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

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

AJ Brown to Patriots Graph Trending Up at Kalshi  Sports Illustrated

1. iPhone 18 Pro dummy units reveal four color options [Gallery]  9to5Mac
2. Fresh iPhone 18 Pro Leaks Reveal Stunning 'Dark Cherry' And 'Sky Blue' Colours Before Launch  NDTV
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

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. Acer Expands Lineup of Aspire AI Copilot+ PCs With New Laptops and All-in-Ones  Yahoo Finance
5. Acer Launches New Swift Air 14 Powered by Latest Intel Core Series 3 Processors  TechPowerUp

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. These 5+ PS5, PS4 Games Will Be Delisted in June 2026  Push Square
4. Call of Duty Warzone is being delisted for last-gen consoles next week  KitGuru
5. PlayStation 4 Loses Its Biggest Multiplayer Game, Press F To Pay Respects  GAMINGbible

T-Mobile users will want to delete T-Life after this scary allegation  PhoneArena

1. Amazon Takes $199 Off Nearly Every M5 MacBook Air, Starting at $899.99  MacRumors
2. Our 5-star, fully loaded MacBook Air just got an incredible $500 discount  Macworld
3. Apple’s new MacBook Air M5 just dropped below Memorial Day pricing at $199 off  CNN
4. Best price ever alert: Save $200 on the 15-inch Apple M5 MacBook Air at Amazon  Mashable
5. Looking for a Laptop? Here’s How You Can Get $500 in Instant Savings on this MacBook Air  No Film School

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/

From May 5 to 7, the 2026–2030 Landsat Science Team met for their first in-person meeting at the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD. The three-day event, co-moderated by Landsat 8, 9, and 10 Project Scientist Chris Neigh, allowed leaders from USGS and NASA to begin work on a vision for the upcoming five-year period.

Attendees shared their current work and a vision for the future of the Landsat program. Participants received comprehensive status updates on the upcoming Landsat 10 project, the ongoing interagency and international collaboration on the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) data products, and detailed plans for Collection 3 (C3).

Throughout the event, team members representing funded, international, and federal programs showcased the far-reaching impact of Landsat data across various Earth science disciplines, spanning snow cover mapping, atmospheric correction, water quality monitoring, evapotranspiration, agricultural applications, volcanic monitoring, and more.

The meeting culminated in focused breakout sessions, where experts drafted vital recommendations across four key technical areas to guide future mission data processing:

Surface Reflectance

The surface reflectance working group identified several priorities, including topography and adjacency corrections, Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) correction, and enhanced cloud masking with consistent approaches for HLS data products. Key recommendations included incorporating CMIX2 cloud masking results into future collections and mapping out C3 toolkit dependencies for user-applied corrections.

Temperature and Emissivity

Discussions on land surface temperature and emissivity centered heavily on maintaining archive consistency. The team recommended either maintaining native resolution or standardizing to 60 meters, with additional testing specifically for volcano studies. They endorsed using ASTER GED/CAMEL emissivity datasets and preparing for Landsat 10’s five thermal bands through ECOSTRESS comparison. They also called for better quantification of how atmospheric inputs impact harmonization efforts through collaboration between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), RIT, and EROS.

Aquatic Reflectance 

Aquatic reflectance experts raised critical concerns regarding Landsat 10’s planned 18-day repeat cycle, noting that it severely limits the monitoring of highly dynamic processes such as harmful algal blooms. The group called for increased investment in validation infrastructure for inland waters coordinated with international CEOS efforts. They also strongly advised against pixelwise algorithm switching to prevent data discontinuities and emphasized the need for strict compliance with CEOS Aquatic Reflectance V2.0 standards.

Projections, Tiling, and the Pixel 

Finally, the group reviewing projection and tiling endorsed the USGS pixel grid nesting plan (which spans 10, 15, 20, 30, 60, and 120 meters). However, they recommended further trade analysis to optimize pixel replication errors, manage storage costs, and ensure proper coordination with Sentinel-2 Next Generation. The working group strongly recommended that if these complex grid issues remain unresolved, the program should maintain the Collection 2 approach (UTM and polar stereographic) while continuing to refine Analysis Ready Data (ARD) products for CONUS, Hawaii, and Alaska.

The recommendations generated during these breakout sessions created a roadmap for the new Landsat Science Team, ensuring that the global scientific community continues to receive high-quality, actionable Earth observation data through the end of the decade.

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