NASA Has a New Administrator

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Earlier today, Jared Isaacman was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the new administrator of NASA. The final Senate vote was was 67-30, which is an encouraging sign showing that he is off to a good start. Anything bipartisan is unique in this environment.

Sean Duffy, the acting administrator, can now go back to the Department of Transportation. Fortunately, his effort to make NASA a sub-component of his department has failed.

The Planetary Society had a nice statement welcoming Mr. Jared to his new role and also emphasizing what needs to be done in partnership with the Congress:

The Planetary Society congratulates Jared Isaacman on becoming NASA’s 15th Administrator. After nearly a year of historic disruptions to the agency’s workforce, facilities, and budget, Mr. Isaacman has the opportunity to stabilize and reinvigorate the U.S. space program.

Congress is on a path to provide Mr. Isaacman with a restored budget that better funds national priorities: returning humans to the Moon, maintaining U.S. leadership in space science and exploration, and training the next generation of scientists and aerospace engineers. This is a remarkable statement of support for NASA’s mission, and Mr. Isaacman publicly committed to make full use of the funds that Congress provides.

The Planetary Society is ready to work with the new Administrator to advance our shared goals of maintaining NASA as the world leader in space science and exploration.

We should all wish Mr. Isaacman the best of luck in his new role. He will need all the support he can get to set the agency on a sustainable path.

Space Stories: JPL Rover Operations Center Opens, Chinese Protect Space Station, and Roman Telescope Will Scan for Voids

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—NASA JPL: “NASA JPL Unveils Rover Operations Center for Moon, Mars Missions“

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Wednesday inaugurated its Rover Operations Center (ROC), a center of excellence for current and future surface missions to the Moon and Mars. During the launch event, leaders from the commercial space and AI industries toured the facilities, participated in working sessions with JPL mission teams, and learned more about the first-ever use of generative AI by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover team to create future routes for the robotic explorer.

—Futurism: “China Installs Defensive Countermeasures on Space Station“

About a month after a tiny piece of space debris stranded three astronauts for nine days aboard China’s Tiangong space station, the taikonauts aboard the orbital outpost have begun making some modifications. According to state media network CGTN, the country’s space travelers Zhang Lu and Wu Fei endured an eight-hour spacewalk earlier this week in order to install a debris protection panels on the space station’s outer hull. While there, they also performed an inspection of Tiangong’s exterior, along with other minor repairs.

—Space Telescope Science Institute: “NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Observe Thousands of Newfound Cosmic Voids“

What do fizzing champagne glasses and our universe have in common? They’re both full of bubbles! The cosmic bubbles are vast structures hundreds of millions of light-years across. Their walls are outlined by collections of galaxies. The details of these bubbles – their size, shape, and distribution – can tell us more about the mysterious force known as dark energy that is causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate. The upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will detect and measure tens of thousands of cosmic voids, some as small as just 20 million light-years across.

Space Quote: China, the Moon, and the Military

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): China’s Chang’e-4 Lander on the Moon’s surface, as captured by the Yutu-2 rover in early 2019. (CNSA)

“Politically, China’s lunar program has demonstrated an ability to undertake cutting edge scientific programs, as demonstrated in the innovative Chang’e-4 and Chang’e-6 probes. In terms of direct military benefits, its value is more limited. China is not in a direct space race with any other state, nor is it racing to establish settlements or “space colonies.” While there are theories of how one might employ a lunar base to undertake surveillance or even kinetic operations against terrestrial targets, the costs associated with such ambitions would be enormous. Surveillance platforms on the Moon, for example, would be almost 240,000 miles from Earth. To obtain high resolution images would be enormously costly. It is not at all clear that such efforts would win a cost-benefit analysis against systems in standard earth orbits (LEO, MEO, GEO), or even air-breathing systems. Instead, the most likely military benefits are in terms of improvements in Chinese space support capabilities, thus expanding the volume of space employed for military purposes.”

-Statement by Dean Cheng, Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, from a hearing before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee titled “Strategic Trajectories Assessing China’s Space Rise and the Risks to U.S. Leadership.” Mr. Cheng was one of four witnesses at the hearing.

