Episodios

  • NASA Secures Funding for Planetary Science, Prepares for Lunar Landings and Heliosphere Studies

    NASA Secures Funding for Planetary Science, Prepares for Lunar Landings and Heliosphere Studies
    Jan 31 2026
    NASA has secured stable funding for planetary science missions after Congress passed H.R. 6938 for fiscal year 2026, rejecting nearly all White House-proposed cuts and preserving key programs like Juno at Jupiter and New Horizons at the solar system's edge, according to the Planetary Society. This victory ensures continued operations for most space science efforts, though Mars Sample Return faced cancellation amid budget pressures.

    Planetary exploration accelerates with four NASA-backed lunar landing missions targeting 2026 launches, primarily from U.S. sites using SpaceX rockets. Astrobotic's Griffin 1, aboard Falcon Heavy, aims for the lunar south pole to prospect water ice with the FLIP rover, building on prior setbacks. Intuitive Machines' IM-3 heads to the Reiner Gamma region to study lunar magnetism and space weather effects on future habitats. Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1, launching on New Glenn, will test precision landing and plume interactions at the south pole, advancing Artemis goals. These missions counter international competition, especially from China, and highlight commercial partnerships enabling robust lunar strategies.

    NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe arrived at Lagrange point 1, one million miles sunward from Earth, on January 10, 2026, confirming its orbit for heliosphere studies. Meanwhile, the agency updated Artemis II preparations, delaying a critical Space Launch System fueling test at Kennedy Space Center due to freezing temperatures, pushing the crewed lunar flyby no earlier than February 8 from Florida.

    Challenges emerge as NASA plans to end formal support for planetary science advisory groups like the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, potentially reducing scientific input into decisions, SpaceNews reports. Amid this, Purdue University hosted its second Advancing Space Exploration Symposium on January 16 in Indiana, uniting experts on robotic and human missions with industry partners.

    These developments reveal patterns of fiscal resilience, commercial innovation driving lunar returns, and tensions between policy shifts and scientific continuity, positioning U.S. planetary science for sustained deep space progress.

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  • Headline: NASA Milestones and Discoveries Fuel Resurgence in U.S. Planetary Science

    Headline: NASA Milestones and Discoveries Fuel Resurgence in U.S. Planetary Science
    Jan 28 2026
    In the past week, United States planetary science has advanced with key NASA milestones and discoveries. NASA's Artemis Two mission rocket reached its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after an overnight journey on January 19, according to ScienceDaily. Engineers there completed pre-fueling checks ahead of a test, staying on schedule for a potential liftoff as early as February 6, NASA reports. This crewed flight will loop astronauts around the Moon, building on decades of lunar research to study its surface and prepare for future landings.

    Congress delivered a major win by passing H.R. 6938, rejecting White House cuts to NASA funding for fiscal year 2026, as detailed in The Planetary Society's January newsletter. The bill preserves science programs, safeguarding missions like Juno at Jupiter and New Horizons at the solar system's edge. Only Mars Sample Return faced reduction, signaling strong bipartisan support amid threats of future budget battles.

    NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite reobserved Comet Three I slash Atlas from January 15 to 22, with data now public on the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, NASA Science announces. Meanwhile, the Arcstone instrument wrapped its primary mission, boosting lunar calibration accuracy for better surface mapping.

    Discoveries abound too. An Earth-sized planet with a yearlong orbit was spotted, Science.org reports, while NASA's alert highlights a cool Earth-sized candidate transiting a K-dwarf star, hinting at icy worlds. The James Webb Space Telescope revealed distant platypus galaxies at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, as astrophysicist Becky Smethurst noted in her January 23 Night Sky News.

    Looking ahead, 2026 promises lunar landers from Intuitive Machines and Blue Origin, Mars arrivals for ESCAPADE satellites, and ESA's Hera at asteroid Didymos. These efforts reveal patterns of resilient funding, prolific small missions, and a push toward habitable exoplanets and solar system frontiers, underscoring a golden age of United States-led exploration.

