It was the first allegation of a crime committed in space — back in 2019. But by 2020 it had led to charges of lying to federal authorities. And now a former Air Force intelligence officer "has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent," reports CNBC, "by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday." The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce. The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden's then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilizationand carried by a surrogate...

McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019. She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August.

Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 12. She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has landed the booster of its New Glenn mega-rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean on just its second attempt -- making it the second company to perform such a feat, following Elon Musk's SpaceX. It's an accomplishment that will help the new rocket system become an option to send larger payloads to space, the Moon, and beyond. Thursday's launch wasn't just about the landing attempt, though. Roughly 34 minutes after takeoff, the upper stage of New Glenn successfully deployed the rocket's first commercial payload: twin spacecraft for NASA that will travel to Mars to study the red planet's atmosphere. The pair of achievements are remarkable for the second-ever launch of such a massive rocket system. And it could put Blue Origin in position to compete with SpaceX, which dominates the world's launch market with its Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship rockets. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

UPDATE (1:16 PST) Today's launch has been scrubbed due to weather, and Blue Origin is now reviewing opportunities for new launch windows.

Sunday Morning Blue Origin livestreamed the planned launch of its New Glenn rocket, which will carry a very unique mission for NASA. "Twin spacecraft are set to take off on an unprecedented, winding journey to Mars," reports CNN, "where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago." By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Martian magnetosphere changes... Called EscaPADE, the mission will aim for an orbital trajectory that has never been attempted before, according to aerospace company Advanced Space, which is supporting the project. If successful, it could be a crucial case study that can allow extraordinary flexibility for planetary science missions down the road. The robotic mission plans to spend a year idling in an orbital backroad before heading to its target destination... [R]ather than turning toward Mars, the two orbiters will instead aim for Lagrange Point 2, or L2 — a cosmic balance point about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. Lagrange points are special because they act as gravitational wells in which the pull of the sun and Earth are in perfect balance. The conditions can allow spacecraft to linger without being dragged away... The spacecraft will then loop endlessly in a kidney bean-shaped orbit around L2 until next year's Mars transfer window opens.
This "launch and loiter" project is part of NASA's SIMPLEx [Small, Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration] program, which seeks high-value missions for less money, notes CNN. "EscaPADE's cost was less than $100 million, compared with the roughly $300 million to $600 million price tags of other NASA satellites orbiting Mars."

"Blue Origin is also attempting to land and recover New Glenn's first-stage booster," notes another CNN article.

President Trump has re-nominated tech billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, reversing his earlier withdrawal over concerns about Isaacman's political affiliations. CBS News reports: Mr. Trump nominated Isaacman to the Senate-confirmed post last year, but announced in late May he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a "thorough review" of his "prior associations." Weeks after the withdrawal, the president went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman's credentials. At the time, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman "was very good," but had been "surprised to learn" that Isaacman was a "blue-blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before." [...]

Mr. Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. "This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA," Trump posted. "Jared's passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era."

"People are creating 'dumb homes,'" the VP of research at the Global Wellness Institute, tells the web site Axios.

Some are swapping NASA-style setups for old-fashioned buttons, switches and knobs. Others are designing digital detox corners — all part of a bigger "analog wellness" movement...

The return to analog hobbies and spacesis about more than nostalgia for pre-internet times, researchers say. A home where "technology is always in the background, working and listening, feels anxiety-producing" instead of restorative, architect Yan M. Wang tells Axios... Design media brand Dwell named the decline of smart homes a top trend for 2025 and beyond.

Wealthy Los Angeles house hunters have started shunning WiFi-enabled, voice-activated appliances "to escape the $100 billion home-automation industry," according to the Hollywood Reporter. Meanwhile, landlines have found new fans — many of them parents who want to keep their kids off screens, the Washington Post reports.

"A nearby galaxy once thought to be dominated by dark matter seems to have a surprise supermassive black hole at its centre," reports New Scientist.

