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Volunteers Discover Rare Space Weather Events Using Their Ears

Our planet rests inside a magnetic cocoon filled with plasma – but it’s not always peaceful and quiet. Activity from the Sun can send waves through this space, and some of those disturbances can even reach Earth, affecting our power grid.

Scientists are working to understand exactly how these waves behave, and the team behind NASA’s Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas (HARP) citizen science project approaches this in a unique way: they compare the Earth’s magnetic field to a giant harp in space. The HARP team translated magnetic field measurements into sound. This translation allowed HARP project volunteers to use their ears to study a particular type of plasma wave that plays a role in space weather. What they heard surprised everyone.

The science team expected lower pitches farther from Earth and higher pitches closer to it. But when they played back data from NASA’s THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) mission, volunteers noticed something unexpected. Some plasma waves revealed the opposite pattern – lower pitches close to Earth and higher pitches farther away. 

The HARP volunteers were thrilled to help discover this anomaly, which will help scientists better understand geomagnetic storms. One volunteer said of the HARP project, “I only signed up for this group because my friend was participating, but now I think I’m going to change my major to physics – this was just too cool.” These findings now appear in a new article in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. 

Thank you to all the HARP volunteers who helped develop the project’s audio analysis protocol, beta tested the graphical user interface, and identified and labeled the myriad plasma waves that the team will be studying for years to come.

The HARP project was sponsored by NASA and continues to be sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The project is no longer actively seeking volunteers.

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NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory Maps Interstellar Ice in Milky Way

An observation made by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent regions of star birth in our Milky Way galaxy. The image was released on April 15, 2026, along with a study detailing the observation.

One of SPHEREx’s main goals is to map the chemical signatures of various types of interstellar ice. This ice includes molecules like water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, which are vital to the chemistry that allows life to develop. Researchers believe these ice reservoirs, attached to the surfaces of tiny dust grains, are where most of the universe’s water is formed and stored. The water in Earth’s oceans — and the ices in comets and on other planets and moons in our galaxy — originates from these regions.

SPHEREx launched March 11, 2025, and has the unique ability to see the sky in 102 colors, each representing a different wavelength of infrared light that offers distinctive information about galaxies, stars, planet-forming regions, and other cosmic features.

Read more about what SPHEREx found.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.

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Monika Luabeya

Spring Rains Saturate Michigan

April 16, 2025

April 11, 2026

April 16, 2025April 11, 2026

April 16, 2025

April 11, 2026

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The Grand River in Michigan flooded after above-average rainfall in March and April 2026 (right). A false-color image from April 11, 2026 (right), is compared with a view of the same location on April 16, 2025 (left). The 2025 and 2026 images were acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 and Landsat 9, respectively.

The start of spring 2026 brought bouts of heavy rain to much of Michigan. Above-normal levels of precipitation in March and early April—exacerbated by snowmelt in the northern part of the state—saturated soils and caused damaging flooding along multiple rivers. A flood watch spanned the entirety of both the upper and lower peninsulas as rain continued to fall in mid-April.

Flooding along the Grand River—Michigan’s longest—near Grand Rapids is visible in the image above (right), acquired on April 11, 2026. For comparison, the left image shows the area the previous April. The images are false-color to better distinguish water from vegetation and other land cover.

At the time of the 2026 image, river gauge data showed the Grand River at Comstock Park was in minor flood stage. The river had crested on April 8 at about half a foot beneath the major flood level at this gauge, making it one of the harder-hit locations along the river. Water had already submerged roads and trails along its banks and encroached on homes, according to news reports, and more water was still to come. After another round of rain, the river was rising again as of April 16, with the potential to reach one of the highest levels on record in Grand Rapids.

The area has been beset by many weeks of soggy weather. Grand Rapids saw approximately double the normal March rainfall totals in 2026. In the first half of April, it received 5.79 inches (147 millimeters), exceeding the average for the entire month by nearly 2 inches.

The story is similar throughout the state. To the north, where an above-normal snowpack still covered the ground, abundant rainfall combined with melt to amplify flooding. Floodwaters in the northern Lower Peninsula washed out roads, including part of a scenic drive, and rendered airport runways unusable. The buildup of water has also stressed dams around the state. Officials have been monitoring several reservoirs that are close to overtopping and have advised some residents to prepare to evacuate.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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April 16, 2025

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April 11, 2026

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References & Resources

• Bridge Michigan (2026, April 16) Michigan flood watch: Newaygo urges evacuations; Cheboygan Dam waters rise. Accessed April 16, 2026.
• FOX 17 (2026, April 5) Grand River forecast to reach major flood stage near Comstock Park. Accessed April 16, 2026.
• MLive (2026, April 15) All of Michigan under Flood Watch as roads washed out, dams fail, people evacuated. Accessed April 16, 2026.
• The New York Times (2026, April 15) Dam Failure Could Imperil Thousands in Northern Michigan. Accessed April 16, 2026.
• NOAA (2026) National Water Prediction Service. Accessed April 16, 2026.
• WGRD (2026, April 15) How the Current Grand River Flood Ranks Historically. Accessed April 16, 2026.

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NASA Invites Media to Latvia Artemis Accords Signing Ceremony

The Republic of Latvia will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 9 a.m. EDT Monday, April 20, at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will host Dace Melbārde, Latvia’s minister for education and science; Jānis Beķeris, chargé d’affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia to the United States; and Jacob Helberg, under secretary of state for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

This event is in person only. Media interested in attending must RSVP no later than 3 p.m. on Friday, April 17, to: hq-media@mail.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.

The signing ceremony will take place in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in the Mary W. Jackson building, 300 E Street SW.

In 2020, during the first Trump Administration, the United States, led by NASA and the State Department, joined with seven other founding nations to establish the Artemis Accords, responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies.

The accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Latvia will be the 62nd country to sign the Artemis Accords.

Learn more about the Artemis Accords at:

https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords

-end-

Camille Gallo / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
camille.m.gallo@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov

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Elizabeth Shaw