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  • Soaring Exploration: NASA's Artemis, Congress' Funding Boost Fuel US Planetary Science Breakthroughs

    Soaring Exploration: NASA's Artemis, Congress' Funding Boost Fuel US Planetary Science Breakthroughs
    Jan 24 2026
    In the past week, United States planetary science has marked key milestones amid strong congressional support and preparations for deep space exploration. NASA's Artemis two crew entered quarantine this week ahead of their historic journey around the Moon, a critical step in returning humans to lunar orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA also selected ground stations and partners across the United States to track the mission, ensuring real-time communication from locations like California and Texas.

    Congress passed H.R. six nine three eight this month, restoring near full funding for NASA science after proposed cuts threatened dozens of missions. According to The Planetary Society's Planetary Radio, this bipartisan victory protects planetary science programs alongside astrophysics, Earth science, and heliophysics, providing twenty-seven point five billion dollars or more for fiscal year twenty twenty-six, adjusted for inflation the largest NASA budget in thirty years. Advocates from all fifty states and over one hundred countries influenced lawmakers through unprecedented grassroots efforts, highlighting planetary science's value. The budget safeguards upcoming launches like Dragonfly to Titan, NEO Surveyor for near-Earth objects, and early work on the Habitable Worlds Observatory, while funding Mars sample return redesigns despite past challenges.

    NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, known as Maven, awaits recontact after the Mars solar conjunction ended January sixteenth, with engineers in California poised to resume operations studying the red planet's atmosphere loss. On the surface, Curiosity rover continues analyzing Gale Crater's geology.

    Worldwide, patterns emerge of accelerating lunar and planetary missions. Firefly Aerospace plans Blue Ghost Mission two for November, landing NASA's LuSEE-Night radio telescope on the Moon's far side. Intuitive Machines targets its third Nova C lander in late twenty twenty-six from Florida, carrying NASA and international payloads. Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark one pathfinder nears uncrewed lunar debut on New Glenn. Japan's MMX mission and NASA's ESCAPADE twins prepare Mars launches this fall, probing moons and solar wind stripping.

    These developments signal robust recovery for United States planetary science, with stable funding enabling a pipeline of lunar landers, Mars explorers, and solar system probes, fostering insights into habitable worlds and cosmic origins.

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  • Artemis II Readies for Historic February Launch as NASA's Budget Bolsters Planetary Exploration

    Artemis II Readies for Historic February Launch as NASA's Budget Bolsters Planetary Exploration
    Jan 17 2026
    NASA's Artemis II moon rocket completed its rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 17, 2026, marking a key step toward the crewed mission's potential February launch. NASA reports that the giant Space Launch System rocket, stacked with the Orion spacecraft, traveled aboard the historic Crawler Carrier vehicle to Launch Pad 39B, the same site used for Apollo moon missions. Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson stated that a critical fueling test, known as a wet dress rehearsal, is set for February 2 to verify fixes for past fuel leak issues that delayed Artemis I in 2022. If successful, the four astronauts could lift off between February 6 and 10 for a 10-day flight around the Moon, the first human venture beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972.

    This progress aligns with strong U.S. support for planetary science, as the Senate approved a 2026 fiscal year budget providing 24.4 billion dollars to NASA and 7.25 billion dollars to its Science Mission Directorate, rejecting proposed deep cuts and sustaining missions to the Moon and beyond, according to The Planetary Society.

    Worldwide, astronomers are gearing up for a rare solar alignment on January 22, 2026, when Earth positions almost directly between the Sun and interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. USA Herald details how this week-long window, with alignment angles under two degrees, will allow precise brightness measurements to determine if the object's dust grains are carbon-rich, icy, or loosely clumped. Astrophysicist Avi Loeb and Mauro Barbieri note this opportunity precedes 3I/ATLAS's March approach near Jupiter, a focus for NASA's Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency's Juice mission studying ocean moons like Europa and Ganymede for potential habitability.

    Skywatchers in the U.S. can observe Jupiter at its brightest during opposition on January 10, visible high in Gemini, as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory highlights, alongside a Saturn-Moon conjunction on January 23. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope nears a possible early 2026 launch from the U.S., poised to detect thousands of exoplanets and map dark matter, per Astronomy Magazine.

    These events signal emerging patterns in planetary science: accelerated human lunar return via Artemis, budget stability enabling deep-space probes, and timely alignments unveiling interstellar secrets, all enhancing understanding of our solar system and beyond.

