OF SPECIAL INTEREST
OF SPECIAL INTEREST NEWS
COMET ALERT!!TWO POTENTIALLY BRIGHT COMETS IN APRIL!
C/2026 (MAPS): The roster of comets now visible is quite sparse, but comet fans, take heart! A new comet has just been found that could put on a great show this month. Its name is C/2026 A1 (MAPS), and it was found by a French asteroid search team working in Chile (MAPS is an acronym of the first letters of their last name). It’s still too faint and too far south for those of us north of the Equator, but is a member of the Kreutz Comet class, Sun-grazing comets that, in the past, have produced amazing displays. Of course, it is too soon for accurate predictions, and passing so close to the Sun (less than one million miles) can really tear comets apart, but if it survives perihelion, the display could rival that of the best in the past few centuries.
Aristotle observed the Great Comet of 371 BCE, bright enough to cast a shadow. Astronomers suspect it broke up and produced the family of Kreutz comets that have been visiting us since, identifiable as a “family” due to the similarity of their very eccentric orbits and small perihelia. Most are small, and disappear in a puff when close to the Sun, but C/2026 A1 is likely to be much larger, on the order of 2 km. It has to be unusually large; it was discovered when it was 300 million km from the Sun! For more about Kreutz comets, see: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.15467 ; for more about C/2026 A1, see: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/new-kreutz-comet-c-2026-a1-may-dazzle. NOTE: MAPS will be in the constellation of Pisces at perihelion, then move rapidly over to Orion a month later.
UPDATE (3/26):C/2026 A1 MAPS is now in Pisces, now brighter than +10 and brightening rapidly. Perihelion is on April 4, and the comet may be tidally disrupted by the Sun’s gravity. If that does happen, it could produce a “headless comet,” a fate suffered by comet C/2024 G3 just before Halloween last year. Best viewing, low in the west on the evening of April 7. Get the latest info here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/latest-news-on-kreutz-sungrazing-comet-c-2026-a1-maps!
C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS): April could turn out to be a great month for comets! This recent discovery by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) atop Haleakalā, first seen on September 8 last year, is a long-period comet (unlike C/2026 MAPS), presently about halfway between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It has a 1000+ year orbit around the Sun, spending most of its time in the Oort Cloud. It reaches perihelion on April 19, a mere two weeks after MAPS reaches perihelion. It’s not expected to be as bright as MAPS, but it still might put on a good show. NOTE: This comet’s perihelion will be in the constellation Pegasus, then it will move quickly through the Great Square and the tail of Cetus toward Orion.
UPDATE (3/26):C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) is now shining at +7, in Pegasus. It will reach perihelion on April 19, and could get much brighter. See this entries for MAPS here: http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2026A1/2026A1.html; and 2025 R3 here: http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2025R3/2025R3.html. Stay tuned!
Hail Mary
By now, more than a few of you will have seen the movie, Hail Mary. It’s a science fiction story, of course, but one with more science than usual. It exposes the public to SETI, panspermia, time dilation, and other astrophysical concepts. What do astrophysicists think about it? See: https://phys.org/news/2026-03-hail-mary-hard-science-astrophysicist.html and https://phys.org/news/2026-03-hail-mary-wrong-astrophysics.html.
How NASM Will Celebrate America’s 250th
The National Mall Building of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) was dedicated on July 1, 1976, part of our Nation’s Bicentennial celebration. The Viking 1 spacecraft, comprising both orbiter and lander components, was then in orbit around Mars. NASM had a replica of the lander’s sampling arm, and a signal from Viking was used to cause it to cut the ribbon at the Dedication Ceremony. President Ford, Vice President Rockefeller, Chief Justice Warren Burger, Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley, and First NASM Director, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, were all in attendance.
The National Mall Building, after 42+ years and 360 million visitors, needed some major TLC, and has been undergoing an amazing transformation. The entire building has been affected; to date only seven galleries remain under construction.
Fifty year later, to the day, NASM will celebrate again! On July 1, 2026, five of the new galleries will be opened to the public: Flight and the Arts Center, Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air, the U.S. National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe, RTX Living in the Space Age, and Textron How Things Fly. The At Home in Space Gallery will open on October 30, and the Modern Military Aviation Gallery will open on Veterans’ Day (November 11).
For more on this exciting development, see: https://www.airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/national-air-and-space-museum-announces-plans-celebrate-50-years!
Sad News
A very valuable education resource is going away! The Annenberg Learner website will sunset on July 1, 2026. AL has been providing all sorts of educational support books, multi-media resources and more. One of my favorite items was their 20-minute documentary, A Private Universe (https://www.learner.org/series/a-private-universe), about otherwise-outstanding Harvard students continued to hold confused ideas about basic science concepts, particularly in astronomy. You can still access APU from the Annenberg site, but that will be going away. There are copies available on-line if you search.
OF SPECIAL INTEREST FYI
NASA Funding Restoration! President Trump had proposed massive cuts to NASA that would have eviscerated a number of NASA Projects and Facilities and necessitated a very large Reduction in Force. Congress recently passed a budget for NASA that would restore most of the capability that would have been lost. The newly-passed funding would require some reduction, but the only mission cancellation would be for the proposed Mars sample return mission that would have retrieved the rock/soil samples being collected by the Perseverance rover.
Also avoiding major cuts were Congress appropriations of the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The latter two organization had a slight boost in funding compared to 2025, NSF suffered only a 3.4% annual reduction.
