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Atmospheric Code Red: 2026 Super El Niño Now Trending Toward Record-Breaking Intensity  Severe Weather Europe

With turnout trending high, here’s what voters are saying about the override  Brookline.News

Brown is the new black: The color is trending red-hot in interior design  AJC.com

Notre Dame trending in the right direction with elite OL Oluwasemilore Olubobola  247Sports

1. Nintendo Switch 2 price rise takes effect from September  BBC
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3. Japanese video-game maker Nintendo raises Switch price, forecasts lower profits  Boston Herald
4. Price Revision for Nintendo Switch 2 System - News - Nintendo Official Site  nintendo.com
5. Sony, Nintendo grapple with memory price surge as AI boom constrains supply  Reuters

Blackmagic Camera Hands-On: Apple Watch Compatibility Gives Vloggers Remote Control  Engadget

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NASA astronaut Chris Williams captured the Milky Way rising above Earth’s atmospheric glow on April 13, 2026, while aboard a SpaceX Dragon docked to the International Space Station.

This atmospheric glow is also called airglow. It occurs when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, excited by sunlight, emit light to shed their excess energy. Alternatively, it can happen when atoms and molecules that have been ionized by sunlight collide with and capture a free electron. In both cases, they eject a particle of light — called a photon — in order to relax again. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is energized by ordinary, day-to-day solar radiation.

Image credit: NASA/Chris Williams

NASA announced Friday that Brian Hughes will return to the agency as senior director of launch operations, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In this role, Hughes will provide enterprise-level leadership, strategic direction, and operational oversight for NASA’s launch infrastructure.

Reporting to NASA Headquarters in Washington, Hughes will have direct responsibility for launch operations at NASA Kennedy, as well as the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. He will work across government, industry, and local leadership to strengthen coordination among stakeholders supporting NASA’s spaceports, enable increased launch cadence, and support execution of the President’s National Space Policy to ensure continued American leadership in space.

“Brian brings a unique combination of operational expertise, strategic leadership, and public service experience at the highest levels of government,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “His track record leading complex organizations and executing high-stakes missions makes him exceptionally well-suited to help shape the future of NASA’s launch operations as we accelerate into a new era of exploration and innovation.”

Most recently, Hughes served as NASA’s chief of staff, where he helped drive agencywide priorities and decision-making. Prior to NASA, he served as deputy national security advisor for Strategic Communications at the White House, helping shape policy and communications on national security matters.

Hughes also served as chief administrative officer for the City of Jacksonville, overseeing a workforce of more than 7,000 employees and managing a multi-billion-dollar budget across public safety, infrastructure, and emergency management operations. Earlier in his career, he served as chief of staff to former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and as chief executive officer of the Downtown Investment Authority, leading economic development initiatives across the city.

A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Hughes served as a KC-135 aircrew member during operations over the Middle East in support of the Gulf War.

His return comes as NASA continues advancing a growing portfolio of civil, commercial, and national security launch activities across its spaceport infrastructure.

Learn more about NASA’s mission at:

https://www.nasa.gov

-end-

Bethany Stevens / George Alderman
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / george.a.alderman@nasa.gov

With a small blue crane, four researchers hoist a cylindrical fuel cell, which looks like a stack of flattened silver and gold soda cans bundled together, into the air and lower it into a rectangular cart on wheels. A tangle of tubes and wires spiral away from the system, where nearly 270 sensors and 1,000 components are nestled inside.

“It’s a behemoth; it’s a researcher’s dream,” said Dr. Kerrigan Cain, lead engineer for the team at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland preparing to test this technology, known as a regenerative fuel cell system, over the next few months.

The system, about as long as a sedan and as tall as a person, operates like a rechargeable battery and could revolutionize the way NASA stores energy during future Moon missions through the Artemis program. When power is needed, it’s designed to combine hydrogen and oxygen gas into water, heat, and electricity, and then “recharge” by splitting the water back into hydrogen and oxygen — all on the lunar surface.

“It is an ideal technology for habitats, exploration with rovers, and many of the systems that are envisioned under Artemis,” Cain said. “Developing a sustainable, long-term human presence on the Moon requires power and energy storage solutions that fit those needs. Regenerative fuel cells fit into that puzzle perfectly.”