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  • Thrilling Advances in American Planetary Science: Artemis 2, Blue Origin's Lunar Lander, and the Roman Space Telescope

    Thrilling Advances in American Planetary Science: Artemis 2, Blue Origin's Lunar Lander, and the Roman Space Telescope
    Jan 14 2026
    American planetary science is experiencing remarkable momentum as multiple missions advance toward historic achievements. NASA's Artemis 2 mission represents the most significant lunar endeavor in decades. According to NASA's latest updates, the Space Launch System megarocket carrying the Orion spacecraft is targeting rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B no earlier than Saturday, January 17th. The four-mile journey on the crawler-transporter will take up to twelve hours. Launch opportunities currently span from late January through April 2026, with the primary window running from January 31st through February 14th. This crewed mission will carry NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman as commander, Victor Glover as pilot, and Christina Koch as mission specialist, alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The mission will test life-support systems, navigation, and communications in deep space ahead of future lunar landings.

    Beyond the moon, American commercial space ventures are advancing rapidly. Blue Origin plans to launch its Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander on a robotic demonstration mission in early 2026, targeting a landing near Shackleton Crater at the moon's south pole. The lander will carry NASA's SCALPSS instrument, which stands for Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies, to image the lunar surface during and after descent and study how landing plumes interact with the moon's regolith.

    Meanwhile, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, construction of which completed in December at Goddard Space Flight Center, represents another cornerstone of American planetary science. The telescope could launch as early as fall 2026 and is expected to discover more than one hundred thousand distant exoplanets during its five-year primary mission while mapping billions of galaxies across cosmic time. The Roman telescope also carries a coronagraph instrument designed to block out a star's light and directly photograph orbiting planets, technology that will pave the way for future missions like NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory.

    Recent developments also include NASA's selection of industry proposals to advance technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, the first mission designed to directly image Earth-like planets and study atmospheric composition for signs of life. Companies including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3 Harris Technologies received three-year contracts to develop these technologies.

    Additionally, NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, called IMAP, recently reached its destination at Lagrange Point 1 on January 10th, approximately one million miles from Earth toward the Sun, where it will monitor solar activity and cosmic radiation for years to come.

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  • Lunar Exploration and Solar System Missions Dominate Planetary Science Agenda for 2023

    Lunar Exploration and Solar System Missions Dominate Planetary Science Agenda for 2023
    Jan 10 2026
    Across the United States, planetary science is entering the new year with intense activity, shifting plans, and renewed political support. NASA reports that preparations for Artemis 2, the first crewed mission around the Moon in more than fifty years, are reaching their final phase at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the Space Launch System rocket scheduled to roll from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad thirty nine B as early as mid January, ahead of a planned early February launch window. According to NASA mission planners, this flight will test the Orion spacecraft in deep space and lay the groundwork for future lunar landings that will carry extensive geology and geophysics experiments on the Moon.

    In cislunar space, NASA announced from its Glenn Research Center in Ohio that engineers have powered up the electrical system for the Gateway lunar space station for the first time. This power and propulsion system, developed with international partners, will eventually support long duration planetary science at the Moon, including observations of the lunar surface, the solar wind, and possibly near Earth asteroids, all from a stable orbit around the Moon.

    Closer to Earth, Congress has just sent a strong signal about the future of planetary science funding. NASA Watch reports that the House of Representatives passed a major funding bill after intense debate over proposed cuts, and the bipartisan Planetary Science Caucus declared that the legislation keeps the United States on track to maintain leadership in space exploration. The caucus statement specifically highlights Mars Sample Return as the highest priority planetary science mission recommended by the 2023 Planetary Sciences Decadal Survey, and frames sustained support for Mars exploration as essential to retaining American expertise at institutions such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

    At the same time, global planetary missions are aligning with this push. The Planetary Society notes that January launch opportunities are opening for Japan’s Martian Moons Exploration mission to Phobos and Deimos, Europe’s Juice spacecraft is preparing a gravity assist near Earth on its way to Jupiter, and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is approaching its earliest possible launch date, promising powerful new studies of exoplanets around distant stars.

