[April 21] A Penumbra of Human Mind

[April 21] Artemis II Returns Crew to Earth, Demonstrates New Recovery Operations for Lunar Missions

[April 21] Booth-Kresa Gift Endows Caltech Aerospace Department, Signals New Era of Expansion

[April 21] Caltech Wildlife: Butterflies

[April 21] CASE Workshop 2026: Beckman Political Award — The Little Italian Girl Heads to Washington, D.C.

[April 21] Our Trip to D.C. — The Life Cycle of the Scientific Idea

[April 21] Student Life and Experience: Caltech Hosts 2026 SLEC Conference

View full PDF

That soothing strip / Of human mind. / That whisper of echoes / Of from beyond. / That rose that rotates / Of red petals. / That emergence / Of light from dark. / That asymptote / Of familiar tones. / That lovely boundary / Ushering forth. / That special you / In your gaze and hues. / Fathomed to / Through and true. / Under the sun, the moon, / The spring and its dews.

NASA’s Artemis II mission concluded April 10 with a Pacific Ocean splashdown, returning four astronauts from humanity’s first crewed journey to the Moon in more than 50 years and marking a critical step toward future lunar landings.

Caltech formally dedicated the Lynn Booth and Kent Kresa Department of Aerospace on April 8, marking the culmination of a $50 million endowment from Trustee Lynn Booth and Life Member Kent Kresa that permanently names and supports one of the Institute’s flagship programs.

It’s springtime, with blooms everywhere, and who wouldn’t appreciate a pair of colorful wings dancing in front of their eyes? In this issue, your avian specialist takes a small detour and presents some butterfly species on campus. While I haven’t surveyed the area thoroughly, there is a surprisingly rich collection of butterflies here, thanks to the variety of exotic flowers and plants.

When I think back on my time in Washington, D.C., for the 2026 CASE Workshop, what returns to me first is not a talking point, or a statistic, or even a room. It is motion. It is the feeling of walking being surrounded by students from across the country who had come for the same reason: to understand how science survives in public life.

Right now, most of us are tunnel-visioned on solving a frontier scientific problem. However, the moment you glance up from your microscope, algorithm, or chalkboard, you realize that this myopic luxury is sustained by a delicate flow of federal funding, agency agendas, and perpetual grant writing. We call this hidden backbone of modern science “the lifecycle of a scientific idea.”

On Friday, April 17, Caltech held the Student Life and Experience Conference (SLEC) in the Hameetman Multipurpose Room, bringing together students, staff, and faculty to discuss undergraduate life. Several committees presented findings and recommendations based on responses from the SLEC survey sent out in January.

Hello Tech readers! Time for the third round of reviews where I explore the San Gabriel Valley food scene with the 2025 MySGV Food Passport. This passport is valid from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, so I have been trying to explore as many restaurants as I can in 2026! For this issue, I grabbed dinner with my Caltech bestie, Kayane, and then we went for ice cream.

Just days after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT on April 1, Artemis II has reestablished a capability absent since Apollo 17: human transit beyond Earth orbit. The mission represents the first crewed validation of a modern deep-space system and marks a transition from experimental demonstration to operational architecture for lunar exploration.