Yet scientists "are convinced dark matter is out there," writes Space.com. "The quest to detect it arguably remains both one of the most frustrating and most exhilarating challenges in modern physics."

And now they report that the century-old mystery of dark matter — the invisible glue thought to hold galaxies together — "just got a modern clue." Scientists say they may be one step closer to confirming the existence of this elusive material, thanks to new simulations suggesting that a faint glow at the center of the Milky Way could be dark matter's long-sought signature. "It's very hard to actually prove, but it does seem likely," Moorits Muru of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany, who led the new study, told Space.com...

The findings, show that dark matter near the Milky Way's center might not form a perfect sphere as scientists long thought. Instead, it appears flattened, almost egg-shaped, and that shape closely mirrors the pattern of mysterious gamma rays observed by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope... Using powerful supercomputers, [the researchers] recreated how the Milky Way formed, including billions of years of violent collisions and mergers with smaller galaxies. Those violent events, the researchers found, left deep "fingerprints" on the way dark matter is distributed in the galactic core.... matching the pattern of gamma-ray emission Fermi has observed, the new study reports...

If the excess truly arises from dark matter collisions, it would mark the first indirect evidence that weakly interacting massive particles [WIMPs], a leading dark matter candidate, really exist...
"We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS," notes Phys.org, in an article titled "The Empty Search for Dark Matter." We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS — dark matter particles in this particular mass range. And they're not all the same kind of experiments. There are also the scintillators, which use a giant vat of liquefied noble gas, like several tons of xenon. They wait for a dark matter particle to strike the xenon and cause it to scintillate, which is a fancy science word for "sparkle." We see the sparkle; we detect dark matter...

They're just one example of a broader class of dark matter candidates, with delightful names like Q-balls, WIMPzillas, and sterile neutrinos. We've tuned our different experiments to capture different mass ranges or interaction strengths to cover as much of that wide dark matter spectrum as possible. We've even tried to manufacture various kinds of dark matter in our particle collider experiments.

And we've found nothing.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: [C]iting delays in Starship's development and competitive pressure from China, NASA asked SpaceX and Blue Origin — which holds a separate lunar lander contract with the space agency — to submit plans to expedite development of their respective spacecraft by October 29. Both companies have responded. But the space agency is also asking the broader commercial space industry to detail how they might get the job done more quickly, hinting that NASA leadership is prepared to sideline its current partners. CNN spoke with half a dozen companies about how they plan to respond to NASA's call to action, which the agency will formally issue once the government shutdown ends, according to a source familiar with the matter.
One possibility is Lockheed Martin... Notably, as a legacy NASA contractor, the company built the $20.4 billion Orion spacecraft that astronauts will ride when they take off from Earth... Now, Lockheed says it can piece together a two-stage lunar lander that uses spare parts harvested from Orion. The company would make use of Space Shuttle-era OMS-E engines — which are also used on Orion — to serve as the propulsion for an "ascent stage" of the lunar lander, providing the thrust for the vehicle to lift off the moon after a mission is completed. But the vehicle also needs a descent stage to get down to the lunar surface in the first place...

Other commercial space companies contacted by CNN — including Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman — said simply that they were "ready to support" NASA in its endeavor to find a faster way to complete the Artemis III mission. They did not confirm whether they would formally respond to the space agency's anticipated request for companies to submit proposals.
The more important goal, argue some experts, is to pave the way for a permanent lunar base where astronauts can live and work... [P]erhaps the true winner will be the country that is able to build lasting infrastructure, experts say. "It makes great press fodder to frame this as competition," said one space policy source, who was among several that spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity to discuss controversial issues. "But this is about the long game and the sustainability."

