Thursday, May 21, 2026

Colossal Biosciences announced it has hatched 26 live chicks from fully artificial eggs, a 3D-printed incubation system with a bioengineered silicone membrane that could enable the resurrection of extinct birds like the giant moa and the dodo.^[1]

NASA is now targeting early September 2026 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, eight months ahead of schedule, with the observatory expected to survey billions of galaxies and discover tens of thousands of exoplanets during its mission.^[2]

Scientists have documented two humpback whales that made record-breaking crossings between Australia and Brazil, covering more than 14,500 kilometers across open ocean — the greatest confirmed distance ever recorded between sightings of individual humpback whales.^[3]

New high-precision calculations using supercomputers have resolved the long-standing muon anomaly puzzle, finding that the apparent discrepancy between theory and experiment was likely a calculation error rather than evidence of new physics beyond the Standard Model.^[4]

New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson received an Honorary Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival opening ceremony, with Elijah Wood presenting the award to the Lord of the Rings director in recognition of his contributions to cinema.^[5]

Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Vienna, with singer Dara's high-energy anthem "Bangaranga" achieving a record-breaking 173-point margin of victory — the country's first Eurovision win in the 70-year history of the competition.^[6]

NASA's Psyche spacecraft performed a successful gravity assist flyby of Mars on May 15, passing just 2,800 miles from the planet's surface and capturing detailed images while gaining speed for its journey to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche.^[7]

NASA announced it will host a news conference on May 26 to share Moon Base plans and highlight progress toward establishing a sustained human presence at the lunar South Pole as part of the Artemis program.^[8]

SpaceX stacked its first Starship V3 megarocket and completed a full wet dress rehearsal at its Starbase facility in Texas, with the debut launch of the upgraded rocket design now scheduled for Thursday, May 21.^[9]

Researchers have discovered that ancient humans 150,000 years ago successfully lived in dense West African rainforests, overturning the long-held belief that early humans avoided these environments due to the extreme challenges they posed for survival.^[10]