# Comet MAPS Is Gone — What Killed It & What Comes Next + Planet Parade Tonight

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/comet-maps-is-gone-what-killed-it-what-comes-next-planet-parade-tonight.md
Podcast: [Astronomy Daily: Space News Updates](https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676)
Published: 2026-04-18T11:10:48+00:00
Episode link: https://spacenutspodcast.com
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/track/op3.dev/e/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71436840/comet_maps_is_gone_what_killed_it_what_comes_next_planet_parade_tonight.mp3
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Duration seconds: 968

## Resource

In this episode of Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery cover six space and astronomy stories for Saturday, April 18, 2026. Comet MAPS has met its end at the Sun — the pair reflect on what happened and what comes next. Artemis III's SLS rocket stage rolls out of New Orleans on Monday. JWST and ALMA have revealed a stunning monster spiral galaxy hiding behind cosmic dust 11.5 billion years ago. An exoplanet system is changing its orbital architecture in real time. Four planets are gathering in a pre-dawn planet parade visible tonight. And 33,000 hydrogen halos have been found that solve a decades-old mystery about the early universe's fuel supply. Story 1: Comet MAPS — Death of a Sungrazer Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS), a Kreutz sungrazer discovered on January 13, 2026 by French amateur astronomers at the AMACS1 Observatory in Chile, disintegrated during its close solar approach on April 4. The nucleus — estimated at approximately 400 metres in diameter based on JWST observations — could not survive passage just 160,000 km above the solar surface. A brief dust tail was visible in coronagraph images from SOHO and GOES-19, but the debris cloud has since dispersed. Attention now shifts to Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) as the next comet of interest. MAPS was the furthest-discovered Kreutz sungrazer in history, spotted 81 days before perihelion. Sources: EarthSky | StarWalk Space News | Sky & Telescope Story 2: Artemis III SLS Core Stage Rollout On Monday, April 20, NASA will roll the top four-fifths of the Artemis III Space Launch System core stage — containing the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank, and forward skirt — out of the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and load it onto the Pegasus barge for delivery to Kennedy Space Center. The engine section is al…

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