Phil McAlister, who directed NASA’s Commercial Space Division from 2005 to 2024, which included this commercial space station program, said the changes give NASA and the companies a chance for success, given that the agency’s budget will be less than anticipated. “How was NASA’s previous strategy for commercial stations going to work when they lost…
You can add another name to the thousands of employees leaving NASA as the Trump administration primes the space agency for a 25 percent budget cut. On Monday, NASA announced that Makenzie Lystrup will leave her post as director of the Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday, August 1. Lystrup has held the top job…
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, want to make living on Mars a reality. Musk has said that his company, SpaceX, can get humans to Mars as early as 2029. Meanwhile, NASA officials have said that sending humans to Mars even by 2040 would be an “audacious” goal. China also has…
The Trump administration has floated a plan to trim about $6 billion from the budget of NASA, while allocating $1 billion of remaining funds to Mars-focused initiatives, aligning with an ambition long held by Elon Musk and his rocket maker SpaceX. A copy of the discretionary budget posted to the NASA website on Friday said…
Rebecca Morelle, Alison Francis and Greg Brosnan BBC Science Watch: Astronauts return to Earth after extended stay in Space After nine months in space, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally arrived back on Earth. Their SpaceX capsule made a fast and fiery re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere, before four parachutes opened to…
Many people see space exploration as a waste of resources. Of course, there is the counterargument that scientific discoveries have intrinsic cultural value, that space-related initiatives often boost international cooperation, or that the space sector has crucial technological and economic importance. But the most effective argument might simply be to point to the plethora of…
Europa’s orbit is an ellipse, and the satellite’s shape is affected by Jupiter’s gravity, becoming deformed when it passes closer to Jupiter. This change in shape creates friction inside Europa, generating enormous amounts of heat in a mechanism known as tidal heating, which melts some of the ice and forms a vast internal ocean beneath…
Although the details remain in flux, the transition team reviewing NASA and its activities has begun to draft potential executive orders for changes to space policy under the Trump Administration. Sources familiar with the five people on the team, who have spent the last six weeks assessing the space agency and its exploration plans, were…
On the eerie night of Halloween, space experts unveiled a chilling revelation: a ‘zombie star’ is poised to rise from the dead. T Coronae Borealis, also known as the Blaze Star, is expected to explode violently soon. As if summoned by the spirits of the night, this illuminating binary star system will awaken for the…
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian. “We are witnessing the beginning of a new era, as the internet was in the 1980s. Today access to space is still something for the few, but just as in computing, in a few years prices will come down. Everyone should indulge…
