Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower Peaks & SpaceX Starlink Launch Success - Space News (May 2, 2026)

Let's start with the meteor shower. The Eta Aquariid meteor shower will peak on Sunday and Monday night, May fifth and sixth. These meteors come from Halley's Comet. Each year, Earth passes through the debris trail left by the comet, and particles burn up in our atmosphere, creating bright streaks across the sky. You can expect to see up to fifty meteors per hour under ideal dark skies. The best viewing window is before sunrise, looking generally toward the east. Find a location away from city lights and allow your eyes about twenty to thirty minutes to adapt to the darkness. There is a fairly bright moon in the sky this year, which will wash out some of the fainter meteors, but you should still catch plenty of shooting stars.

In other news from orbit, SpaceX had a successful launch yesterday. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on May first, carrying twenty-nine Starlink V2 Mini satellites to low-Earth orbit. The first stage booster completed its thirty-first flight before landing successfully on a droneship in the Atlantic. This latest deployment adds to SpaceX's growing constellation of internet satellites, with the Starlink network continuing to expand its coverage for global connectivity.

Beyond this weekend's meteor show, May has several other viewing opportunities for stargazers. On May eighteenth, look to the western sky just after sunset to find the Moon positioned close to Venus. Venus is particularly bright right now, so both should be easy to spot. Speaking of Venus, it's been slowly moving toward Jupiter throughout the month. Watch them converge night after night, with their closest approach coming on June ninth. Finally, May ends with a Blue Moon on the thirty-first. That's the second full moon in a calendar month, a relatively rare event. It also happens to be the most distant full moon of the year, sometimes called a micromoon.