5 Low Maintenance Bob Haircuts Celebrities Are Loving for Summer  ELLE

Jesse Minter: Nnamdi Madubuike getting work in, trending in great direction  NBC Sports

5/27/2026: Warm today, then trending a bit cooler  NEWS10 ABC

Kratos Defense (KTOS) Stock Is Trending As Trump Administration Eyes Equity Stakes In US Drone Makers  Benzinga

Mitch Marner Talks 'Dark Times in Hockey' After Trending Celebration Video, Stanley Cup Final Berth  Bleacher Report

1. Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless Review: Worth The Wait  Engadget
2. Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless Headphones Review: One Big Crucial Upgrade  CNET
3. Sennheiser’s new Momentum 5 headphones have upgraded ANC and a replaceable battery  The Verge
4. Sennheiser's Momentum 5 Headphones Are All About The Audio And ANC Upgrades  Engadget
5. Hear That? Sennheiser Has Some New Around-Ear Bluetooth Wireless Headphones to Check Out  No Film School

1. Acer’s answer to the MacBook Neo is a $699 laptop with Intel chips and 8GB of RAM  The Verge
2. The Acer Swift Air 14 Looks Like A Cute And Breezy Windows Alternative To The MacBook Air  Engadget
3. Acer unveils ultra‑light AI laptops to rival MacBook Neo  Bangkok Post
4. Windows PC Industry Reacts to Apple's Most Affordable MacBook Ever  MacRumors
5. Acer Expands Lineup of Aspire AI Copilot+ PCs With New Laptops and All-in-Ones  Yahoo Finance

1. First Look at iPhone 18 Pro Color Options Revealed by Dummy Models  MacRumors
2. New leak confirms new iPhone 18 Pro Dark Cherry, Light Blue colors  Macworld
3. iPhone 18 Pro's Camera Upgrade Will Cost Apple 50% More  MacRumors
4. iPhone 18 news: The latest leaks, rumored features, and colors  Mashable
5. iPhone 18 Pro Max vs Google Pixel 11 Pro XL: Main differences to expect  PhoneArena

Exynos 2600’s Heat Pass Block Performs Better Than A Liquid-Nitrogen-Cooled Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Enabling Practical Uses For Future SoCs  Wccftech

1. Call Of Duty: Warzone Joins Two Other Xbox One Games Being Delisted In Early June 2026  Pure Xbox
2. Call of Duty: Warzone is dropping PS4 and Xbox One support later this year  The Verge
3. Call of Duty: Warzone to Shut Down on PS4 and Xbox One as Modern Warfare 4 Leaves Last-Gen Consoles Behind  IGN
4. Popular Free PS4 Shooter Being Delisted Soon, Shutting Down  PlayStation LifeStyle
5. These 5+ PS5, PS4 Games Will Be Delisted in June 2026  Push Square

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image released on May 27, 2026, features the dwarf irregular galaxy ESO 490-017, roughly 12,000 light-years in diameter and some 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The galaxy’s low surface brightness makes it appear as a faint, starry swarm behind brighter foreground stars that are easily recognized by their diffraction spikes. Numerous red, orange, and beige dots are distant galaxies peppering the black background, many exhibiting distinct spiral structure.

The data in this image of ESO 490-017 was part of a Hubble observing program that looked at the movement of galaxies and galaxy clusters through space. Matter in the universe is distributed unevenly, and the gravitational influence of that matter drives the “cosmic flow” or movement of large-scale structures in the universe.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Tully (University of Hawaii); Image Processing: G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The focus of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is an active spiral galaxy on a journey lasting hundreds of millions of years. The galaxy Messier 88 (M88), also known as NGC 4501, is located about 63 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). 

M88 is an active galaxy, which means that its center harbors a supermassive black hole that is snacking on gas and dust. Astronomers estimate the black hole is around 100 million times as massive as the Sun, and it appears to be powering outflows of gas from the galaxy’s center.

A population of old, reddish stars around the black hole give M88 its warmly glowing heart. Spreading out from the galaxy’s center are several tightly wound, symmetrical spiral arms, each outlined by sparkling pink and blue star clusters and knotted clouds of dust. We see M88 from an angle that makes it appear elongated, and its spiral arms delicately fan out before it.

