The HMS Trump (P333) was a British T-class submarine launched in 1944 that featured a specific badge typical of Royal Navy vessels, which included a depiction of a playing card - specifically, the Ace of Spades, often interpreted as a "trump card"
https://x.com/MJTruthUltra/status/2049320532013621544
let freedom ring!
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
April 29, 2026
The Moon, Venus, and the Pleiades
No, Earth did not recently acquire six more moons! Today’s APOD is a combination of images following the Moon, Venus, and the Pleiades across a southern Sicilian sky as twilight turned to evening on April 19. From 2023 to 2029, the Pleiades' and the Moon “visit" each other once per month due to the Pleiades' location in the ecliptic plane. April 2026 saw the celestial alignment of their visit with Venus. About six stars in the Pleiades cluster (Messier 45) are typically visible with the unaided eye. Due to the cluster’s visibility across the world, there are many myths and legends across cultures associated with the Pleiades. The Haudenosaunee people of North America, for example, say that seven boys danced so enthusiastically that they lifted off into the sky. Astronomers recently found thousands more Pleiades members, showing that after thousands of years of gazing upon this cluster, there is yet more to learn about the Pleiades.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAxpryiSXF0
BIG SHIFT at World's Scariest Volcano | S0 News and frens
Apr.29.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1J7eEBoLek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftsdDJT31R0 (S0: Pole Shift Acceleration Confirmed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nINxLVD6QJY (Global Crisis: What Causes Earth's Climate to Defy the Laws of Physics?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vixp1uFLlWg (John Lenard Walson: The Full ‘Flower Moon’ Is Coming — When To See It Rise On May Day)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga4F4_YYvgs (EarthMaster: Rare Earthquake near Folsom Lake California. Elevated EQ activity near Kilauea Volcano. Tues Night)
https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/aurora-expert-captures-rare-pulsating-northern-lights-in-remarkable-detail-one-of-the-most-profound-sightings-of-my-career
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/tornado-causes-significant-injuries-damage-north-texas-town-mineral-wells
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-anomaly-global-sea-deep-ocean.html
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2049254028501217490
https://x.com/MrMBB333/status/2049140178699338069
https://meteoagent.com/schumann-resonance-forecast
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/300938/Volcano-earthquake-report-for-Wednesday-29-Apr-2026.html
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/a-request-to-jared-isaacman-intercept-4i-rubin-283f06f019d6
other space objects
https://www.surfer.com/news/mysterious-green-lights-hawaii-video
https://www.space.com/eta-aquarid-meteor-shower-2026-guide
https://twistedsifter.com/2026/04/researchers-propose-new-way-of-measuring-high-speed-asteroids-as-they-hurtle-through-our-solar-system/
https://nypost.com/2026/04/29/us-news/kansas-lightning-strike-turns-100-foot-dinosaur-into-raging-fireball-at-theme-park/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP76KiD626U (Ray's Astro: What’s Going On With the Sun? Two Comets, Two X Flares… One Rotation)
ICYMI
https://mashable.com/article/comet-photobombs-sun-telescope-images
A Request to Jared Isaacman: Intercept 4I/Rubin
April 29, 2026
The NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory in Chile is expected to discover dozens of new interstellar objects within the next decade.
These visitors to our cosmic backyard will be flagged by their speed exceeding the value needed to escape from the pull of the Sun’s gravity.
Near the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the escape speed is 42.1 kilometers per second, just a square-root of 2 larger than the Earth’s orbital speed at the Earth-Sun separation (AU).
3I/ATLAS arrived in our vicinity at about 60 kilometers per second. At that fast speed, which outperforms our fastest rockets, it still takes billions of years to travel throughout the entire disk of the Milky-Way galaxy (as calculated here).
Interstellar visitors spend that time traveling and offer us an opportunity to learn about the physical conditions at their origin without us needing to travel for billions of years in order to get there. They already invested that time to get here.
If such objects are on random trajectories, it is natural to expect most of them to be icebergs that shed a cometary tail of gas and dust once they are warmed by sunlight.
The reason is simple and can be illustrated through the example of our latest visitor, 3I/ATLAS.
The parent population of 3I/ATLAS was inferred here to deliver a new detectable object within 5 AU every couple of years, implying that there should be about ten trillion such objects right now within the Solar System out to the edge of the Oort Cloud at 100,000 AU.
This edge is roughly half-way to the nearest star, implying that each star system in the Milky-Way galaxy needs to produce during its lifespan about ten trillion objects like 3I/ATLAS if what we detected represents the average interstellar abundance of such objects.
Given that 3I/ATLAS carried at least a mass 0.1 billion tons, as derived here, the total ejected mass to interstellar space is at least a sixth of the Earth mass per star, a large reservoir which can only be accommodated by the ejection of icebergs during the formation process of a planetary system.