This technology can weigh less but store the same amount of energy as comparable battery systems and could even operate during cold, dark, nearly two-week-long lunar nights. Its recharging capability also would ensure astronauts make the most of their resources and energy on the lunar surface without needing new supplies delivered from Earth.

The upcoming tests are the culmination of over five years of work. The system was designed and assembled at NASA Glenn. Researchers completed initial testing in 2025 to understand the basics of how the technology functions and make modifications.

Now, the team is passing a major milestone as they get ready to operate the complete system, storing the hydrogen and oxygen gas generated during recharge for the first time. They hope to gather essential data, identify any additional challenges, and further advance the technology toward a lunar mission.

On an average test day, researchers will secure the thick double doors to the test cell where the system is located in NASA Glenn’s Fuel Cell Testing Laboratory, head to a nearby control room, and begin to run the system remotely. Once it is powered up and a test has started, the technology can operate on its own without researcher intervention.

“This testing is going to generate crucial data, so every day is exciting,” Cain said. “This effort was made possible by countless hours of work. The desire for fuel cell technology is so high, it makes it very easy to get up every morning and go, ‘All right, we have to keep moving forward so that we can be ready for Artemis.’”

Researchers will use lessons learned from testing to continue advancing regenerative fuel cell technology. Before the system can launch to the Moon, researchers will put it through its paces outside of the lab.

“We want to simulate being on the lunar surface and prove the system can work under much harsher conditions compared to a controlled laboratory environment,” Cain said.

Cain and his team noted working on the complex regenerative fuel cell system is both rewarding and challenging as they consider the impacts their research could have on NASA’s future deep space missions.

“Creating a sustainable presence on the Moon is a team effort requiring a lot of collaboration between NASA and industry,” Cain said.

NASA’s Regenerative Fuel Cell project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program, managed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Carved over millennia by the pressure and motion of glacial ice, the valley walls cradling the Tracy Arm fjord in southeast Alaska continue to be reshaped. In summer 2025, following the rapid retreat of South Sawyer Glacier, a large landslide sent rock careening into the fjord, altering the wider landscape in a matter of minutes.

The slide culminated on the morning of August 10, 2025, when at least 64 million cubic meters of rock slid downslope. Material entering the fjord induced a tsunami that stripped trees and other vegetation from the opposing fjord wall up to 1,578 feet (481 meters) above sea level. While this peak was the highest “runup” reached by the tsunami, shores and islands down the fjord also saw substantial destruction.

NASA-USGS Landsat satellites captured these images on July 26 (left) and August 19 (right), before and after the event, respectively. “The bright landslide scar on the north side of the fjord is striking, as is the ‘bathtub’ ring around the fjord showing the areas where the forest was leveled by the tsunami,” said Dan Shugar, a geomorphologist at the University of Calgary.

Note that Sawyer Island, about 6 miles (9 kilometers) from the landslide, also turned from green to brown. Only a few trees still stood at the island’s higher elevations.

In the months following the slide, Shugar and colleagues combined satellite, airborne, and ground-based observations with eyewitness reports and simulations to build a more complete picture of how the event unfolded. Their analysis, detailing the event from its lead-up through its aftermath, was published May 6, 2026, in the journal Science.

In addition to the details outlined above, the researchers showed that water continued to slosh around the fjord—a phenomenon known as a “seiche”—for more than a day. Both the landslide and seiche produced seismic signals detected around the world, the former equivalent to a magnitude 5.4 earthquake.

The Landsat images also reveal significant retreat at the front of South Sawyer Glacier in less than a month. “Part of that occurred between the date of the first image and the date of the landslide,” Shugar said. “But part of it is from the landslide itself, which broke off a big chunk of the terminus of South Sawyer Glacier, resulting in a slurry of icebergs in the fjord.”

The exact mechanisms that caused the landslide remain uncertain and could have involved a combination of factors. Rainfall, which was moderate prior to the event, and the rapid retreat of glaciers can both destabilize a slope. What is clear, however, is that the glacier’s retreat exposed a new area of open water, leaving it vulnerable to a landscape-reorganizing tsunami. 