M88 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, a collection of more than a thousand galaxies held together by gravity. As this massive galaxy group moves through space, the galaxies themselves are in constant motion as they orbit the cluster’s center of gravity. M88 itself is on a long and somewhat perilous cosmic journey that will bring it to the innermost reaches of the cluster.

As is the case with any epic journey, M88 will be fundamentally changed by its trek to the center of the Virgo Cluster, about two million light-years from where it is today. In 200–300 million years, M88 will make its closest approach to Messier 87, the massive elliptical galaxy that anchors the entire cluster. As it draws close to this gravitational behemoth, M88 will experience intense ram pressure stripping. Ram pressure stripping is a process through which a galaxy’s gas is swept away as it pushes through the ever-present gas between the galaxies in a cluster.

Researchers have already seen this process at work in M88. The galaxy’s swirling disk of gas is truncated and appears compressed on the leading edge of the galaxy, piling up gas and dust like snow before a plough. In fact, M88 appears to have considerably less cold gas — the raw fuel for star formation — than expected for a galaxy of its size, especially in its outer regions. This is a clear sign that M88 will be altered by its journey, which will affect its ability to form stars and alter the course of its evolution.

Astronomers observed M88 with Hubble as part of an observing program (#18103; PI: D. Thilker) dedicated to understanding the lives of spiral galaxies in crowded environments. This program uses Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which can finely resolve individual star clusters and nebulae in galaxies tens of millions of light-years away. By studying galaxies on these scales, astronomers can understand how a journey through a cluster impacts a galaxy’s evolution and ability to form new stars.

Text credit: ESA/Hubble

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Along the Vetrivier (Vet River) in South Africa, a patchwork of circular and rectangular fields spreads across what is otherwise a semi-arid part of the Free State province. The water brings life to an array of crops, contributing to the agricultural productivity of the wider Maize Triangle.

The agricultural area shown in this image lies about 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Bloemfontein. The scene is reminiscent of a modern abstract painting. Colorful circles mingle with straight-edged fields in combinations of red, green, and blue. But each color carries physical meaning, providing clues about crop types and revealing how they changed over the course of the Southern Hemisphere’s growing season.

Data for the visualization were acquired by the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite during 10 passes over the area between November 2025 and March 2026. L-band radar observations, which can “see” vegetation’s structure instead of its color, were analyzed to produce per-pixel statistical measures across the scene. By combining radar scattering behaviors observed across multiple dates into a single composite, scientists built a compact summary of seasonal agricultural activity and change.

“It’s a pretty picture, but there are also important things that it communicates to us,” said Paul Siqueira, a scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and ecosystems lead of the NISAR science team. “With NISAR, crops like maize and sunflower appear differently than forests because of their size differences and period of growth.”

In this false-color composite, green indicates a vegetated area; red represents an unvegetated surface; and blue indicates how rapidly a vegetated area changed over the season. For instance, stable vegetation—such as forested areas—display a light blue component. Plants that change structure throughout the season, such as wheat and maize (corn), have a darker blue component.

In practice, most pixels contain a mix of these colors, producing the visualization’s rich and varied palette. For example, plants that grow rapidly (contributing some green) and are harvested early (contributing a large red component) make fields appear orange. Sunflowers are known to exhibit this pattern in the region, though ground validation would be needed to confirm their presence in any given field.

The processing behind the visualization is relatively straightforward, but it is based on a large amount of data. NISAR sends radar signals to Earth and measures how they bounce back; the orientation of the returned radar waves (cross-polarized or co-polarized) carries information about the structure of vegetation and surfaces. By combining radar measurements from multiple satellite passes and calculating statistics for each pixel, scientists built the detailed map of the landscape’s characteristics throughout the growing season.

The technique provides a repeatable way to monitor crop development, the impacts of irrigation, and land-use change across large regions. As NISAR collects more data, researchers will be able to compare seasons, track field-to-field differences in growth patterns, and better understand how agricultural systems respond to water availability and climate variability.

Image by Paul Siqueira (UMass Amherst) of the NISAR science team using data from the NISAR GCOV product, and prepared for NASA Earth Observatory by Michala Garrison. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

References & Resources

• NASA (2025, July 25) Get to Know SAR – Overview. Accessed May 28, 2026.
• NASA (2026, April 14) NISAR. Accessed May 28, 2026.
• NASA (2026, April 14) NISAR Handbook. Accessed May 28, 2026.
• NASA (2025, July 23) Polarimetry. Accessed May 28, 2026.

