NASA - Updates Only

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https://twitter.com/x/status/2052159029112107245
View: https://twitter.com/NASAWallops/status/2052159029112107245


Join us on Wednesday, May 13 at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center from 4-6 p.m. for a public information session.

NASA will have information booths on the status of the causeway bridge construction, updates on beach replenishment, and a representative from the GLOBE program. The Wallops Environmental team and federal and state health experts will be on hand to speak with the public about the PFAS health consultation report released by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The Visitor Center exhibits gallery, gift shop, and auditorium will also be open for these extended hours. Admission is always free. The Visitor Center is located on Virginia Route 175 about five miles from U.S. Route 13 and five miles from Chincoteague Island, Virginia.

Learn more about the session: https://go.nasa.gov/4tXBilR
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The goalposts are already shifting. Artemis III slips to late '27 (still unlikely) & landers may not have life-support. Artemis IV considering options to South Pole & talk of 2 landings in '28 has ended. Hot take - Summit proposes cooperation with China on lunar development!
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2054718896008212533
View: https://x.com/Lori_Garver/status/2054718896008212533


Lori - always appreciate the interest and commentary!

We never officially moved the timing of Artemis III to 'late' 2027. A reporter wrote that after misinterpreting my quick response to a question during a budget hearing. In the same hearing, I also said we were gaining increased confidence in interoperability tests with both landers in 2027. I am quite sure at least one will incorporate an ECLSS demonstration.

As for 2028, we have always said we would protect for up to two landing attempts, if required. That story has not changed, and the South Pole was always the landing target.

The only goalposts that have moved have been in the direction of achievability--standardizing the architecture, adding missions, focusing resources, and rebuilding in-house competencies. We have tried to communicate to the greatest extent possible in this regard, while respecting the proprietary information of our commercial partners.

I will say, I am very proud of the NASA team and the new pace we are moving at. The public will learn in the weeks ahead which astronauts will undertake Artemis III, and I would not be surprised if you see some early wet dress testing at 39B before the end of this year. Now, if your point is that the schedule is ambitious, I agree. And NASA’s recent track record on schedule has not been great, but when it comes to landing astronauts on the Moon, historically, our batting average was pretty good. I suspect it will be again.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2054742156435140954
View: https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2054742156435140954
 
[answering a question about the IG Report indicating that the spacesuits are not likely to be ready for Artemis III]I actually did post on X regarding the report a month or so ago. I really value the IG work at NASA. It is a sobering story, and as I wrote previously, it should serve as a cautionary tale about contracting methods, especially leaning into an 'as-a-service' model when NASA is the only customer and before a market has matured. The report was also largely written before the changes we implemented a few months ago, when I posted publicly about the NASA resources we are embedding across the supply chain to take an active role, clear blockers and drive outcomes. That statement applies to the entirety of Artemis acceleration initiative, the Moon Base buildout, and other key programs... We won't sit on our hands...and the suits will be tested in LEO in 2027.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2054747676919415253
View: https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2054747676919415253
 
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5225/1

The clearest sign of NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s relationship with Congress came about halfway through a hearing April 28 by the Senate Appropriation Committee’s commerce, justice, and science (CJS) subcommittee when Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), ranking member of the subcommittee, took the microphone for a second round of questions about the agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal.
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NASA Announces Public-Private Partnership to Advance Mars Science

NASA Wednesday announced a new public‑private partnership to advance Mars science by combining the agency’s scientific leadership with commercial innovation. Under this model, NASA will provide the Aeolus atmospheric‑science instrument payload suite, while Relativity Space supplies the spacecraft, rocket, and cruise operations necessary to deliver the instruments to Mars.
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I bought Shift4 stock, the company I started 27 years ago, that serves predominantly hotels, restaurants, and stadiums, because it was trading at a multi-year low and permissible under my ethics agreement. I sold all SpaceX stock, any indirect equity exposure to it, and any other aerospace-related companies 18 months ago when I was first nominated for the job. A billion-dollar sacrifice I was happy to make to serve my country. I suspect I will be worth much less coming out of public service than going into it-- and that is completely fine!
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2067730099596583098
View: https://twitter.com/rookisaacman/status/2067730099596583098
 
Because Shift4 isn't 'SpaceX-linked.' I'm not referring to what Isaacman himself said, but Sludge News' claim.
 
