Artemis II, Comet MAPS, and Mercury: Your Space Week Just Got Very Busy
It's Day 3 of the Artemis II mission, a sungrazer comet is emerging from the solar corona, an Atlas V just set a payload record, and Mercury is at its best of the year. Here's everything you need to know from today's episode of Astronomy Daily. Artemis II Flight Day 3: Orion Doesn't Even Need a Course Correction Four humans are on their way to the Moon, and everything is going better than planned. Flight controllers cancelled the first of three scheduled trajectory correction burns today — Orion is already on such a precise path that the burn simply wasn't needed. As Howard Hu, NASA's Orion program manager, noted, this reflects exceptional navigation performance throughout the mission. The crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen — spent Day 3 on medical readiness drills, practising CPR in weightlessness and checking out the spacecraft's medical equipment. They also successfully tested Orion's optical communications system, transmitting HD video back to Earth from deep space. On Monday, April 6th, Orion will swing around the lunar far side at its closest approach — briefly out of radio contact with Earth — and at the mission's farthest point will travel 252,757 miles from home. That breaks the human spaceflight distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. Fifty-six years. We're finally going further. Comet MAPS: The Solar Plunge Is Done — Now Comes the Wait At 14:22 UTC on April 4th, Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) reached perihelion — passing just 161,000 kilometres from the surface of the Sun, skimming through the lower solar corona. Whether it survived that encounter is still being determined from spacecraft imagery, as the comet remains in the Sun's glare for ground-based observers. If MAPS emerges intact, the Southern Hemisphere viewing window opens April 6th to 10th. Look west after sunset, low on the horizon, near Venus. Brightness predictions range from magnitude -5 (comparable to Venus) to extraordinary scenarios even brighter. Even a nucleus breakup could leave a spectacular dust tail — what's known as a 'headless wonder.' Either way, this story is not over. Atlas V Sets a Record: 29 Amazon Leo Satellites, Heaviest Payload Ever At 1:45 a.m. Eastern Time on April 4th, a ULA Atlas V 551 lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying 29 Amazon Leo satellites — the heaviest payload in the rocket's 102-mission history. Mission LA-05 continues Amazon's build-out of its 3,200-satellite internet constellation (formerly Project Kuiper), with around 241 satellites now on orbit. Amazon faces an FCC deadline to have half its constellation operational by July 2026. Blue Ghost Challenges a Fundamental View of the Moon New data from Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander — which operated on the lunar surface for two weeks in March 2025 — is shaking up decades of lunar science. Scientists expected Blue Ghost's landing site at Mare Crisium, well outside the Moon's 'hot zone,' to show significantly cooler interior temperatures than Apollo landing sites. It didn't. The near-side/far-side temperature divide may be far less pronounced than previously thought, suggesting heat-producing elements are more widely distributed beneath the surface. 'We may have to abandon that binary,' said principal investigator Seiichi Nagihara. Pulsars Broadcast Further Than Anyone Knew — With Australian Science Behind the Discovery A study led by Professor Michael Kramer (Max Planck Institute) and Dr Simon Johnston (CSIRO) has found that about one third of millisecond pulsars emit radio waves from two completely separate regions — including a distant zone at the very edge of their magnetic reach called the current sheet. This overturns decades of received wisdom and suggests pulsars should be detectable from a wider range of directions than previously thought — with implications for gravitational wave detection using pulsar timing arrays. Mercury Is at Its Best All Year — And Southern Hemisphere Skywatchers Win Mercury reached greatest western elongation on April 3rd — the year's best opportunity to see the innermost planet. From Australia and New Zealand, this is specifically the best morning apparition of Mercury in 2026. Look east about 30-40 minutes before sunrise for a steady point of light at around magnitude 0.4, just above Mars. Through binoculars or a small telescope, Mercury is currently showing a half-illuminated quarter phase. And on April 18th, Mercury, Saturn, Mars, and Neptune will gather in a tight morning-sky cluster — three of them visible to the naked eye.
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