NASA

During its mission, SPHEREx will complete surveys of the entire sky in optical and near-infrared light, observing over 450 million galaxies and more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way. From these surveys, scientists will identify the source of the early universe’s inflation and search for organic molecules throughout the universe. Meanwhile, PUNCH will utilize four small satellites to investigate the Sun’s inner heliosphere and how the corona becomes solar wind.

In a statement late Feb. 19, NASA announced that Associate Administrator Jim Free will retire from the agency, effective Feb. 22. Free had been associate administrator, the top civil-service position in the agency, since the retirement of Bob Cabana at the end of 2023.

Free was previously associate administrator for exploration systems development, a position NASA created in 2021 when it split the former Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate into two directorates, one overseeing exploration programs and the other the International Space Station and related operations. Earlier in his 30-year NASA career, he was director of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

Scott Manley tours the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range.

I’ve got no clue how many people this will turn out to be, but I’ve heard a fair pile of corroboration.

I’ve wanted to work at NASA since I was six. That’s a common story at the agency - most folks have to work hard and make conscious decisions from high school on to get there. The folks I’ll be saying goodbye to on Tuesday are literally the best and brightest of their generation - people with brains and determination that chose to take worse pay and underfunded lab environments to serve their country and have arranged their whole lives to make that sacrifice possible.

I mourn for them, for the agency, and for the future they could have given us.

NASA announced Feb. 11 that it would use the Crew Dragon spacecraft Endurance for the upcoming Crew-10 mission to the ISS rather than a new Crew Dragon spacecraft as originally planned. Endurance, previously used for the Crew-3, -5 and -7 missions, had been slated to fly the Ax-4 private astronaut mission to the ISS for Axiom Space.

NASA awarded a contract to Canoo Technologies in 2022 for three Artemis Crew Transportation Vehicles, vans that the agency plans to use to ferry astronauts to the launch pad for Artemis missions. The vans, with a value of nearly $150,000 under the contract, were delivered to NASA in July 2023.

Canoo, however, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation Jan. 17, citing the inability to secure capital from a Department of Energy loan program or other sources.

NASA, for now, plans to continue using the vehicles. “Our vehicles are in working order for use during training activities and mission preparations,” a spokesperson for NASA Kennedy Space Center told SpaceNews. “NASA has worked with the manufacturer to train teams at Kennedy to operate and maintain many of the elements and the agency will review those plans as needed.”

I am really sad that those 800 people are feeling the same thing that the govvies are. The folks on the chopping block were not the ones responsible for the problem. In my opinion, plan should be to keep the engineers, lose the suits.

Can confirm.

The US space agency said Wednesday it will host a live Twitch stream from the International Space Station on February 12.