'God of Chaos' asteroid Apophis will blaze across the sky on April 13, 2029 — here's why this once-in-a-lifetime event is worth traveling for

space.com Apr 14, 2026

‘God of Chaos’ asteroid Apophis will blaze across the sky on April 13, 2029 — here’s why this once-in-a-lifetime event is worth traveling for

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · Apr 14, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

The asteroid Apophis will pass closer than Earth's geosynchronous satellites on April 13, 2029, at a distance of approximately 20,000 miles. This rare event, occurring once every few thousand years, will be visible with the naked eye from dark locations in Europe, Africa, and western Asia. At its peak brightness, Apophis will have a magnitude of 3.1, making it a truly once-in-a-lifetime celestial encounter for observers in these regions.

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Satellite AI Inference Clears Orbit: Gemma 3 Ran Aboard YAM-9 in April

Loft Orbital's YAM-9 spacecraft successfully demonstrated the first publicly disclosed execution of a vision-language model in orbit. Aboard the spacecraft, Google DeepMind's Gemma 3 performed natural language queries, classified Earth imagery, and produced plain-English summaries without transmitting raw pixels to the ground. This achievement marks a significant shift in the value layer of Earth observation, moving from ground-based processing to onboard inference capabilities. The model, running on an Nvidia Jetson Orin AGX graphics processing unit, utilized a software harness developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to fit within the spacecraft's memory budget and processing constraints.

💡 This breakthrough enables Earth observation satellites to operate more autonomously, reducing reliance on ground-based processing and potentially leading to faster and more efficient analysis of satellite imagery.

space.com · Jun 17

‘Best. Mars. Mission. Ever.’ Scientists hail MAVEN’s legacy as NASA retires Red…

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spacenews.com · Jun 17

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💡 This investment will accelerate Dawn Aerospace's growth in emerging markets, including hypersonics testing and in-space mobility. By delivering reusable, responsive access across the air and space domain, Dawn can unlock the economic potential of space and solve critical national security challenges.

spacenews.com · Jun 17

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space.com · Jun 17

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