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman

@NASAAdmin
We are doing things differently now. NASA cannot take years longer than expected and spend billions more than planned when the world is waiting for the headlines only NASA can deliver. The programs covered in the report will free up more than $3 billion in the years ahead for more missions of science and discovery. The small pilot program we implemented to rebuild core competencies has already resulted in nearly $200 million a year in savings. That means more Moon Base missions, more astronauts in space, more telescopes, more nuclear spaceships and more x-planes.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2069907082606674239
View: https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2069907082606674239
 
Isaacman really is the biggest breath of fresh air the agency has seen in a long time. I hope his changes last.
 
DAVINCI was mentioned in the GAO annual Assessments of Major Projects.

Effects of Workforce Reductions Vary Across Major Projects
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The major projects across NASA’s centers are experiencing varying effects from the reduced civil service workforce levels. Of the 36 projects in the portfolio, 25 reported that they had been affected by the workforce reductions. According to agency officials, individual projects within the portfolio have generally addressed the loss of workforce by having remaining civil servants take on the responsibilities of those who left. Some projects, however, have reported more serious negative effects from the workforce reductions. Specific examples reported by NASA officials include the following:
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The Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) project at Goddard Space Flight Center suffered substantial impacts through civil service workforce reductions and transfers. The fiscal year 2026 President’s Budget Request proposed canceling the project, but NASA continued the project based on the fiscal year 2026 appropriation.40 DAVINCI lost critical team members with leadership roles in program management and engineering to the deferred resignation program and was unable to backfill the positions in fiscal year 2025. This resulted in the program rescoping planned risk reduction activities for fiscal year 2025 to ensure that all critical formulation schedule milestones were met. According to NASA officials, fiscal year 2026 funding allowed DAVINCI to restore staffing to the levels required to maintain the project’s formulation schedule.

Moving forward, some centers may be challenged to meet the workforce needs of the mission directorates because of the reduced civil servant workforce. Some centers, particularly those that encountered large workforce losses, may not be able to adequately staff all planned work. For example, three NASA centers are responsible for managing 23 of the 36 major projects in the portfolio. Each of these centers encountered workforce reductions based on proposed project cancelations. See table 5.
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Article by Phil McAlister

NASA Is About to Lose Its Way to Low Earth Orbit
https://linkedin.com/pulse/nasa-lose-its-way-low-earth-orbit-phil-mcalister-e16kc/#NASA

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman responded to this after reading the article

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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
@NASAAdmin

Few thoughts in response:

1) NASA has not given up on LEO. Within weeks of being on the job, I publicly addressed the Starliner situation and the role NASA played in it, and we have since taken a very active role with Boeing in implementing the investigation recommendations and putting Starliner on a path to life beyond Atlas V. We intend for Starliner to safely transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and commercial LEO destinations, in the years ahead. I actually agree that we should have more crewed transport vehicles, but how many major endeavors do you want NASA to solve simultaneously? The more NASA takes on in parallel, the less will be accomplished. And if there is considerable demand in LEO and lots of economic potential, nothing stops the companies referenced from raising capital and building vehicles. We are trying to get back to the Moon, build a base, get underway on nuclear power, launch more science missions, replace the International Space Station with a commercial service, but now we also need to fund several new crewed vehicles too? To the author’s point, nothing stopped one company from building a suborbital vehicle and operating it dozens of times without NASA as an anchor tenant, but I think market realities have spoken and the service appears to have been paused.

2) America and NASA are not giving up our astronauts, and as a commercial astronaut, I state that as emphatically and patriotically as possible. Of course, if useful research and affordable data become available as a commercial service, similarly to how we purchase and make available Earth observation data, we would have to look at it.

3) I am about as pro-commercial space as it gets, for what I hope are obvious reasons. But to be clear, you cannot simply slap the word “commercial” on every problem or opportunity, pound the table about “deleting NASA’s burdensome requirements,” and assume it automatically produces a more affordable, better solution supported by a thriving market. When people talk about relying on private capital and commercial services, someone still has to pay, a service provider has to execute really well, and if NASA is the customer, it is likely a service that has rarely been done before. If it turns out NASA is ultimately the only meaningful customer, that has the potential to become a very expensive proposition, if it works at all.

4) Premature commercialization can set both the NASA program and the emerging industry up for failure. We have seen approaches ranging from spacewalking-as-a-service to lunar-nuclear-power-as-a-service, often premised on NASA eventually being just one customer of many. Sometimes that market materializes. Many times--it is speculative. NASA, the taxpayers and the interested public should care about whatever achieves the intended mission outcome as quickly, affordably and safely as possible, and the contracting method is secondary. We can screw up cost-plus, fixed-price and as-a-service contracts just as easily. The outcomes are what matter. If, along the way, we can create a credible demand signal, help industry mature the technology and buy time for a market to develop, that is outstanding. But we should be grounded in reality rather than pretending a market already exists when it does not.