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft is preparing for some of its most significant flights yet. The X-plane is about to begin a new block of test flights that will include its first time flying faster than the speed of sound and other mission-critical objectives.

“What comes next is the first time this one-of-a-kind aircraft will fly supersonic,” said Cathy Bahm, project manager for NASA’s Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. “We are starting toward the mission conditions test point that X-59 was designed for.”

After months of flights, the X-59 team reviewed their progress in late May and now look toward the aircraft’s next series of flight tests, including higher altitudes and faster speeds. This will give engineers a look at how the X-59 handles under required operational conditions for NASA’s Quesst mission to eventually gather data on quiet supersonic flight.

The team expects the X-59 to fly supersonic – over 630 mph – for the first time at approximately 43,000 feet altitude during a series of test flights in early June, a major milestone for the aircraft. After that, it will conduct a “mission conditions” flight, where it will hit Mach 1.4 (925 mph) at approximately 55,000 feet. That speed and altitude are important because they’re NASA’s performance targets for the X-59 to eventually fly over U.S. communities to demonstrate quiet supersonic flight and collect feedback data about the aircraft’s quiet sonic “thump” from the public.

While the X-59 is designed to fly at supersonic speeds without producing a loud sonic boom, these early flights are not yet intended to demonstrate its quiet supersonic capabilities. The X-59 will be accompanied by a traditional supersonic chase plane, so any quiet thump it produces in the current phase of testing will be obscured by louder, traditional sonic booms from the chase. In supersonic flights this summer, the chase aircraft will also be outfitted with a specialized shock-sensing probe to take initial measurements of the X-59’s shock waves.

Completed flights 

The X-59’s first block of flights successfully met several test goals, generating data for its team to analyze. After making its first flight in October 2025, it entered a scheduled period of maintenance before returning to the skies in March 2026. It has since completed 14 additional flights, marking milestones including:

• Its first gear swing, or the retraction of its landing gear to show off its sleek design for the first time.
• Reaching altitudes up to 43,000 feet and near supersonic speeds at Mach 0.95, approximately 627 mph. 
• Marking its first dual-flight day and then making those increasingly routine as the X-59 team increased flight cadence.
• After a period of moving higher and faster, transitioning into lower and slower test flight conditions so engineers could gather information on the X-59’s behavior across a range of flight conditions. 

Data collected during the X-59’s first block of test flights helped teams better assess critical systems, including fuel, hydraulics, environmental controls, and the eXternal Vision System, which is the aircraft’s unique series of cameras that feed into a monitor that allows the pilot to see forward instead of using a traditional windshield. Teams monitored how the aircraft behaved during takeoff, landing, and throughout flight. Strain gauges installed throughout the X-59 collected detailed information on the forces it experienced, and how its structure responded to them.  

Next steps 

During the X-59’s upcoming flights, pilots will run through test points while engineers watch the aircraft’s performance — but now in supersonic flight conditions. 

“Flying at supersonic speeds is a major milestone for the X-59 team,” Bahm said. “Every step of envelope expansion brings us closer to demonstrating the quiet supersonic capability that is at the heart of the Quesst mission. Completing the first mission-conditions flight is especially meaningful – it’s the moment where we begin validating the aircraft in the environment it was designed for.”

In addition to reaching mission condition during this block of flight tests, the X-59 will also achieve its maximum speed of Mach 1.6 (1,218 mph) and altitude of 60,000 feet.

But just because the aircraft can go that fast doesn’t mean it always will fly supersonic. Testing will continue, including a mix of subsonic and lower-altitude flights so the team can continue monitoring it in varied conditions.

“These flights not only deepen our confidence in the X-59’s performance – they mark our progression toward the future phases of the mission that will ultimately help shape the future of supersonic travel,” Bahm said.

All flights so far and in the upcoming test block are part of Phase 1 of the X-59’s Quesst mission, focused on proving the performance and airworthiness of the aircraft. Some of those flights will include early deployment of equipment, including a probe mounted to one of NASA’s F-15 research aircraft that can measure the X-59’s unique shock wave signature.