For details on this wonderful news, see: https://aas.org/posts/news/2026/01/congress-passes-fiscal-year-2026-spending-bills-nsf-nasa-and-doe , https://spacenews.com/congress-passes-minibus-spending-bill-that-rejects-proposed-nasa-cuts, and https://nasawatch.com/congress/aas-summary-of-nasa-fy-2026-budget!
Follow Up: An optimistic look at Astronomy and Space Exploration coming up in 2026 can be found here: https://theconversation.com/from-a-new-flagship-space-telescope-to-lunar-exploration-global-cooperation-and-competition-will-make-2026-an-exciting-year-for-space-272010.
OF SPECIAL INTEREST LINKS AND OTHER INFORMATION
China Expands Military Space Capabilities: Aviation Week’s Military Space Editor Vivienne Machi posted an article on this important topic, here: https://aviationweek.com/space/budget-policy-regulation/hide-seek-orbit-china-expands-military-space-capabilities. And although it isn’t a direct military threat, she notes that China plans to launch a constellation of over 200,000 satellites to LEO… And the FCC just authorized SpaceX to make an expansion of its Starlink system. [Why am I having an Olber’s Paradox flash-back?]
“How the U.S. Space Force Aims to Avoid a Second Sputnik Moment” is an interesting piece by Vivienne Machi, the Military Space Editor for Aviation Week. See it here: https://aviationweek.com/space/budget-policy-regulation/how-us-space-force-aims-avoid-second-sputnik-moment.
The latest on Comet 3I/ATLAS: Sorry Avi, it’s not a spaceship. Too bad, because NASA’s budget would have skyrocketed. But it is an important ambassador of science, carrying a “portfolio” of information from elsewhere in our galaxy.
Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third known object to visit our Solar System from interstellar space. The designation of this object is derived from “3” being the third object of this type, the “I” means it is “Interstellar” not Solar System in origin, and “ATLAS” was the part of NASA’s Planetary Defense Network that discovered it, the “Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System.” The other two Solar System interlopers were 1I/’Oumuamua, discovered in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019. There has no doubt been others before, but we did not have the technology in place that would have allowed their discovery.
The object was first observed by the ATLAS survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile. The data was relayed to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (the clearinghouse for all such observations of new Solar System objects) on July 1 of this year. Continued observations soon showed that its speed and trajectory were proof of its interstellar origin. It reached perihelion on October 30, ~1.4 AU from the Sun (just outside of the orbit of Mars) and is now moving away from the Sun. The Earth was never threatened. You can see more about the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS on NASA’s wonderful “Eyes On” website: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/c_2025_n1.
3I/ATLAS is designated as a “comet” because it has an icy nucleus and has a coma, a cloud of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus that was liberated by solar heating. Its size was difficult to estimate because it did not come very close to Earth; estimates range from ~440 to ~5600 meters. To astronomers, the composition of the material liberated from the object, determined by spectroscopy, are very important because it’s our best look yet at planetary formation elsewhere in the Milky Way.
Scientists are already posting information about the chemical composition of 3I/ATLAS. It is a bit different than comets bound to the Sun. While CO2 and H2O are the principal compounds present in the comet’s coma, there is an overabundance of nickel and other elements, however small, and no iron has been observed. CO and OCS are also present in small quantities. The conclusion of the initial study now published is that “these signatures are consistent with formation in an Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stellar wind environment approximately 4.6 billion years ago in the Perseus Arm at 2.3±0.3 kpc galactic radius.”
Why Do People (Like Avi) Adopt Beliefs without Evidence? Social media is filled with Flat Earthers, Moon Landing Deniers, and others who hold “Extraordinary Beliefs” in the face of no or contradicting evidence. Some are motivated by their religion, which is OK; others are sh*tposting, which is annoying but generally harmless; but some are downright dangerous (RFK Jr.). Eli Elster just posted a piece on Space.com about the issue, “Flat Earth, spirits and conspiracy theories – Experience can shape even extraordinary beliefs.” He has some interesting ideas on the subject; check it out at: https://www.space.com/astronomy/earth/flat-earth-spirits-and-conspiracy-theories-experience-can-shape-even-extraordinary-beliefs.
For Those of You in the Colorado Springs Area: The Space Foundation Discovery Center on Garden of the Gods Avenue has undergone a significant expansion and updating. Find out more about it at: https://discoverspace.org and more about the Space Foundation at: https://www.spacefoundation.org. In addition, the Planetarium at the U.S. Air Force Academy offers a variety of public programs; for more information, see: https://www.usafa.edu/facilities/planetarium. But be advised that the Academy has new stringent requirements to enter. The Academy also has great STEM outreach programming for students and teachers, see: https://www.usafa.edu/research/stem-outreach.
Jack Cross: I have met an interesting fellow on-line via one of NASM’s wonderful Docents. His name is Jack Cross, and he proudly served in the U.S. Navy from 1950 to 1954 as a Bosun’s Mate. He was on a series of warships at first, then he moved over to the USS Yellowstone, a tender that served the Navy’s Sixth Fleet. He joined the Navy and saw the world!
Now retired, Jack has put together a series of picture-rich PowerPoint presentations. He kindly gave me permission to post three of them already, one about D-Day, one about “A Day of Mercy in the Sky,” and one about his Navy career, which gives a real interesting look at what Navy life was like at the start of the Cold War. Check all three out on the Archive: Other Stuff page of the website! Thank you, Jack!
DOCENTS (and all others interested in Solar System exploration history): If you don’t have an on-line copy of Fordham University’s Asif A. Siddiqi’s fabulous book, Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, you should. You can find it at: https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/beyond_earth_detail.html.