A substantial fraction of the building blocks that combine to make rocky planets could be tossed out of their planetary system through gravitational scattering by massive planets or passing stars.
Another ejection mechanism is tidal disruption of planets, as I discussed in my paper with Morgan MacLeod, published here.
However, 3I/ATLAS arrived on a trajectory that was aligned to within 4.89 degrees with the orbital (ecliptic) plane of the Earth around the Sun. This alignment is unexpected, given that the ecliptic plane is tilted by 60.3 degrees relative to the plane of the Milky-Way disk of stars.
If future interstellar objects will show a preference for an ecliptic orientation, then we would have to entertain the possibility that these trajectories were not drawn randomly but might have been designed technologically.
In case of a technological origin, the abundance of visitors near Earth could be much higher than average for the same reason that honey bees cluster around flowers.
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The simplest way to figure out whether an interstellar visitor is a natural iceberg or an interstellar Trojan Horse with a technological interior, is to crash on its surface — in the same fashion that the DART spacecraft impacted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on September 26, 2022.
A close-up photograph just before impact would unravel the nature of future interstellar objects, labeled as XI/Rubin with X=4, 5, 6 ….
In addition to a camera, the interceptor could carry instruments that would probe the composition of the plume of gas or dust around the interstellar object before impact.
Even if the object turns out to be a natural iceberg, the instruments onboard the interceptor could check whether the iceberg carries any biological signatures or the building blocks of life-as-we-know-it in the form of organic molecules.
This is an entirely new discovery pathway for astrobiology in our search for life beyond Earth.
Obviously, crashing on the hard surface of a spacecraft would be an entirely different experience for a DART-like mission.
Launching an interceptor on a crash course with an interstellar object, say 4I/Rubin, requires detection of 4I/Rubin at a distance of 5–10 AU and a fast response time.
3I/ATLAS was discovered at a distance of 3.5 AU from Earth on July 1, 2025 and arrived closest to Earth at a distance of 1.8 AU on December 19, 2025, nearly half a year later.
If 4I/Rubin will be detected at a distance of 10 AU and will take a year to get to within 2 AU, then an Earth-based launch at a reasonable speed of 10 kilometers per second could intercept its path and crash on its surface.
This requires planning for a target-of-opportunity space mission with a billion dollars budget. The total cost of the less ambitious DART mission was a third of that.
The European Space Agency (ESA) plans a mission called Comet Interceptor, to be launched by 2029.
The spacecraft will be placed at the second Earth-Sun Lagrange point L2 and wait for up to three years for a long-period Solar system comet or an interstellar object to fly by at a reachable trajectory and speed.
The limitation of this mission is that it can propel itself only at a maneuvering speed of up to 1 kilometer per second, equivalent to traversing 1 AU in about 5 years.
Unless we are lucky to have an interstellar visitor that arrives very close to this spacecraft, we will not have sufficient time from detection to intercept its path.
NASA could do better, if Jared Isaacman will read this essay.
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Trump will host astronauts of NASA’s groundbreaking Artemis II mission at White House
Updated April 28, 2026, 6:47 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Trump will host the four astronauts from the Artemis II mission at the White House on Wednesday, The Post has learned.
The crew broke the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth during a 10-day lunar flyby this month.
“President Trump is honored to host the legendary crew in the Oval Office tomorrow to celebrate their unmatched achievements,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told The Post.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the excellence of the Artemis II crew, America is leading the world in space exploration.”
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are expected to join the president in the Oval Office.
The Artemis mission garnered significant public interest and Trump watched the team’s April 11 return to Earth live from his winery in Charlottesville, Va.
Trump and his guests had a TV wheeled in to watch the dramatic splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Since his first term, the president has supported returning astronauts to the moon, which humans last visited in 1972.
NASA intends to launch the Artemis III mission next year to test docking capabilities with the spacecraft needed to land on the moon.
Artemis IV, currently planned for early 2028, would feature a lunar landing and exploration of the moon’s South Pole region.
https://nypost.com/2026/04/28/us-news/trump-will-host-hero-astronauts-of-nasas-groundbreaking-artemis-ii-mission-at-white-house/
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2049443389452525810
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrXTmwyHZiQ
extra Artemis
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/28/nasas-artemis-iii-moon-rocket-hardware-arrives-artemis-ii-capsule-returns-to-kennedy/
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/artemis-2/nasa-laser-terminal-enhances-views-during-artemis-ii-mission/
10,000 new planets? Researchers finds hidden worlds in NASA telescope data
Posted: Apr 29, 2026 / 09:35 AM CDT
Updated: Apr 29, 2026 / 09:39 AM CDT
Space just got a lot more crowded: scientists say they’ve uncovered about 10,000 new exoplanet candidates hidden in NASA data.
