NASA and Space News

Mon, June 8, 2026:

• NASA quietly talking to Congress about more moon money. The agency has begun reaching out to lawmakers as it pushes to meet President Trump’s moon landing timeline. - Politico

Thurs, April 16, 2026:

• Artemis Was a State Failure and a Human Triumph. For all its well-earned acclaim, NASA’s most recent moon mission also epitomized the worst excesses and flaws of the US space program and took risks out of proportion to its rewards. - Bloomberg

Tues, April 14, 2026:

• Amazon Buys Globalstar for $10.8 Billion to Build Its Efforts in Space. The e-commerce giant is buying Globalstar, a satellite communications company, as it aims to expand its own satellite internet service to compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink. - NYT

Thurs, April 9, 2026:

• Shooting $100 billion in taxpayer funds to the moon is not a win. The private economy is winning the space race, not NASA. - WP

  • TrillionsWeekly: This opinion piece is right about the immensely inefficient Artemis program, but ignores the critical role of NASA funds in keeping Space X alive during its infancy. The company would have failed without NASA’s contract. Rather than a simplistic discussion of public vs. private investment, the piece would have been more useful focusing on the value of public-private partnerships.

Wed, April 1, 2026:

• Artemis II Successfully Kicks Off 10-Day Lunar Mission. The crew, three Americans and a Canadian, are the first humans to travel to the moon in more than 50 years. They will not land on the surface, but the mission will pave the way for future visits. - NYT

Thurs, March 26, 2026:

• The SpaceX IPO Will Be Just as Unconventional as Musk Himself - WSJ

Tues, March 24, 2026:

• NASA unveils ambitious new moon base plans. NASA chief Jared Isaacman announced a $30-billion plan to speed up its lunar landings and establish a U.S. moon base by 2036. - SciAm

Mon, Feb 16, 2026:

• The flaw that could prevent humans from becoming deep-space explorers. NASA should focus on the body and mind, not just engineering, for cosmic travel. -WP

Fri, Jan 16, 2026:

• (I)t’s fair to ask if the appalling costs of the Artemis program — at some $100 billion and counting, with each new launch of the SLS exceeding $4 billion — may have induced officials to sign off on decisions they otherwise wouldn’t have, or to forgo additional tests that would’ve allayed more concerns. - Bloomberg
  One irony of this endeavor is that the president’s most recent budget request called for scrapping the current Artemis design post-moon landing and moving on to “more cost-effective, next-generation commercial systems.” In other words: NASA is conducting this risky and expensive mission to test an architecture that the executive branch has already concluded is obsolete.

  • Trillions commentary: If there was ever an example of bureaucratic inertia and throwing good money after bad, this is it. We live in an age of reusable rockets. Why NASA would spend $4 billion per launch on throw away rockets—based on outdated space shuttle technology—is beyond reason. This is about satisfying government contractors, not achieving any clearly defined rational objectives for the nation. And guess what: after $100 billion, NASA still does not have a safe and proven vehicle to bring astronauts home safely from the moon, and still does not have a lunar lander (just a hope that SpaceX can deliver one by late this decade). In other words, NASA has thus far failed in its objective to get astronauts back to the moon during the 2020s, when they accomplished it in the 1960s.

Thurs, Jan 15, 2026:

• Congress passes $24.4 billion NASA budget, rejecting Trump’s deep cuts - space.com

Thurs, Nov 6, 2025:

• NASA has lost thousands of workers. Here’s what that means for science. Staffers told The Post about months of turmoil and sweeping changes that, if fully implemented, could transform NASA and American science beyond the Trump years. – WP