    Emerging patterns are clear. United States planetary science is pivoting toward a tightly integrated program, combining human missions around the Moon, a permanent presence in lunar orbit, and sophisticated robotic missions throughout the solar system, while Congress and advocacy groups work in parallel to shield this effort from disruptive budget cuts and preserve long term scientific momentum.

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  • Headline: NASA Pushes Boundaries: Habitable Worlds Observatory Advances Exoplanet Exploration and Solar System Observation

    Headline: NASA Pushes Boundaries: Habitable Worlds Observatory Advances Exoplanet Exploration and Solar System Observation
    Jan 7 2026
    NASA has selected industry proposals to advance technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a flagship space telescope concept designed to directly image Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars and analyze their atmospheres for signs of life. According to NASA, this mission, announced on January 5, 2026, from headquarters in Washington, will also support studies of our universe and human exploration of Mars and the solar system. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division, stated that these awards combine government leadership with commercial innovation to make future missions possible. The proposals build on work from the Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, and upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set for launch no earlier than September 2026.

    In Phoenix, Arizona, the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, running from January 4 to 8 at the Phoenix Convention Center, is highlighting exoplanet research and the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Sessions organized by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program are debating priorities for detecting biosignatures on distant worlds, while discussions cover galaxy evolution using data from James Webb, Hubble, and Chile's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

    Skywatchers in the United States can observe Jupiter at opposition on January 10, when it appears biggest and brightest all year in the constellation Gemini, as noted by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. On January 23, Saturn and the Moon will conjoin in the western sky, with Saturn sparkling below the Moon. The Beehive Cluster, or Messier 44, buzzes into view throughout January evenings.

    Emerging patterns show accelerating U.S. focus on habitable exoplanets and solar system observation, with the Habitable Worlds Observatory poised to answer if we are alone. Meanwhile, NASA's Psyche mission plans a gravity assist at Mars this month, flying within 4,400 kilometers, and Astrobotic's Griffin Mission One eyes a lunar landing under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services. These efforts reveal a strategic push toward life-detection technologies and deep-space readiness, blending public and private innovation.

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  • Soaring U.S. Planetary Exploration: NASA's Artemis, Mars Missions, and Commercial Partnerships Propel Scientific Breakthroughs

    Soaring U.S. Planetary Exploration: NASA's Artemis, Mars Missions, and Commercial Partnerships Propel Scientific Breakthroughs
    Dec 31 2025
    NASA marked significant strides in planetary science throughout 2025, with key developments centered in the United States advancing lunar and Mars exploration. NASA's Artemis program progressed toward the Artemis II test flight, scheduled for early 2026, which will send astronauts on the first crewed mission under the campaign to confirm systems for future lunar landings, including Artemis III. According to NASA, experiments on recent Commercial Lunar Payload Services flights captured over nine thousand first-of-a-kind images of a lunar lander's engine plumes and tested technologies like an electrodynamic dust shield and lunar navigation systems at sites near the Moon's South Pole.

    A major announcement awarded Blue Origin a task order to deliver NASA's VIPER rover, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, to the lunar South Pole in late 2027, aiming to map water ice resources crucial for sustained human presence. Firefly Aerospace secured another flight for 2030, highlighting growing commercial partnerships from U.S. firms. At NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, Steve Sinacore was named to lead fission surface power efforts, developing nuclear systems for powering Moon and Mars bases.

    Mars exploration gained momentum with the National Academies releasing a science strategy for human missions, identifying opportunities to search for signs of life, study planetary evolution, and test in-situ resource utilization. NASA selected participants for a second yearlong ground-based Mars simulation starting in October at facilities in the U.S., alongside tests of deep space inflatable habitats. The agency's fourth Entry Descent and Landing test in three months advanced precision landing capabilities for Mars' thin atmosphere and rugged terrain, conducted at U.S. test ranges.

    Emerging patterns show accelerated U.S.-led innovation through public-private collaborations, with seven new nations joining the Artemis Accords, now nearing sixty signatories, promoting safe exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars faces upcoming tests of its endurance, as reported by Purdue University researchers, while skywatchers note the interstellar comet three-I-ATLAS reaching closest approach to Earth on December nineteenth, observed from dark U.S. skies. These efforts position the United States at the forefront of planetary science, blending robotic precursors with crewed ambitions for multiplanetary expansion.

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