fireball or anything that demands you roll a big wodge of dice all at once—unless you don't mind slowly rolling them one at a time.
Rogge was part of SpaceX's Fram2 mission, a polar orbit flight funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang.
Dr. Christopher Combs, associate dean of research, mechanical engineering, at the University of Texas at San Antonio told CNN that a private space flight around the poles was "a notch above gimmick, but not exactly a groundbreaking milestone." Still, she's been to space more than I have.
Meanwhile, NASA's Artemis 2 flight around the moon has helped boost Kerbal Space Program's concurrent player count to a record high, despite the issue they had with Microsoft Outlook running two instances at the same time, neither of which worked.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/an-astronaut-rolled-a-d20-in-space-so-yes-you-can-play-d-and-d-in-zero-gravity/
https://www.instagram.com/rabearogge/
Information Session on AI Compendium Activities – 23 April 2026
07/04/2026
ESA / Enabling & Support / Space Engineering & Technology / Shaping the Future
On 23 April 2026, ESA's General Support Technology Programme (GSTP) and the ESA Competence Centre are hosting the AI Compendium Activities Information Session.
We invite interested parties to register for the event.
The event will introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) activities featured in the 2025 GSTP AI Compendium, providing industry with a clear overview of current developments and future opportunities.
Participants will be able to explore how these activities support technology maturation across ESA missions and contribute to Europe’s competitive advantage in space innovation.
To facilitate broad participation, the session will be conducted online via a Teams event. Registration is required to attend.
Participants are encouraged to submit questions before the session, via the Teams registration form.
About the AI Activities
The 2025 GSTP AI Compendium highlights 31 activities designed to deploy Artificial Intelligence across the entire engineering and mission lifecycle.
These activities focus on developing and applying AI techniques with the greatest potential to enhance space system performance or to enable new mission concepts and applications.
They span three key domains:
AI for Mission Design & Engineering
AI for Mission Operations
AI for Data Insights
Objective of the Session
The information session will provide:
An overview of the GSTP AI Compendium and the rationale behind the selected activities
Insights into ongoing developments and technology priorities
An opportunity for participants to ask questions and share recommendations
A forum to foster future cooperation across the European space ecosystem
We look forward to welcoming you and learning from your contributions.
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Shaping_the_Future/Information_Session_on_AI_Compendium_Activities_23_April_2026
extra ESA
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/ROSE-L_radar_unfolds_in_crucial_ground_test
https://www.esa.int/Education/ESA_Academy_Experiments_programme/New_student_teams_for_ESA_Academy_Experiments_Programme
https://www.esa.int/Education/Rexus_Bexus/Student_experiments_launched_on_sounding_rockets
Ceasefire, DC easter recess, is it all about the break?
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