Artemis II returns from Moon & Two comets: breakup and promise - Space News (Apr 12, 2026)

NASA’s Artemis II mission has safely returned to Earth, closing a landmark 10-day crewed flight around the Moon. Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen rode the Orion spacecraft—nicknamed “Integrity”—to a modern-era distance record, flying roughly 4,600 miles beyond the lunar surface and surpassing Apollo 13’s farthest-crewed-flight mark. Orion splashed down in the Pacific at about 8:07 p.m. EDT on April 10, or 0007 UTC April 11, after a high-energy reentry that saw the capsule peak above 38,000 kilometers per hour before parachutes brought it down to around 30 kilometers per hour. The crew was recovered and taken to the USS John P. Murtha for checks, then headed to Houston for a hero’s welcome—plus the mission delivered a first: a deep-space “ship-to-ship” call with astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

April’s most dramatic comet story belongs to sungrazer Comet C/2026 A1, also known as MAPS, which made an extremely close pass by the Sun—about 161,000 kilometers above the solar surface, roughly 1.073 solar radii. Early hopes suggested it could become extraordinarily bright if it survived, but observations—including from the James Webb Space Telescope—indicated a small nucleus, around 400 meters across, and the comet ultimately disintegrated roughly six hours before perihelion on April 4. It’s a vivid reminder that sungrazers live on the edge: intense heating and tidal forces can tear apart even promising objects just before their most spectacular moment.

The brighter-looking comet story may still be ahead, with Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) emerging as a leading “great comet candidate” for 2026. Forecasts range widely, from a binocular-only object around magnitude 8 to a possible naked-eye comet around magnitude 2.5 under ideal conditions. For Northern Hemisphere observers, the key window is mid-April in the predawn eastern sky—especially around April 17—with the most practical stretch roughly April 10 through April 19 before the comet sinks deeper into morning twilight and solar glare. Southern Hemisphere observers should see improving views later as it shifts to more favorable evening geometry, and the comet’s closest approach to Earth is expected on April 27 at about 0.292 astronomical units, or roughly 44 million miles.

April 2026 is also packed with skywatching highlights, led by the Lyrid meteor shower. The Lyrids run from April 16 through April 25, peaking overnight April 21 to 22, and typically produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour at peak—often fast and bright, sometimes with lingering trails. This year’s viewing gets a boost because the Moon is a modest waxing crescent—about 27 percent illuminated on April 22—and sets relatively early, leaving darker skies for the best pre-dawn hours when the radiant near Vega climbs higher. Planet-watchers also get a strong month: Venus blazes in the evening sky around magnitude minus 3.9 and passes within about 45 arcminutes of Uranus on April 23, a binocular-friendly pairing. Mercury reaches greatest eastern elongation on April 3, offering one of the better chances to spot it low before sunrise, while Jupiter remains prominent after sunset with ongoing opportunities to track Galilean moon events.

Launch and operations activity remains intense. SpaceX continues building out Starlink, with totals cited at more than 11,700 satellites launched since 2019 and roughly 10,200 in orbital operations as of April 10, alongside subscriber growth reportedly reaching the 10 million mark globally. Early April also includes multiple scheduled Starlink missions, while NASA’s Artemis II launch on April 1 carried additional secondary payloads with mixed outcomes. Looking ahead in the same timeframe, Blue Origin’s New Glenn has seen its first-launch schedule shift later by a couple of days, and ISS support continues with a Northrop Grumman Cygnus XL cargo mission—CRS-24—scheduled to loft more than 11,000 pounds of supplies and research to the station.

On the international science front, ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are preparing SMILE—the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer—for an April 9 launch on Vega-C from French Guiana. SMILE aims to deliver global images of Earth’s magnetospheric boundaries using a wide-field soft X-ray imager and to monitor auroral dynamics with an ultraviolet camera, operating from a high, elongated orbit that supports both long observations and efficient data downlinks. Meanwhile, China’s crewed program outlines multiple 2026 missions, including plans that could see taikonauts from Hong Kong and Macao participate, and continued progress toward a crewed lunar landing before 2030 with major systems like Long March-10, Mengzhou, and the Lanyue lander advancing through key tests.

A mix of discoveries rounds out the week: lunar scientists have identified a fresh, bright-rayed impact crater about 22 meters wide in Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery by comparing before-and-after frames from different years. Far beyond the Moon, astronomers studying Markarian 501 report evidence consistent with two supermassive black holes, inferred from jet behavior across high-resolution radio observations spanning about 23 years, with an apparent orbital period around 121 days—potentially setting up a low-frequency gravitational-wave target for pulsar timing arrays. Exoplanet science also accelerates, with the NASA Exoplanet Archive adding multiple newly confirmed planets and a substantial increase in spectral data—boosted notably by JWST—expanding the catalog of atmospheres and system characterizations. And in theory work, researchers propose a compact gravitational-wave detection method based on how passing waves could imprint directional patterns on photons emitted by atoms, hinting at future detectors far smaller than kilometer-scale interferometers.

Finally, closer to home, planetary science and hazard monitoring stay active. New research suggests Martian dust storms and dust devils may drive powerful electrostatic effects that trigger chemistry—producing chlorine compounds and carbonates and helping explain surface observations and isotopic fingerprints. On Earth’s doorstep, a small near-Earth asteroid, 2026 GD—about 16 meters across—made a close pass on April 9 at roughly 250,000 kilometers, or about 0.65 lunar distances, with no risk of impact. And space weather has been relatively calm overall in early April, with low activity expected through April 12, though occasional M-class flares remain possible—conditions that generally support steady satellite and launch operations.