“Sentinel-6B will ensure that we continue to collect the high-precision data needed to understand our changing climate,” ESA’s director of earth observation programmes, Simonetta Cheli said in a press release.
The partnership managed to survive the Trump administration’s attempts to stop collecting other environmental data and stymie reports on climate change.
Former Real World cast member and current Transportation Secretary / acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy recently said SpaceX was “behind” on its contract for Artemis III and proposed reopening it. (Elon Musk responded with a predictable slew of insults.)
Now SpaceX has a response, but its blog post is missing one thing: the details of this “simplified” approach.
In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.
November 2nd will mark 25 years of continuous human occupation aboard the International Space Station, and Ars Technica points out this new ISS in Real Time website lets you revisit each and every day.
You can see crew rosters, camera footage, the astronauts’ schedule, and even listen to recorded announcements.
[ISS in Real Time]
The reduction — in the works before the government shutdown — comes from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Reuters reports is “NASA’s only federally funded research and development center.” The layoffs affect roughly a tenth of the JPL’s workforce, who will find out if they’re affected or not today.
[NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)]
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) hasn’t given it a name yet, but NASA has announced that astronomers discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus using images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera last February.
Currently designated S/2025 U1, the tiny moon’s estimated to be around six miles in diameter which is potentially why it wasn’t previously spotted by Voyager 2 or other telescopes. It’s located about 35,000 miles from the center of Uranus in an orbit between Ophelia and Bianca.
The agency was already working on designing a reactor that might one day provide people with electricity on the moon. The Trump administration wants to try to speed things up and build a bigger reactor, Politico reports.
[politico.com]
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.
[science.nasa.gov]
It’s bleeding senior-level talent with at least 2,145 employees taking buyouts, deferred resignations, and early retirement offers, Politico reports.
The Trump administration wants to cut thousands more jobs at NASA as part of its efforts to decimate the federal workforce. The Supreme Court just issued a decision yesterday that allows Trump to move forward with mass layoffs while a lawsuit challenging that plan plays out in lower courts.
The H.R.1 spending bill Trump signed Friday that expands mass deportations, cuts social services, and stalls clean energy projects also includes a requirement for a “Space Vehicle Transfer.”
The target is Space Shuttle Discovery, which Texas senators are attempting to snatch from the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian estimates moving it could cost more than $300 million, and there’s the small detail that the modified Boeing 747 used to transport the shuttles is no longer available.
An update on how the extremely public political breakup is going today, as protestors face off with federal immigration agents in Los Angeles.
Can a move-fast-and-break-things approach create the next-gen rocket?
No, not those sorts of drugs, the kinds that could save your life.
It’s slightly smaller than the 2,354-piece Discovery set that debuted in 2021, but Lego’s new Space Shuttle Enterprise is part of a larger 2,417-piece set that includes a buildable replica of the Boeing 747 that NASA used for testing and moving its shuttles around the country.
The $229.99 Lego Icons Shuttle Carrier Aircraft will be available for purchase starting on May 15th for Lego Insiders, and May 18th for everyone else.
It’s gathering “extremely precise” wind measurements using an instrument that sends out 200 laser pulses per second from an aircraft. By documenting how those pulses bounce off aerosol particles, NASA’s able to create 3D profiles showing wind speed and direction.
The hope is that this can make up for a dearth in data on winds above the surface of the Earth, which could lead to more accurate storm forecasts.
Trump’s pick to lead NASA, Jared Isaacman, found it strangely difficult to tell his Senate confirmation hearing whether Elon Musk was part of his job interview or not. That’s odd, because he must have met Musk — Isaacman funded, and flew on, two private spaceflights using Musk’s SpaceX craft.
Isaacman says Mars will be NASA’s new priority if he’s in charge. Strangely enough, that’s where SpaceX is putting its money too.
The Trump administration’s attacks on diversity could lead to more accidents in space missions, experts say.
Right on schedule, the Dragon capsule deployed its parachutes and landed off the coast of Florida as recovery crews began the process of bringing the capsule onboard a recovery ship and extracting its crew.
The Dragon spacecraft is fewer than 20 minutes out from splashdown in Florida. As noted on NASA’s livestream, it has completed the deorbit burn that lasted about seven and a half minutes at 5:18PM ET, and is entering a period of communications blackout as they reenter Earth’s atmosphere.
Its drogue parachutes will deploy four minutes before splashdown, beginning the process of slowing it down from 350 miles per hour before its targeted landing at about 5:57PM ET.
Last night, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, along with Crew-9 members Aleksandr Gorbunov and Nick Hague, left the ISS in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft now that the Crew-10 mission has arrived to relieve them. NASA will resume coverage of their return mission this afternoon, as they are expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57PM ET, ending a voyage that started last June.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will soon return to Earth — following an unexpectedly long stay in space due to issues with Boeing’s Starliner craft — after the Crew-10 mission’s SpaceX Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station early this morning.
Here, in a video shared by NASA, the newcomers are greeted by the ISS crew. NASA said Friday that Wilmore, Williams, and two others “will return to Earth no earlier than Wednesday, March 19.”
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on schedule in its second attempt Friday night, sending the Crew-10 mission on its way to the International Space Station.
The agency is axing the Office of the Chief Scientist and the the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy.
NASA contributes significantly to research on climate, weather, air quality, and the environment. Joe Biden appointed chief scientist Katherine Calvin, who was recently stopped from joining a meeting of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Science reports.
The footage is so crisp that it almost looks like CGI. Check out the incredible shot of the Firefly Aerospace lander’s shadow coming back into focus after the Moon dust settles.
Elon Musk, the US’s would-be dictator, isn’t content with lying about the Boeing Starliner astronauts, who unexpectedly spent much longer in space than they planned after the Boeing craft had thruster failures. When Andreas Morgensen, a Danish astronaut, called the lies what they were, Musk replied with offensive name-calling.
It’s “going to look a little different” as it migrates to a more general science site, according to NASA. President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and researchers have been archiving environmental data in case it starts to disappear from federal websites.
The Biden administration’s climate and economic justice screening tool, a federal website on reproductive rights, and NASA’s diversity and inclusion pages appear to be down.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who has taken some of the best photos of the stars and Earth ever captured aboard the International Space Station, recently shared a video on X highlighting how easy it is to juggle and swap big camera lenses in zero gravity. Keeping dust out of lenses is still an issue, but accidentally dropping one is not.