No one was injured in the event, though it did catch some by surprise. Kayakers camping on Harbor Island near the fjord’s mouth had their gear swept away, and passengers aboard a small cruise vessel in neighboring Endicott Arm reported swings in water levels and a strong current associated with the tsunami. Brentwood Higman of Ground Truth Alaska, a co-author of the paper, noted that a glacier’s shift from relative stability to renewed retreat, visible in satellite images, could serve as an important indicator that an area has become more susceptible to landslide and tsunami hazards.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photograph by John Lyons/U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

References & Resources

• Alaska Public Media (2025, August 12) ‘Pure chaos out of nowhere’: Mega-landslide and tsunami rip through Tracy Arm south of Juneau. Accessed May 7, 2026.
• AP News (2026, April 12) Cruise companies to Alaska are avoiding a popular excursion to Tracy Arm after a massive landslide. Accessed May 7, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2024, November 12) Sizing Up a Greenland Tsunami. Accessed May 7, 2026.
• Shugar, D. H., et al. (2026) A 481-meter-high landslide-tsunami in a cruise ship–frequented Alaska fjord. Science, 392 (6798).
• University of Alaska Fairbanks (2025, August 12) Tsunami-causing slide was largest in decade, earthquake center finds. Accessed May 7, 2026.
• U.S. Geological Survey (2025, August 13) 2025 Tracy Arm Landslide Before and After Satellite Imagery. Accessed May 7, 2026.

NASA’s home for experimental flight is welcoming more flyers to its already high-performing fleet as it continues to support science and aeronautics test missions – continuing the legacy of pioneers like Neil Armstrong.

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, added multiple aircraft this year: two F-15s supersonic jets, a Pilatus PC-12 utility plane, and a T-34 turboprop trainer, which the center will use to support the agency’s advancement of aerospace research.

Throughout the center’s history, pilots have flown everything from large aircraft like the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and rocket-powered airplanes like the X-15 to high-speed repurposed fighter jets like the F-18. And after almost 80 years, flight research is still going strong in the desert today.

“Armstrong has a rich history of flight research, but it’s the multidimensional skills of the people we have here, and the knowledge they’ve built to handle very unique aircraft maintenance and modifications, that stands out,” said Darren Cole, capabilities manager for the Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities project at NASA Armstrong.

The center plays a pivotal role in worldwide airborne science missions, flying scientists and equipment from NASA, other government agencies, industry, and academia to collect measurements such as air pollution levels, glacier melt trends, and wildland fire mapping.

Scientists can manage experiments in real time aboard flying laboratories like the NASA ER-2, to collect important data with the help of Armstrong’s pilots and airborne science team.

“We all come together to make the science happen,” said Matt Berry, airborne research platforms branch chief at NASA Armstrong. “It is the agility of the Armstrong team that allows us to collaborate with scientists, get their equipment onboard, and to fly them to areas where they need to collect data.”

The center sits on Rogers Dry Lake, a 44-square-mile slat flat area used for aviation research and test operations. Rogers and the adjacent Rosamond Dry Lake have seen everything from space shuttle landings to emergency test flight recoveries. The Rogers lakebed continues to serve as an important piece of Armstrong’s test missions.

For NASA Armstrong, it all started with the first attempt by a human to fly faster than the speed of sound in the Bell X-1. In 1946, 13 employees from NASA’s predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), arrived at what was then known as Muroc Army Airfield to prepare for the X-1 tests. A year later, NACA’s Muroc Flight Test Unit was established as a permanent facility at the airfield.

The center has gone by several names over the years, most recently changing from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center to NASA Armstrong in 2014. But its legacy has never shifted: The Bell X-1E, the last of the X-1 series of aircraft, now sits in front of NASA Armstrong, welcoming the newest test pilots, engineers, scientists, explorers, and dreamers. And they’re using the aircraft of today to break new barriers.

“I don’t think there is another place in the world with a more diverse fleet of aircraft. We have everything from a low-altitude powered glider to ER-2s, which are flying at high altitudes, and a multitude of aircraft in between,” Cole said.

From sourcing rare components to machining custom parts in-house, NASA Armstrong’s teams transform these aircraft into research workhorses. The center continues its crucial role in leading aeronautics testing, Earth science research, and supporting government and industry partners.

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