A new research paper published this month in the Astrophysical Journal revealed the discovery made using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) telescope.
The work, led by Princeton University graduate student Joshua Roth, took a closer look at datasets called light curves. This data shows the brightness of an object over time.
How scientists found 10,000 new planet candidates
Dips in light indicate an object, like a planet, passing in front of its host star. About 75% of the exoplanets that humans have discovered have been found by looking for dips in brightness, according to the researchers.
Typically, astronomers are able to find exoplanets, planets outside our solar system, in these data sets by looking at the brightest stars, where signals are easier to detect.
This research focused on signals from much fainter stars.
Why faint stars were key to this discovery
Using machine learning, the researchers dug through around 83 million light curve data sets. The algorithm they used sorted signals into exoplanets passing in front of a star, noise in the data, and false positives.
They used two separate models, one for bright stars and one for faint stars, eliminated messy data and then arrived at about 50,000 potential signals before further filtering.
Sorting real planets from noise
After some vetting, they got the list down to 11,554 planet candidates. Not all of these candidates will be confirmed as planets. Follow-up observations are needed.
Around 10,000 of these exoplanets were new, while 411 were “single-transit events,” meaning they were only seen crossing their star once, often a sign of planets with very long orbits.
Why most of the planets are gas giants
According to the paper, 97.7% of the planets discovered were gas giant-like planets.
Bigger planets are easier to see. Planets with shorter orbits were also easier to detect because they caused more frequent dips in the light curves.
The team followed up on their data by confirming one of the potential discoveries: TIC 183374187. This planet is about half the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star about every five days.
There are some downsides to their method:
The method favors big planets.
Planets orbiting faint stars are harder to follow up on because their stars are dimmer and harder to study with follow-up instruments.
Some of the planets could still be false positives.
How this could reshape the search for planets
TESS was launched in 2018 to discover new exoplanets. In the first two years of its mission, TESS was expected to discover 1,250 potential exoplanets.
Since then, TESS has identified 7,821 candidate planets.
This new research could more than double the number of planet candidates identified in TESS data.
https://www.kxan.com/news/science/10000-new-planets-researchers-finds-hidden-worlds-in-nasa-telescope-data/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18579
extra NASA
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/chandra/nasa-connects-little-red-dots-with-chandra-webb/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-boeing-advance-truss-braced-wing-research-in-test/
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/tech-demonstration/nasa-fires-up-powerful-lithium-fed-thruster-for-trips-to-mars/
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/kennedy/nasa-demonstrates-new-prescribed-burn-capability-for-spaceport/
https://spacenews.com/appropriators-reject-nasa-budget-proposal/
extra extra NASA and space
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/prizes-challenges-crowdsourcing-program/center-of-excellence-for-collaborative-innovation-coeci/ceq-permitting-innovators/
https://www.permittinginnovators.com/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/general-blog/2026/04/29/agu-ambassador-award/
https://www.radioiowa.com/2026/04/29/ui-opens-new-lab-devoted-to-exploring-the-far-reaches-of-space/
Appropriators reject NASA budget proposal
April 29, 2026
WASHINGTON — House and Senate appropriators criticized a NASA budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 that includes significant cuts, suggesting they may instead use last year’s spending bill as a guide.
In back-to-back hearings by the House Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Subcommittee on April 27 and its Senate counterpart April 28, members of both parties told NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman that the $18.8 billion proposed for his agency in 2027, a 23% cut from 2026, was insufficient.
“After the success and momentum NASA has built up over the last year, it’s disappointing to see that request,” Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House CJS appropriations subcommittee, said in his opening remarks, citing a “space race” with China to return humans to the moon.
“This is a critical time for investment in NASA.”
Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., ranking member of the subcommittee, noted the budget proposal would cancel more than 50 science missions in development or extended operations.
“House Democrats will once again lead the fight to make sure these budget proposals never become law.”
The leadership of the Senate CJS subcommittee offered similar sentiments. “I have significant concerns about the FY27 budget request,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., chairman of the subcommittee, who previously said he opposed proposed cuts.
“A budget that prioritizes exploration at the expense of science, technology and other core missions risks undermining the very foundation that makes those exploration efforts possible.”
“I think you well know the fiscal year 2027 Trump budget proposal is anything but ambitious. It is shortsighted,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., ranking member of the subcommittee. “It would be a disaster for the NASA mission.”
At both hearings, like the April 22 hearing on the budget proposal by the House Science Committee, members peppered Isaacman with questions about cuts to science missions and the closure of the agency’s education office.
Isaacman argued that the budget proposal provided sufficient funding for its exploration priorities while seeking efficiencies in areas like science.