5) There are absolutely areas where the commercial model works extraordinarily well. Launch, Earth observation and communications are real services supported by real markets, and have been for decades, where NASA truly can be one customer of many. There will be more examples in the years ahead. In those cases, NASA can execute missions at lower cost and free up more of the NASA budget for the low-TRL, cutting-edge missions that have no obvious business case or revenue model, but change the world in air and space.

6) People often point to commercial crew and cargo as proof that this model works everywhere. It does not. Those programs benefited from NASA providing substantial early demand across dozens of missions, creating an opportunity for private capital to generate a return, even though I believe most did not, while also allowing an iterative design process rather than jumping immediately to the dream state. There is a big difference between maturing capabilities over a dozen cargo missions before building a no-fail crew vehicle and jumping directly to the crew vehicle, and I think the real-world data has demonstrated that. Even then, the development record across all of the crew and cargo providers was far from perfect. And today, the category leader is increasingly focused on opportunities with much larger potential markets, which should tell us something about the near-term economics of the market NASA helped create.

7) I have been very open that, in the near term, I do not know whether there is a sufficiently large LEO market where NASA can truly be one customer of many, but we will do everything within reason and within our budget to set industry up for success and ensure there is a home beyond the International Space Station. I do know demand for commercial LEO destinations will be heavily influenced by transportation cost, and those costs are likely to go up in the near term rather than down. Now, you can argue that if NASA had funded more commercial crew vehicles in years past, that would have changed the dynamic, but how many did you want for two crewed NASA missions to the ISS per year? We picked two providers, the results are apparent (for better and for worse), and clearly there was not enough supplemental commercial demand to justify further industry investment. The same uncertainty exists on the Moon. I cannot promise today that the economic value extracted from the lunar surface will exceed all of the input costs. What we can do is create a demand signal for landers, rovers, power, communications and other infrastructure, do so in a logical way that affords iterative design, and give a lunar economy every opportunity to emerge. I believe it will, but there are no guarantees. The mission is to return to the Moon and build the base for scientific, technological, national security and even inspirational reasons, and along the way, we hope enormous economic potential is unleashed.

8) If the objective is to force an economy out of every NASA endeavor, then NASA should probably sit inside the Department of Commerce. But NASA is an independent agency with a broader mission: to extend humanity’s reach farther into space, pioneer breakthrough technologies, undertake the near-impossible and unlock the secrets of the universe. While at times that is sure to leverage commercial capabilities and stimulate economic activity, it is not a prerequisite to achieving every mission.

7:59 PM · Sep 2, 2026
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2095345993738850760
View: https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2095345993738850760
 
Flyaway said:
NASA's 0.33% share of Federal spending is the lowest since 1959. In 2025$, the budget has fallen from $27,211 billion in 2023 to $24,438 billion in 2026, a fall of 10%.
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The US Congress could easily double NASA's annual operating budget and still be less than one-cent spent out of every federal-dollar.
 
Outer Space Today
@outerspacetoday

JUST IN FROM THE ALL-IN SUMMIT: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman just laid out his vision for America’s next phase in space.

Among his most notable remarks:

• NASA expects “dozens of landers” and “dozens of rovers” to head to the Moon over the next four years, alongside major robotics and lunar resource experiments.

• Isaacman said the lunar south pole has only a limited number of viable landing areas near permanently shadowed craters containing water ice, creating what he described as a race for a small number of strategic “parking spots.”

• He warned China is targeting the same region, intends to build a lunar base with Russia and “will get to the Moon.” Isaacman said China is now an “incredible rival” and that “the Chinese are extremely good in space right now.”

• Isaacman called SpaceX NASA’s “most important launch partner” and said the U.S. would be “seriously challenged in the high ground of space” without its capabilities.

• On Mars, he argued the hardest problem is not getting astronauts there, but getting them home - and said NASA should develop nuclear-powered transfer vehicles that reduce the need to manufacture return propellant on Mars.

• He said NASA’s SR-1 Freedom nuclear mission will be followed by “SR-2, SR-3, SR-4,” with technology ultimately aimed at destinations including Enceladus, Europa and Titan.

In summary, the message from @NASAAdmin was clear: the next space race will be won by whoever can secure the Moon’s most valuable terrain, build permanent infrastructure there and use it as the springboard to Mars and beyond.
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https://twitter.com/x/status/2099578176834064425
View: https://twitter.com/outerspacetoday/status/2099578176834064425
 

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