schwit1 shares a report from Behind the Black: SpaceX is going to land this spaceship manned on the Moon, whether or not NASA's SLS and Orion are ready. And even if those expensive, cumbersome, and poorly designed boondoggles are ready for those first two Artemis landings, SpaceX is likely to quickly outmatch them with numerous other private missions to the Moon, outside of NASA. It has the funds to do it, and it knows it has the customers willing to buy the flights. The news comes from a detailed update SpaceX released today on the Starship lunar lander. Here's the section where SpaceX "made it clear that it sees Starship and Superheavy as its own space effort, irrelevant of NASA": "To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure, including production facilities, test facilities, and launch sites -- which SpaceX is self-funding representing over 90% of system costs -- and development of the HLS-specific Starship configuration, which leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability to support NASA's requirements for landing crew on and returning them from the Moon. SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs. SpaceX provides significant insight to NASA at every stage of the development process along both paths, including access to flight data from missions not funded under the HLS contract.

Both pathways are necessary and made possible by SpaceX's substantial self-investments to enable the high-rate production, launch, and test of Starship for missions to the Moon and other purposes. Starship will bring the United States back to the Moon before any other nation and it will enable sustainable lunar operations by being fully and rapidly reusable, cost-effective, and capable of high frequency lunar missions with more than 100 tons of cargo capacity."

"Japan's new HTV-X cargo spacecraft launched on its first-ever mission to the International Space Station on Saturday," reports Space.com: The robotic HTV-X lifted off atop an H3 rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT and 9 a.m local Japan time on October 26). It is expected to arrive at the station for its capture and berthing on Wednesday (Oct. 29) at about 11:50 a.m. EDT (1550 GMT)...

The HTV-X's potential uses also extend beyond the ISS, according to JAXA. The agency envisions it aiding "post-ISS human space activities in low Earth orbit" as well as possibly flying cargo to Gateway, the space station NASA may build in lunar orbit as part of its Artemis program.

HTV-X's debut increases the stable of ISS cargo craft by one-third. The currently operational freighters are Russia's Progress vehicle and Cygnus and Dragon, spacecraft built by the American companies Northrop Grumman and SpaceX, respectively. Only Dragon is reusable; the others (including HTV-X) are designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere when their missions are over.

China's private space company LandSpace has completed a key static fire test of its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket -- a stainless-steel, methane-fueled launcher modeled after SpaceX's Starship. Universe Today reports: The latest milestone took place on Monday, Oct. 22nd at the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone (where the JSLC is located). It involved another static fire test, where the rocket was fully-fueled but remained fixed to the launch pad while the engines were fired. This kind of testing is a crucial prelaunch trial (what NASA refers to as a "wet dress rehearsal"), and places the company and China another step closer to making an inaugural flight test, which is expected to happen by the fourth quarter of 2025.

In traditional Chinese, Zhuque is the name of the Vermillion Bird that represents fire, the south, and summer, and is one of the four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. Like the Starship, the Zhuque-3 is composed of stainless steel and relies on a combination of liquid methane (LCH4) and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellant. The rocket will be powered by nine Tianque-12A (TQ-12A) engines and will measure 65.9 m (216 ft) tall and weigh 550,000 kg (1,210,000 lb). It's payload capacity will be significantly less than the Starship: 11,800 kg (26,000 lbs) in its expendable mode, and 8,000 kg (18,000 lbs) for the recoverable version. This is closer in payload capacity to the Falcon 9, which is capable of delivering 22,800 kg (50,265 lbs) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

In time, the company hopes to transition to the larger Zhuque-3E, which will be 76.2 m (250 ft) tall and powered by nine TQ-12B engines, and will be capable of delivering to 21,000 kg (46,000 lb) in its expandable mode and 18,300 kg (40,300 lb) recoverable. The long term goal is to create a reusable system that can rival the Falcon rocket family, bringing the country closer to its goal of achieving parity with NASA.