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His arguments did not appear to win over appropriators. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., called the agency’s budget request for science “abysmal” and singled out sharp cuts in heliophysics, whose budget would be reduced by more than 50% in the budget proposal.
“I’m a huge fan of heliophysics,” Isaacman responded, but argued that commercial capabilities with satellite constellations could enable much less expensive missions, comparing it to the reduction in launch costs enabled by reusable rockets.
“I’m not convinced,” Shaheen said.
Not everyone on the appropriations subcommittees was opposed to the cuts. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., praised Isaacman for a budget proposal that “prioritizes NASA’s most important missions, reduces redundancies and ensures that critical programs remain on time and on budget, all while saving taxpayers an amazing more than $5 billion.”
Critics of the budget, though, did not blame Isaacman for the cuts, but instead the White House and its Office of Management and Budget.
“This would be a very different hearing if I believed the budget request from the administration reflected your best judgment,” Van Hollen said. “To me, this is a carbon copy of what OMB submitted last year, and I really think it’s a disgrace.”
Besides questions about the 2027 budget proposal, appropriators at both hearings complained that NASA was late in submitting its fiscal year 2026 operating plan, which provides details about how it will spend the funding appropriated in the current fiscal year.
Some noted that the operating plan for fiscal year 2025 was not released until this March, months after the end of the fiscal year.
Isaacman told appropriators that NASA had submitted its operating plan to the White House earlier this month, and he expected it to be sent to Congress next week. "We can’t proceed until we’ve got the plan,” Rogers said.
However, House appropriators are proceeding with their CJS spending bill, with a markup by the subcommittee scheduled for April 30. The full committee will mark up the spending bill May 13.
Senate appropriators have not released their schedule for marking up a CJS spending bill. “I would guess our work will begin with FY26 as a starting point, a baseline,” Moran said. He asked Isaacman if that bill underemphasized or overemphasized any programs.
“If I had any one request,” Isaacman responded, “it’s just the flexibility with respect to the programs.” Appropriations bills today, he said, are longer and more specific than those from the Apollo era of the 1960s.
“The flexibility to be able to react in an environment that’s certainly a fast-moving ballgame against a very motivated competitor, I think is important.”
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https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/news/ccny-led-nasa-arctic-coastal-mission-earns-un-decade-project-endorsement
Crew Opens Cargo Craft, Works on Physics Gear and Biomedical Tech
April 28, 2026 2:33PM
The hatches are open between the International Space Station and the new Progress 95 cargo spacecraft following the delivery of about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies on Monday.
Expedition 74 commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev, both from Roscosmos, finalized leak and pressure checks between Progress 95 and the Zvezda service module’s rear port on Tuesday.
Afterward, the duo installed air ducts and began unpacking the spacecraft beginning seven months of cargo activities in the resupply ship.
Meanwhile, physics equipment maintenance topped the scientific schedule as the lab residents installed new quantum research gear and stowed cryogenic fluid hardware.
The advanced physics gear takes advantage of weightlessness to gain beneficial insights unobtainable in Earth’s gravity environment.
NASA flight engineers Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway upgraded the orbital outpost’s Cold Atom Lab (CAL) on Tuesday when they installed a new quantum physics module inside the research device.
The advanced hardware expands the CAL’s ability to chill atoms to near absolute zero enabling the observation of atomic wave functions, providing deeper insights into general relativity, and aiding the search for dark matter.
Meir, with assistance from flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency), also opened the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) and removed and stowed physics hardware used to observe how cryogenic fuels behave in tanks.
Results from the investigation may lead to improved spacecraft propulsion and life support systems.
Adenot spent the last half of her shift exploring using the space station’s potable water to produce medical grade intravenous fluids, or saline solutions, to treat medical conditions in space.
The Intravenous Fluid Generation – Mini technology demonstration seeks to reduce a crew’s dependence on cargo missions and avoid expiration of medical supplies on a spacecraft.
NASA flight engineer Chris Williams began his shift inside the Kibo laboratory module reorganizing cargo to optimize space for upcoming research operations.
Next, Williams serviced a laptop computer that supports investigations inside the MSG. At the end of his shift, Williams unloaded supplies from inside the Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft.
Roscosmos flight engineer Andrey Fedyaev worked throughout Tuesday on life support maintenance tasks transferring water between tanks and checking ventilation systems.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/04/28/crew-opens-cargo-craft-works-on-physics-gear-and-biomedical-tech/
extra extra Xtra NASA
https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/curiosity-captures-a-360-degree-view-at-nevado-sajama/
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/fires-rage-in-georgia/
https://www.nasa.gov/ames-earth-science-publications/
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/landsat/nighttime-imaging-grows-landsats-science-value/