Today’s Confirmation Hearing for NASA Administrator

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Jared Isaacman answering questions at the December 3, 2025 Senate confirmation hearing. (Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation)

Jared Isaacman appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation earlier today for his second confirmation hearing. Overall, everything went well and he should be ready for a full Senate vote next week that will make him NASA’s next administrator.

In his prepared testimony, he laid our five goals:

  1. The success of the Artemis program that President Trump began during his first term. America will return to the Moon before our great rival, and we will establish an enduring presence to understand and realize the scientific, economic, and national security value on the lunar surface.

  2. Along the way, we will pioneer the next ‘giant leap’ capabilities to extend America’s reach even further into space, including expanding and accelerating investments into nuclear propulsion and surface power programs. These efforts, in addition to industry partners building reusable launch vehicles, we will set the stage for future missions to Mars and beyond.

  3. We will never accept a gap in capabilities again–not with our space station presence in low Earth orbit or our ability to send American astronauts to the Moon.

  4. We will strive to build an orbital and lunar economy that can fund the future we all want to see in space and not rely exclusively on the taxpayer. We will begin making the investments now for the inevitable spacefaring future that is just on the horizon.

  5. We will make the most efficient use of every dollar allocated–pushing for more xplanes, more rovers & telescopes, more exciting missions like Hubble, James Webb, and Dragonfly with the aim of enlightening the world through breakthrouh scientific discoveries–knowing that if NASA doesn’t do it, no one else will.

The third point about a “gap in capabilities” specifically addresses the hardware needed to get to the space station or the moon, but we are also facing a gap in our scientific capabilities given the loss of so much talent this year. The statement reads like a dime store space novel where all we need it a rocket and grit, but hardware can only get your to a location.

Living and thriving once we get to wherever we are going will depend upon many other factors that are outside the understanding of rocket engineers. Yet too many of the senior mission specialists with these needed skills are now sitting at home after being forced out or deciding to retire in the midst of recent chaos. This gap in this area only widened, and the full impact on the NASA’s space programs has yet to be realized. However, these personnel losses are likely to close the gap between the US and Chinese space programs to our detriment.

Maybe Mr. Isaacman needed to add a sixth goal to close this new gap in scientific capabilities created this year by the White House.

Space Stories: Telescope Moving from US to Spain, Starliner will be Cargo-Only, and Moss in Space

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rending of the Thirty Meter Telescope. (TMT International Observatory)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Sky & Telescope: “Thirty Meter Telescope Considers Move to Spain“

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) was conceived more than two decades ago as the largest and most advanced telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. However, the telescope has encountered significant roadblocks, from funding uncertainties — now heightened by President Trump’s proposed budget cuts — to local resistance to building the telescope on Mauna Kea, a volcanic mountain in Hawai‘i that’s sacred to native communities. Now, the telescope might find a new home in La Palma on the Canary Islands of Spain. In July, the Spanish government offered to host the telescope, with an investment of up to €400 million ($460 million) to help cover some of the costs. In a brief statement posted on November 11th, the TMT announced that it is officially considering the move to La Palma.

—Spaceflight Now: “NASA, Boeing Pivot Starliner-1 Mission from 4-Person Astronaut Flight to Cargo-Only“

In its latest shakeup to the Commercial Crew Program, NASA announced on Monday it has reduced the number of missions Boeing is required to fly to the International Space Station and changing the next flight from a crew mission to a cargo mission. The original contract NASA awarded to Boeing and SpaceX called for each to fly an uncrewed demonstration flight to the ISS, followed by a crewed demo mission and then conduct six regular crew rotation missions.

—Vice: “Moss Just Survived a Full Year Outside the International Space Station“

In the airless, radiation-saturated void outside of the International Space Station, researchers tested whether a common moss species known as Physcomitrium patens could survive at all, and if it could, for how long. The answers are yes and probably forever if it wants...Tomomichi Fujita, the study’s lead author, thinks moss could last up to 15 years in space, knowledge that could help build future extraterrestrial farms or entire ecosystems on the Moon or Mars.