Image (Credit): Astronauts aboard the ISS showing the boots ready for Santa. (NASA)
Santa’s gift-giving territory is pretty wide, but it is not clear whether he will make it to the International Space Station (ISS). However, the astronauts are ready if he does show up. They have hung their space boots by the airlock with cheer.
For the complete ISS holiday message, play this video from NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman, and Chris Williams, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui. The message was recorded on December 17, 2025.
“The comparison I often like to make is with the East India Company: a private British enterprise that became so powerful it could shape the politics of nations and at times had an army twice the size of Britain’s. It began as trade; it ended in domination. Could a similar dynamic unfold locally in our solar system, where a handful of today’s tech giants and billionaires control access to orbit, communications, and eventually, extraterrestrial resources? A monopoly in space would be dangerous for humanity. The challenge is to encourage innovation and investment without ceding ownership of the cosmos to a few individuals or organisations.”
Image (Credit): A portion of the International Space Station’s Russian segment is pictured with docked spacecraft including Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) and the Soyuz TMA-20 crew vehicle. (NASA)
Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.
For several years now, in discussing plans for its human spaceflight program beyond the International Space Station, Russian officials would proudly bring up the Russian Orbital Station, or ROS…Oleg Orlov, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said ROS will no longer be composed of entirely new modules. Rather, its core will be the Russian segment of the International Space Station. “The Scientific and Technical Council of Roscosmos supported this proposal and approved the deployment of a Russian orbital station as part of the Russian segment of the ISS,” Orlov reportedly said.
NASA is losing critical communication links with its Mars missions. After recently losing contact with the MAVEN spacecraft, the agency faces the impending loss of the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been circling the Red Planet for over two decades. As both orbiters approach the end of their operational lifespans, NASA will soon have to find ways to maintain data relay capabilities for its rovers and other missions on the fourth planet.
A key discovery from NASA’s Cassini mission in 2008 was that Saturn’s largest moon Titan may have a vast water ocean below its hydrocarbon-rich surface. But reanalysis of mission data suggests a more complicated picture: Titan’s interior is more likely composed of ice, with layers of slush and small pockets of warm water that form near its rocky core. Led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the new study could have implications for scientists’ understanding of Titan and other icy moons throughout our solar system.
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of of an exoplanet orbiting a rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
A handful of enigmatic Jupiter-mass objects have been discovered orbiting pulsars. One such object, PSR\,J2322-2650b, uniquely resembles a hot Jupiter exoplanet due to its minimum density of 1.8 g/cm^3 and its ~1900 K equilibrium temperature. We use JWST to observe PSR J2322-2650b’s emission spectrum across an entire orbit. In stark contrast to every known exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star, we find an atmosphere rich in molecular carbon (C3, C2) with strong westward winds. Our observations open up new exoplanetary chemical (ultra-high C/O and C/N ratios of >100 and >10,000, respectively) and dynamical regimes (ultra-fast rotation with external irradiation) to observational study. The extreme carbon enrichment poses a severe challenge to the current understanding of “black widow” companions, which were expected to consist of a wider range of elements due to their origins as stripped stellar cores.
Citation: Michael Zhang et al. A carbon-rich atmosphere on a windy pulsar planet. ApJL (2025).
Image (Credit): Apollo Astronaut James B. Irwin, lunar module pilot, works at the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the first Apollo 15 lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Hadley-Apennine landing site. (NASA)
Just as Jared Isaacman, NASA’s new Administrator, started to settle into his new post, the White House updated the nation’s space priorities.
Returning to the Moon by 2028, and the establishment of initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030;
Deploying of nuclear reactors on the Moon and in orbit, including a lunar surface reactor ready for launch by 2030; and
Spurring private sector innovation and investment by upgrading launch infrastructure and developing a commercial pathway to replace the International Space Station by 2030.
Adding nuclear reactors as its own goal seems a little odd since it could simply be wrapped into the first goal related to a permanent lunar outpost, but maybe this is just to kick regolith into the eyes of the Chinese who announced a similar intention.
Returning to the Moon by 2028 will certainly be a challenge, but luckily Administrator Isaacman is showing no favorites when it comes to meeting this goal. This week he made this statement about plans to return to the Moon:
I don’t think it was lost on either vendor that whichever lander was available first to ensure that America achieves its strategic objectives on the moon is the one we were going to go with.
His friend Elon Musk was certainly listening, but so far we have not heard him say that the new NASA Administrator has a 2 digit IQ. Of course, it has only been a few days, though the honeymoon is likely to be very short.
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