An Icelandic programmer successfully ran Doom on the European Space Agency's OPS-SAT satellite, proving that the iconic 1993 shooter can now run not just everywhere on Earth -- but in orbit. ZDNet reports: Olafur Waage, a senior software developer from Iceland who now works in Norway, explained at Ubuntu Summit 25.10 how he, a self-described "professional keyboard typist" and maker of funny videos, ended up making what is perhaps the game's most outlandish port yet: Doom running on a real satellite in orbit, the European Space Agency (ESA) OPS-SAT satellite. OPS-SAT, a "flying laboratory" for testing novel onboard computing techniques, was equipped with an experimental computer approximately 10 times more powerful than the norm for spacecraft. Waag explained, "OPS-SAT was the first of its kind, devoted to demonstrating drastically improved mission control capabilities when satellites can fly more powerful onboard computers. The point was to break the curse of being too risk-averse with multi-million-dollar spacecraft." (The satellite was decommissioned in 2024.) [...]

Running Doom in orbit was partly a challenge of portability and partly a challenge of the limitations of space hardware and mission control. The on-board ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, while hot stuff for space computing hardware (which tends to be low-powered and radiation-hardened), was slow even by Earth-bound standards. Waage chose Chocolate Doom 2.3, a popular open-source version of Doom, for its compatibility with the Ubuntu 18.04 Long Term Support (LTS) distro, which was already running on OPS-SAT. Besides, Waage noted, "We picked Chocolate Doom 2.3 because of the libraries available for 18.04 -- that was the last one that would actually build.

Updating software in orbit is extremely difficult, so relatively little code would have to be uploaded. As Waage said, "Doom is relatively straightforward C with a few external dependencies." In other words, it's easy to port. [...] The only sign that Doom was running in space at first was a lone log entry. So, the team used the satellite's camera to snap real-time images of the Earth, then swapped Doom's Mars skybox for actual satellite photos. "The idea was to take a screenshot from the satellite and use that as the sky, all rendered in software using the game's restricted 256-color palette," explained Waage. Even this posed unexpected difficulties: "Trying to draw all of these beautiful colors with those colors," said Waage, "it's probably not going to work right off. But we tried gradient tests, NASA demo photos. It took quite a bit of tweaking." Eventually, instead of a fantasy Mars as the sky background, they got a good-looking, real Earth in the game's sky. The game itself ran flawlessly. After all, Waage said, "It ran beautifully. It's on Ubuntu."

NASA has reopened SpaceX's $4.4 billion moon lander contract to new bidders like Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin after delays in Starship's development threatened the 2027 Artemis 3 mission. Reuters reports: The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program.

Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030. It represents a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a crewed moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call.

Starship, picked by NASA in 2021 under a contract now worth $4.4 billion, faces a 2027 moon landing deadline that agency advisers estimate could slip years behind schedule, citing competing priorities. Musk sees Starship as crucial to launching larger batches of Starlink satellites to space and eventually ferrying humans to Mars, among other missions. "They do remarkable things, but they're behind schedule," Duffy said of SpaceX's lunar lander work, adding President Donald Trump wants to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: I realize that, at this point, there are already far too many shows. Every channel, every streaming service is teeming with content demanding your attention, and there are simply too few hours in the day to watch them all. However, with that in mind, may I recommend a new show called Space Live? There's only one episode. The only potential downside is that the episode literally lasts for ever. Actually, that's inaccurate. Space Live isn't a show, it's a channel. It launched on Wednesday morning, tucked away on ITVX, and consists only of live footage of Earth broadcast from the International Space Station. It's beguiling to watch, especially for anyone who didn't realize that a person can be awestruck and bored simultaneously.

It's billed as a world first. ITV has partnered with British space media company Sen to use live 4K footage from its proprietary SpaceTV-1 video camera system, mounted on the International Space Station, giving us three camera views: one of the station's docking ports, a horizon view able to show sunrises and storms, and a camera pointing straight down as the ISS passes across the planet. A tracker in the corner of the screen shows the live location of the ISS, while a real-time AI information feed provides facts about our geography and weather systems.

