April 27, 2025 – NeRDs Moonbase

Trump administration cancels lease for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies lab in New York City

April 27, 2025 NeRD

It would appear that the latest wave of U.S. federal program cuts fueled by the Trump administration has affected NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) lab in New York City, a branch of the agency dedicated to studying climate change and other Earth sciences. On Friday (April 25), news outlets such as CNN and SpaceNews reported that GISS’s lease on office space in a Columbia University building in Manhattan’s Upper West Side is set to be canceled. According to SpaceNews, an April 24 email sent to Goddard employees and…

Faint Neptune joins Venus and Saturn to form a planetary triangle in the pre-dawn sky on April 28

April 27, 2025 NeRD

The predawn hours of April 28 will see a planetary triangle form in the night sky, as Venus makes a close approach to Saturn following a conjunction, while Neptune, invisible to the naked eye, will sit just a few degrees away towards the horizon. Saturn and Venus will be below the horizon for viewers in the U.S. when they reach the point of conjunction in the hours before their appearance on the morning of the 28th. A planetary conjunction occurs when two worlds share the same right ascension — a…