In less than six months, NASA is set to launch Europa Clipper on a 1.6-billion-mile (2.6-billion-kilometer) voyage to Jupiter's ocean moon Europa. From the wild vibrations of the rocket ride to the intense heat and cold of space to the punishing radiation of Jupiter, it will be a journey of extremes. The spacecraft was recently put through a series of hard-core tests at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to ensure it's up to the challenge.

NASA has chosen the first science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the moon during Artemis III. Once installed near the lunar South Pole, the three instruments will collect valuable scientific data about the lunar environment, the lunar interior, and how to sustain a long-duration human presence on the moon, which will help prepare NASA to send astronauts to Mars.

"Artemis marks a bold new era of exploration, where human presence amplifies scientific discovery. With these innovative instruments stationed on the moon's surface, we're embarking on a transformative journey that will kick-start the ability to conduct human-machine teaming—an entirely new way of doing science," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.

"These three deployed instruments were chosen to begin scientific investigations that will address key moon to Mars science objectives."

The instruments will address three Artemis science objectives: understanding planetary processes, understanding the character and origin of lunar polar volatiles, and investigating and mitigating exploration risks.

In an effort to enhance the educational outreach of their Starlink constellation, SpaceX has an interactive global map of their Starlink internet satellites, which provides live coverage of every satellite in orbit around the Earth.

This interactive map comes as SpaceX continues to launch Starlink satellites into orbit on a near-weekly basis with the goal of providing customers around the world with high-speed internet while specifically targeting rural regions of the globe. In 2022, Starlink officially reached all seven continents after Starlink service became available in Antarctica. Additionally, SpaceX announced in 2023 a partnership with T-Mobiel for Starlink to provide mobile coverage, as well.

Within this interactive map, users can opt to see live satellite coverage or rewind and fast-forward their respective orbital speeds. Scrolling your mouse will highlight each satellite, and clicking on them will produce their individual satellite information and orbital trajectory, enabling the user to see if a particular satellite will pass over their location.

NASA will launch three sounding rockets during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, to study how Earth's upper atmosphere is affected when sunlight momentarily dims over a portion of the planet.

The Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) sounding rockets will launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to study the disturbances in the ionosphere created when the moon eclipses the sun. The sounding rockets had been previously launched and successfully recovered from White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, during the October 2023 annular solar eclipse.

The worm moon has risen. The final full moon of winter in the northern hemisphere appeared on March 25 and owes its name to Native Americans who noted winter's end by the trails of earthworms it illuminated on the newly thawed soil.

Common names of full moons generally come from seasonal animals, colors or crops: wolf moon, pink moon, harvest moon. But the worm moon may be losing its significance, as climate change leads to wetter summers and milder winters in much of the world. I've been an earthworm scientist for more than three decades, and, of late, I'm seeing signs of worms at the surface in months when they used to be inactive.

To track how the worm moon might be changing we can look at a particular earthworm species (Lumbricus terrestris, aka the dew worm, nightcrawler or lob worm) which is unusually easy to track. Also sometimes called the common earthworm, if you see a big worm in the garden, it's likely to be this species.

Most worms spend most of their lives underground, but the dew worm almost completely leaves its deep burrow, with tail tip left in, as it ventures on to the soil surface every night to feed on dead leaves.