Of course, if you wanted to be picky, you could argue it isn't exactly new. Nasa's YouTube channel has been streaming live footage from the ISS for years, and uniformly draws an audience of a few thousand. But Space Live is, if nothing else, slightly snazzier. The footage is certainly nicer: at 8.30am on Wednesday, Space Live showed gorgeous images of the sun's glare bouncing off the sea around the Bay of Biscay, while all Nasa could offer was a piece of cloth with the word "Flap" written on it. There's even a soundtrack, a constant, soothing kind of hold music that loops and loops without ever becoming fully annoying. It's an improvement, in other words. And, at least for the first orbit, it is absolutely spellbinding.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is laying off around 550 employees, or roughly 11% of its workforce, as part of an effort to "restructure and establish an appropriate size to ensure future success." According to JPL Director Dave Gallagher, the job cuts "are not related to the current government shutdown." CNBC reports: JPL is a research and development lab funded by NASA -- the federal space agency -- and managed by the California Institute of Technology. "While not easy, I believe that taking these actions now will help the Lab transform at the scale and pace necessary to help achieve humanity's boldest ambitions in space," Gallagher wrote in a separate mekor to JPL employees and contractors. Gallagher, in the public announcement, noted that the reorganization of JPL began in July, and "over the past few months, we have communicated openly with employees about the challenges and hard choices ahead."

"This week's action, while not easy, is essential to securing JPL's future by creating a leaner infrastructure, focusing on our core technical capabilities, maintaining fiscal discipline, and positioning us to compete in the evolving space ecosystem -- all while continuing to deliver on our vital work for NASA and the nation," Gallagher wrote. Gallagher said that JPL employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, and the "new Lab structure ... will become effective Wednesday."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's not the vibes; Earth is literally getting darker. Scientists have discovered that our planet has been reflecting less light in both hemispheres, with a more pronounced darkening in the Northern hemisphere, according to a study published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new trend upends longstanding symmetry in the surface albedo, or reflectivity, of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In other words, clouds circulate in a way that equalizes hemispheric differences, such as the uneven distribution of land, so that the albedos roughly match -- though nobody knows why. "There are all kinds of things that people have noticed in observations and simulations that tend to suggest that you have this hemispheric symmetry as a kind of fundamental property of the climate system, but nobody's really come up with a theoretical framework or explanation for it," said Norman Loeb, a physical scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, who led the new study. "It's always been something that we've observed, but we haven't really explained it fully."

To study this mystery, Loeb and his colleagues analyzed 24 years of observations captured since 2000 by the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES), a network of instruments placed on several NOAA and NASA satellites. Instead of an explanation for the strange symmetry, the results revealed an emerging asymmetry in hemispheric albedo; though both hemispheres are darkening, the Northern hemisphere shows more pronounced changes which challenges "the hypothesis that hemispheric symmetry in albedo is a fundamental property of Earth," according to the study.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: NASA has awarded Solstar Space a $150,000 SBIR Phase I contract to develop a Lunar Wi-Fi Access Point (LWIFI-AP). The system is designed to provide wireless connectivity for astronauts, rovers, and orbiting spacecraft as part of the Artemis and Commercial Lunar Payload Services programs. Solstar's goal is to build a space-rated, multi-band, multi-protocol access point that can survive radiation, extreme lunar temperatures, and other harsh conditions. NASA has identified Wi-Fi and 3GPP standards as core communication needs across mission systems ranging from the Human Landing System and Lunar Terrain Vehicle to the Lunar Gateway.

Although this is only an early-stage contract, Solstar's proposal addresses a clear gap in space-qualified networking hardware. The company says that just as Wi-Fi transformed daily life on Earth, it will be equally important for living and working on the Moon. If the project advances, astronauts could soon be relying on familiar wireless technology that has been adapted for one of the most challenging environments in existence.

