The astronauts from the Artemis II mission are returning to normal life on Earth, and excitement continues to surround their remarkable journey. A new PBS documentary is now available for streaming on YouTube, focusing on the Artemis program and the ongoing efforts to return humans to the moon. This week, NASA unveiled breathtaking images of a comet that met its demise as it approached the sun, while the nonprofit American Rivers published its annual report on the most endangered rivers in the United States. Additionally, the European Space Agency (ESA) shared a historical image of Mars to showcase notable changes on the planet's surface. Here’s a look at the science stories that have caught our interest this week.
A Comet Grazes Too Close to the Sun
Earlier this month, a newly discovered comet made a perilously close approach to the sun, but it was unable to withstand the extreme heat. NASA has released remarkable images capturing the event that occurred on April 4, depicting the comet disintegrating into dust as it passed by our star. According to NASA's social media update, this was the comet's "first and last observed flyby of the Sun."
The comet, designated C/2026 A1 (also referred to as MAPS), was first identified on January 13 of this year. As it approached the sun, it was monitored by several instruments, including NASA and ESA's SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft, NASA's STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory), and NASA's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere). This multi-angle observation provided a comprehensive view of the comet's passage. A narrow-field coronagraph view from SOHO shows the comet seemingly plunging into the sun, while a wide view from NASA's STEREO illustrates its close swing around the sun before it broke apart.
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This close-up coronagraph view from NASA/ESA’s SOHO spacecraft shows comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) approaching the Sun on April 4.
After the comet passes behind the disk, only a cloud of dust emerges. pic.twitter.com/PbkzqPnZ5F— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) April 16, 2026
MAPS belonged to a group of comets known as Kreutz sungrazing comets. Karl Battams, the principal investigator for SOHO’s coronagraph, indicated that the comet's destruction likely occurred several hours prior to its closest approach.
Potomac Named Most Endangered River in the US
The nonprofit organization American Rivers has unveiled its 2026 report highlighting the most endangered rivers in the United States, with the Potomac River taking the top spot. The report attributes this designation to the threat posed by sewage pollution from outdated pipe systems and the "unprecedented surge in data center development" in the area.
The Potomac River basin encompasses regions of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, DC. In January, a catastrophic failure of the Potomac Interceptor wastewater pipe in Montgomery County, Maryland, resulted in the release of hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Potomac River and the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal. This incident caused bacteria levels to exceed safe recreational limits by over 4,000 times at the nearest locations, according to the report. The Potomac Interceptor is over 60 years old and is just one of many aging systems in the region noted by American Rivers.
Furthermore, the development of data centers in areas such as Virginia and Maryland has surged, raising concerns about the strain on local water and energy resources. These data centers also have the potential to contribute to further pollution of the river.
The report states, "The region currently has over 300 data centers and is on track to have a total of about 1,000 centers occupying roughly 200 million square feet of buildings — enough to cover 3,472 football fields — on an estimated 20,000 acres of land." The report warns that these facilities pose a significant and growing threat to both water quality and quantity, yet they are being approved without adequate transparency, regulatory review, and assessment of cumulative impacts.
American Rivers is urging Congress to reauthorize infrastructure funding bills to facilitate upgrades of aging systems and is calling on regulators in these states to ensure transparency regarding data centers' resource usage, along with comprehensive environmental assessments prior to approving development plans.
Mars Ash: Then vs Now
The European Space Agency recently shared a comparison of how a specific region on Mars has evolved since it was first observed by NASA’s Viking orbiters in 1976. New images from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft reveal how dark volcanic ash has spread across a section of land in the Utopia Planitia basin. A blog post accompanying the images features a side-by-side comparison from both time periods.
This observation represents a rare instance of notable surface change on Mars occurring over a relatively short timeframe, as noted by ESA. The agency suggests that the ash's spread over the past 50 years could be attributed to either movement by Martian winds or the erosion of ochre dust that previously covered the dark ash.
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