TV News LIES

It has only been a couple days since NASA successfully launched astronauts to the moon for the first time in over half a century. But the Artemis II mission's four-person crew has already delivered striking postcards from their journey: behind-the-scenes photos of what they've been up to in the cabin, and jaw-dropping visuals of the planet we call home.

Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman snapped a photo of the Earth nearly eclipsing the Sun, and what's known as zodiacal light nearby — which, during an eclipse, takes a triangular shape when sunlight bounces off of dust particles. In the same image, Earth is flanked by the northern and southern auroras at its top right and bottom left.

Another photo, also by Wiseman, shows Earth's terminator line, which separates day from night.

The crew is working with NASA's science team to determine what other photos may be of interest once they start to orbit the moon, said Lakiesha Hawkins, the acting deputy associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.

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Snow surveys taking place across the American west this week are offering a grim prognosis, after a historically warm winter and searing March temperatures left the critical snowpack at record-low levels across the region.

Experts warned that even as the heat begins to subside, the stunning pace of melt-off over the past month has left key basins in uncharted territory for the dry seasons ahead. Though there’s still potential for more snow in the forecast, experts said it will probably be too little too late.

“This year is on a whole other level,” said Dr Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist, speaking about the intense heat that began rapidly melting the already sparse snowpack in March. “Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning.”

Acting as a water savings account of sorts, snowpacks are essential to water supply. Measurements taken across the west during the week of 1 April are viewed as important indicators of the peak amounts of water that might melt into reservoirs, rivers and streams and across thirsty landscapes through the summer.

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We have liftoff!

NASA's long-awaited return trip to the moon's orbit launched on Wednesday, April 1 as crowds of people watched in awe to see the Artemis II mission take off in Florida.

The Orion capsule lifted off at about 6:35 p.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The four astronauts on board are now in orbit around the Earth on their historic mission to orbit the moon, though not land on this trip.

“We are going for all humanity,” astronaut Jeremy Hansen said seconds before lifting off.

NASA Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson responded to Hansen and the other three astronauts that they're taking with them "the heart of this Artemis team, the daring spirit of the American people and our partners across the globe, and the hopes and dreams of a new generation.”

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There’s a comet blazing through our solar system this month.

Starting around April 5, Comet C/2026 A1 MAPS will be roughly 89 million miles from Earth, making its closest approach to the sun. That’s close enough that the comet could be visible to the naked eye in New York City.

This month's astronomical agenda also includes the first manned moon launch in 50 years, weather permitting. April will be capped with the Lyrids meteor shower.

“April is a busy month for the night sky,” said Bart Fried, member of the American Astronomical Society. “”You got a lot of cool stuff happening this month.”

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A meteor over Ohio caused a large boom that jolted people as far away as Pennsylvania on Tuesday morning, Nasa has confirmed.

The meteor entered the atmosphere at about 9am local time on Tuesday, producing a sonic boom felt across a wide swath of northern Ohio and beyond. Reports poured in from Cleveland and other sectors as far east as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and into New York state.

Bill Cook, a Nasa spokesperson, confirmed the meteor was spotted near Medina to News5 Cleveland. “I woke up this morning, and the sky fell, so I feel like Chicken Little right now,” Cooke said.

Cooke said the meteor was moving at 45,000mph, “which is fast for a human but slow for a meteor”.

Nasa’s meteoroid environment office said the asteroid was 2m in diameter and weighed about 6 tons. Despite the weight, Nasa noted it is still considered a small asteroid.

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In the middle of the 7th century, a plague swept through the walled city of Jerash, in what is now modern-day Jordan.

Ceramicists abandoned their workshops under the Hippodrome, leaving unfired pottery in their haste. Young and old alike succumbed to a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis, the same microbe responsible for the Black Death seven centuries later.

The city, unable to manage the dead and dying, converted those workshops into a mass grave.

"It was filled within days — hundreds of bodies," says Rays Jiang, a University of South Florida geneticist and lead author of a new study in the Journal of Archeological Science, highlighting the plague victims of Jerash. "There's no ceremony, there's no grave goods. It's a bare minimum to get the bodies disposed of and away from the city."

To understand the lives of the people who died at Jerash, Jiang gathered a team of eight experts from various specialties: archeology, molecular genetics, anthropology and chemistry. Their work helps illustrate the devastation of what is believed to be the first historically recorded pandemic, which began with the Plague of Justinian and killed tens of millions of people across the Mediterranean Basin, West Asia and Northern Europe from roughly 541 to 750.

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