Sen. Mark Kelly and three Democratic colleagues urged appropriations leaders to block funding for moving space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston, arguing the transfer would waste taxpayer money, risk permanent damage, and restrict public access. The relocation, pushed by Texas senators Cornyn and Cruz under a new law, carries an estimated cost of nearly $400 million. Ars Technica reports: "Why should hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars be spent just to jeopardize a piece of American history that's already protected and on display?" wrote Kelly in a social media post on Friday. "Space Shuttle Discovery belongs at the Smithsonian, where millions of people, including students and veterans, go to see it for free." In a letter sent on the same day to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Kelly and his three colleagues cautioned that any effort to transfer the winged orbiter would "waste taxpayer dollars, risk permanent damage to the shuttle, and mean fewer visitors would be able to visit it." "It is worth noting that there is little evidence of broad public demand for such a move," wrote Kelly, Warner, Kaine, and Durbin.

In the letter, the senators asked that committee chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and vice chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) block funding for Discovery's relocation in both the fiscal year 2026 Interior-Environment appropriations bill and FY26 Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. [...] "Houston's disappointment in not being selected is wholly understandable," the four senators wrote, "but removing an item from the National Collection is not a viable solution." [...] "There are also profound financial challenges associated with this transfer," wrote Kelly. Warner, Kaine, and Durbin. "The Smithsonian estimates that transporting Discovery from Virginia to Houston could cost more than $50 million, with another $325 million needed for planning, exhibit reconstruction, and new facilities." "Dedicating hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to move an artifact that is already housed, displayed, and preserved in a world-class facility is both inefficient and unjustifiable," the senators wrote.

Then there are the logistical challenges with relocating Discovery, which could result in damaging it, "permanently diminishing its historical and cultural value for future generations." "Moving Discovery by barge or road would be far more complex [than previous shuttle moves], exposing it to saltwater, weather, and collision risks across a journey several times longer," the letter reads. "As a one-of-a-kind artifact that has already endured the stresses of spaceflight, Discovery is uniquely vulnerable to these hazards. The heat tiles that enabled repeated shuttle missions become more fragile with age, and they are irreplaceable." Kelly, who previously lived in Houston when he was part of the space program, agrees that the city is central to NASA's human spaceflight efforts, but, along with Warner, Kaine, and Durbin, points out that displaying Discovery would come with another cost: an admission fee, limiting public access to the shuttle. "The Smithsonian is unique among museums for providing visitors with access to a national treasure meant to inspire the American public without placing economic barriers," wrote the senators.

The heliosphere "plays a major role in why life is possible on our planet," reports CNN, "and how it perhaps once existed on others such as Mars." (Basically solar winds create "a constant flow of charged particles" that form "an enormous bubble that protects the planets in our solar system from cosmic radiation permeating the Milky Way".)

NASA says the heliosphere's boundary is three times the distance between Earth and Pluto. (After leaving the heliosphere NASA's Voyager probes collected key data about the heliosphere.) But now there's a new mission to investigate "how that solar wind interacts with interstellar space at the boundary of the heliosphere," CNN reports — called the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (or IMAP): The spacecraft's 10 instruments will also fill gaps in the existing map of the heliosphere, pieced together from data collected by previous missions, and help further explain how the heliosphere largely shields our solar system from damaging cosmic rays, the most highly energetic particles in the universe. Along with two other space weather missions that lifted off aboard the same rocket on Wednesday, IMAP will help scientists better predict when solar storms unleashed by the sun could affect our planet. When aimed at Earth, harsh radiation from the storms, also known as space weather, can pose risks to astronauts on the International Space Station as well as interfere with communications, the electric power grid, navigation, and radio and satellite operations.

"This next set of missions is the ultimate cosmic carpool," said Dr. Joe Westlake, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, during a news conference on Sunday. "They will provide unprecedented insight into space weather. Every human on Earth, as well as nearly every system involved in space exploration and human needs, is affected by space weather...." The IBEX, or Interstellar Boundary Explorer, satellite has been mapping the heliosphere since launching in 2008. But IMAP can explore and map the boundaries of the heliosphere like never before because it has instruments with faster imaging that are capable of 30 times higher resolution. Once it reaches an orbit about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in about three months, IMAP will also capture observations of the solar wind in real time and measure particles that travel from the sun, study the heliosphere's boundary between 6 billion and 9 billion miles (9.7 billion to 14.5 billion kilometers) away, and even collect data from interstellar space.
Also launching was the SWFO-L1 mission, which CNN says is "intended to act as a solar storm detector, providing early warnings to protect astronauts in low-Earth orbit and satellites that provide critical communications on Earth. It's a tool that will be even more necessary as astronauts venture farther into deep space."

