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On 2–3 Apr 2026 Google dumped its proprietary Gemma license and released the four-size Gemma 4 model family (2B, 4B, 26B-MoE, 31B-Dense) under Apache 2.0, letting developers run state-of-the-art multimodal LLMs entirely on devices ranging from smartphones to a single 80 GB H100 GPU.
For the first time since 2020, Apple pushed a same-day security backport—iOS 18.7.7 on 1 Apr 2026—to every device still on iOS 18, including the roughly 25 % of iPhones that could run iOS 26 but refused the upgrade, closing the DarkSword zero-click spyware hole without forcing the controversial “Liquid Glass” interface.
On 1 April 2026 at 6:35 p.m. EDT NASA’s Space Launch System successfully launched the Orion capsule with four astronauts for a 10-day free-return loop around the Moon, inaugurating humanity’s first crewed deep-space mission in 53 years.
At 7:49 p.m. EDT on 3 April 2026, Orion’s 5-minute-plus engine burn pushed four astronauts out of Earth orbit on a 10-day free-return loop around the Moon—the first human departure from Earth orbit since 1972.
After months of technical delays, NASA confirmed final ‘go’ status and a two-hour window on 1 Apr 2026 (6:24-8:24 p.m. EDT) to send four astronauts on a 10-day, 685,000-mile loop around the Moon—the first human venture beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.
On 2 Apr 2026 a 7.4–7.6 under-sea earthquake off Ternate sent ≤0.75 m waves to five Indonesian coasts, killed one person, and led authorities to issue but cancel regional tsunami warnings within two hours.
Beginning 1 April 2026, Google is rolling out a feature that lets U.S. Gmail users replace the username portion of their @gmail.com address without creating a new account or losing any data.
On 1 April 2026, a cluster of company disclosures—from Nexscient’s $6.2 m Flipside AI takeover to Schneider Electric’s 100-use-case rollout—showed large firms are no longer experimenting with AI but embedding it deep into operations, even as regulators scramble to delay high-risk rules.
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency declared the four-person Artemis II crew and 322-ft SLS rocket ‘go’ for a 6:24 p.m. EDT lift-off on 1 April 2026, the first human voyage beyond low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17.
On 31 Mar 2026, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner released the first post-ban compliance report, flagging Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for insufficient age-gating and launching investigations that could lead to court action and multimillion-dollar fines by mid-year.
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