Data gathered during those early probing flights will allow engineers to prepare for a new stage of work set to begin later this year: Quesst Phase 2, when teams will begin to measure the aircraft’s supersonic flight signature to verify that it’s producing a quiet supersonic thump, as designed.

“Aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal said, ‘To design a flying machine is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.’ The 15 X-59 flights we’ve accomplished since March have been everything to this team and the mission,” Bahm said. “Every flight has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, steadily expanding the envelope and strengthening our confidence in the aircraft.”

But, she said, rather than focusing on past progress, the team is already looking ahead.

“As we look ahead to the upcoming flights, we’re poised to open the envelope even further – moving boldly toward the mission test point this aircraft was built to achieve,” Bahm said. “Flying supersonic and reaching these milestones isn’t just progress; it’s the realization of years of perseverance, innovation, and teamwork. Each step brings us closer to Phase 2, and to the future of commercial supersonic flight.” 

Listen to this audio excerpt from Daniel Stubbs, NASA aerospace engineer:

If you’ve driven through a cloud of dust and dirt that temporarily obscured your view, you’ve gotten a partial picture of a potential problem that NASA’s human landing systems for Artemis will face when they land on the Moon. Daniel Stubbs, an aerospace engineer with the Plume and Aero Environments team in the Spacecraft and Vehicle Systems office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, studies and models the interaction between plumes of rocket exhaust and the regolith on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for crew safety and Artemis mission success.

Stubbs, a native of Trussville, Alabama, who earned a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from Auburn University in Alabama, decided early in his college career he wanted to work for NASA, but he didn’t see a clear path at the time to reach his goal. In graduate school, he had the opportunity to work on plume-surface interaction modeling as part of a NASA Early Stage Innovations grant. Now, Stubbs is continuing some of the work he first started as a graduate student.

NASA’s Apollo missions uncovered the risks lunar regolith presents to astronauts, spacecraft, spacesuits, and other assets on the Moon’s surface. Lunar regolith consists of meteoroids and micrometeoroids that, over millennia, have been ground up into razor-sharp, abrasive particles. Future lunar explorers and their landers, rovers, and vehicles will face similar challenges. Landers in development are larger, heavier, and incorporate more rocket engines than the Lunar Module that landed astronauts on the Moon during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. And, unlike Apollo Lunar Modules that left descent stages on the Moon, the new lunar landers will take off directly from the surface using the same engines, thrusters, and other systems that they used for the initial landing. Accurate prediction of the plume-surface interaction between the systems and the lunar regolith during landing will help ensure the lander hardware can survive that environment, and that it is ready to take off to meet Orion and astronauts in lunar orbit to return safely home to Earth.

“The dust and regolith plume can make it difficult for instruments on the landers to see the surface of the Moon,” Stubbs said. “If these instruments don’t report correct readings to the guidance computers, it could affect a lunar landing. Also, when a lander takes off from the surface to return astronauts to Orion, the lunar regolith blown away from the landing site by the rocket plumes could damage scientific instruments or other assets that have been deployed on the surface of the Moon.”

NASA’s Human Landing System program is spearheading a major ground-based study of rocket engine exhaust plumes and lunar dust and regolith. Testing in the 60-foot space simulator chamber at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will represent the conditions the lunar landers may experience, and create, when landing on the Moon.

The research will help engineers understand the aerodynamic forces landers will experience during descent and ascent from the surface, heating at a lander’s base, the potential for a large lunar lander to tip over as a result of crater formation or surface instability.

When the dust settles and NASA has landed American astronauts on the Moon in 2028, Daniel Stubbs will be able to reflect on his work modeling plumes of lunar dust and regolith that rocket engines will stir up.

Through the Artemis program, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars – for the benefit of all.

For more on NASA’s human landing systems, visit: 

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/human-landing-system/

Cognition makes Devin, the first and arguably most successful AI coding agent. But famed coder Wu says it isn't designed to supplant human programmers.

Submit your session topic before today ends for a chance to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Apply now to share your insight and help shape the conversations defining the tech industry.

You now have until tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT to lock in Early Bird savings of up to $410 for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 before prices increase. Join 10,000+ tech leaders in October for one of the most anticipated tech events of the year. Register now.

If you're looking for a fun way to connect with nature while collecting bird species on an app like Pokémon, give this smart feeder a try.

South Korean chip startup XCENA is betting that AI's real bottleneck is not compute, but memory.