NASA streamed the launch live on YouTube.

NASA aims to launch its first crewed lunar mission in over 50 years, as early as February. The 10-day Artemis II mission will send four astronauts on a lunar flyby to test systems, paving the way for future Moon landings under the Artemis program. The BBC reports: Lakiesha Hawkins, Nasa's acting deputy associate administrator said it would be an important moment in the human exploration of space. "We together have a front row seat to history," she told a news conference this afternoon. "The launch window could open as early as the fifth of February, but we want to emphasize that safety is our top priority." Artemis Launch Director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson explained that the powerful rocket system built to take the astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS) was "pretty much stacked and ready to go." All that remained was to complete the crew capsule, called Orion, connected to SLS and to complete ground tests.

The Artemis II launch will see four astronauts go on a ten-day round trip to the Moon and back to the Earth. The astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, of Nasa and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, will not land on the Moon, though they will be the first crew to travel beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The lead Artemis II flight director, Jeff Radigan explained that the crew would be flying further into space than anyone had been before. "They're going at least 5,000 nautical miles (9,200Km) past the Moon, which is much higher than previous missions have gone," he told reporters. Further reading: NASA Introduces 10 New Astronaut Candidates

NASA has unveiled 10 new astronaut candidates drawn from over 8,000 applicants. The diverse group includes four men and six women -- pilots, scientists, and medical professionals -- who will train for future missions to the ISS, the moon, and eventually Mars. CBS News reports: This is NASA's first astronaut class with more women than men. It includes six pilots with experience in high-performance aircraft, a biomedical engineer, an anesthesiologist, a geologist and a former SpaceX launch director. Among the new astronaut candidates is 39-year-old Anna Menon, a mother of two who flew to orbit in 2024 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as a private astronaut on a commercial, non-NASA flight. [...]

The other members of the 2025 astronaut class are:
- Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ben Bailey, 38, a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School with more than 2,000 hours flying more than 30 different aircraft, including recent work with UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47F Chinook helicopters.
- Lauren Edgar, 40, who holds a Ph.D. in geology from the California Institute of Technology, with experience supporting NASA's Mars exploration rovers and, more recently, serving as a deputy principal investigator with NASA's Artemis 3 moon landing mission.
- Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, 35, an Air Force Test Pilot School graduate with more than 2,100 hours flying F-16 and F-35 jets. He holds a master's degree in flight test engineering.
- Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, 35, another graduate of Air Force Test Pilot School as well as the Air Force Weapons School with more than 1,600 hours flying high-performance aircraft, spending most of his time flying the F-22 Raptor.
- Yuri Kubo, 40, a former SpaceX launch director with a master's in electrical and computer engineering who also competed in ultimate frisbee contests.
- Rebecca Lawler, 38, a former Navy P-3 Orion pilot and experimental test pilot with more than 2,800 hours of flight time, including stints flying a NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft. She was a Naval Academy graduate and was a test pilot for United Airlines at the time of her selection.
- Imelda Muller, 34, a former undersea medical officer for the Navy with a medical degree from the University of Vermont's Robert Larner College of Medicine; she was completing her residency in anesthesia at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore at the time of her astronaut selection.
- Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, 34, a Naval Test Pilot School graduate and an experienced F/A-18 and F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot with 249 aircraft carrier landings. She also trained with the USA Rugby Women's National Team.
- Katherine Spies, 43, a former Marine Corps AH-1 attack helicopter pilot and a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School with more than 2,000 hours flying time. She was director of flight test engineering for Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. at the time of her astronaut selection.