The annual Lyrid meteor shower is active now and is expected to peak Tuesday night into Wednesday morning (April 21–22, 2026), offering skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere their best chance to see 10–20 shooting stars per hour under dark skies. The Lyrids are debris from Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), a long‑period comet that returns roughly every 415 years; Earth crosses its dust trail each April. This year’s viewing is helped by a thin crescent moon that sets before the best hours, leaving darker skies for observers. Meteors appear to radiate from the Lyra constellation (near the bright star Vega), but longer, brighter streaks are often seen away from the radiant. Experts recommend going out after midnight, finding a wide, unobstructed, low‑light location, allowing eyes 20–30 minutes to adapt, and avoiding direct view of the radiant. The Eta Aquariids, a stronger shower fed by Halley’s Comet, also begins this period and will peak in early May, though lunar phase may affect its visibility.

NASA Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman posted a 53-second iPhone video showing ‘Earthset’ — Earth slipping behind the Moon’s horizon — taken during the crew’s lunar flyby on April 6 and shared on social media April 19. The clip, shot on an iPhone 17 Pro Max using 8x zoom and described by Wiseman as uncropped and unedited, was filmed through Orion’s docking hatch as Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen orbited the Moon. The mission, launched April 1 and returning April 10 with a Pacific splashdown near San Diego, carried both professional Nikon DSLRs and consumer iPhones cleared for the flight. Artemis II set new distance marks for human spaceflight and delivered extensive imagery of the Moon’s far side; Wiseman’s footage — widely viewed and shared by international media — joins those photos as the first publicly seen video of an Earthset since Apollo-era missions.

NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory shut down the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment (LECP) on Voyager 1 on April 17, 2026 to conserve dwindling onboard power after an unexpected drop in February. The command, sent across more than a day of light-time delay, placed the long-running sensor into a low-power state while leaving a small motor (about 0.5 watts) active so the instrument could potentially be reactivated if extra energy becomes available. LECP, active since Voyager's 1977 launch, has been a key source of data on the interstellar medium; its loss reduces the probe’s suite of instruments to two functioning experiments that measure plasma waves and magnetic fields. The shutdown follows a similar deactivation on Voyager 2 in March 2025. NASA says the move should buy Voyager 1 roughly a year of “breathing room” while engineers prepare a broader power-saving manoeuvre nicknamed the “Big Bang,” with tests planned on Voyager 2 in May–June and, if successful, implementation on Voyager 1 no earlier than July. The twin probes run on aging radioisotope thermoelectric generators that lose roughly four watts a year as plutonium decays.

NASA on April 20, 2026 rolled out the core stage for its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will power the Artemis III mission, moving the 212-foot top four-fifths of the stage from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans onto the Pegasus barge for shipment to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The section houses two propellant tanks holding more than 733,000 gallons of super‑chilled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and will be fitted with four RS‑25 engines manufactured by L3Harris. Boeing is the prime contractor for the core stage design and assembly. Once at Kennedy, teams from NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems will complete outfitting, vertical integration and stacking ahead of a planned mid‑2027 Artemis III flight. Artemis III will test rendezvous and docking procedures between Orion and commercial lunar landers — an operation critical to the agency’s plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface on Artemis IV in 2028. The rollout follows the successful Artemis II lunar flyby and reflects NASA’s move to standardize SLS production and increase launch cadence for the Artemis program.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration has released the largest high-resolution three-dimensional map of the universe, built from a five-year observing campaign that recorded spectra from more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and over 20 million Milky Way stars. Mounted on the 4-meter Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak, DESI uses 5,000 robotic fiber-optic positioners that reconfigure roughly every 20 minutes to feed ten spectrographs, achieving positional precision near 10 microns. The survey exceeded its original 34‑million target, completed final observations in April 2026 and involves over 900 researchers across more than 70 institutions. By combining positions and distance measurements the map traces the cosmic web across 11 billion years of history and is being used to probe dark energy’s influence on cosmic expansion. Early DESI data hinted dark energy may evolve with time; the full five-year dataset is under processing with definitive results expected in 2027. DESI will continue observations through 2028 to expand sky coverage by roughly 20 percent and to refine measurements in crowded Milky Way and southern-sky regions.

On April 19, 2026 Blue Origin launched its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket from Cape Canaveral, reusing a first-stage booster that landed successfully. The mission’s primary payload, AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 communications satellite, was placed into a lower-than-planned orbit after an apparent upper-stage anomaly. Early telemetry and company comments point to one BE-3U upper-stage engine failing to produce sufficient thrust. The US Federal Aviation Administration on April 20 ordered Blue Origin to conduct a formal mishap investigation under FAA oversight and to obtain agency approval of the final report and corrective actions before New Glenn may fly again. US Space Force tracking indicates the upper stage and satellite re-entered and likely burned up. AST says the satellite loss will be covered by insurance and has replacement hardware in production. The FAA directive pauses New Glenn’s planned commercial cadence and complicates Blue Origin’s timelines for NASA lunar lander launches and Space Force certification.