NEW FROM NASA
NEW FROM NASA NEWS
NASA Day of Remembrance: January 23 is the day we honor those who have lost their lives furthering the cause of exploration and discovery. At the top of the list are the astronauts lost in the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but don’t forget the loss of Apollo 1 (Grissom, White, and Chaffee), and the other intrepid souls on the Space Mirror Memorial (astronauts Freeman, See, Bassett, and Williams; MOL astronaut Lawrence; X-15 pilot Adams; Space Ship 2 pilot Alsbury; and astronaut Carter. I like also to include the four cosmonauts killed during Space travel: Komarov, Dobrovolsky, Volkov, and Patsayev. We grieve, then salute.
Here's Hoping 2026 is a Good Year for Space Exploration: It could well be, especially with the restoration of NASA’s budget. In addition to the flight of ARTEMIS II (see Item below), the following advances are slated for this year.
- NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed construction recently and could be launched as early as this Fall. Its capabilities complement those of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Simonyi Telescope at the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile. It will be used to find exoplanets, map billions of galaxies, and study dark matter and dark energy. For more on this wonderful instrument, see: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov; https://www.stsci.edu/roman; and https://earthsky.org/space/nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope.
- The Indian Space Research Organization will conduct non-crewed test flights of a launch system that could make them the fourth nation capable of placing astronauts in orbit. For more about the ISRO, see: https://www.isro.gov.in.
- China plays its cards pretty close to the vest, but we do know that they are planning to launch another lunar landing mission, Chang’e 7, to the lunar south pole sometime in the mid-year. The mission comprises an orbiter, a lander, a rover, and a small flying “hopper,” all looking for water ice in permanently-shadowed areas near the crater named for the famous polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. For more on China’s objectives, see: https://www.space-agencies.com/2025/10/09/change-7-and-8-the-chinese-missions-paving-the-way-for-human-exploration-of-the-moon.
- JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, will launch the Martian Moons eXploration mission (MMX) late this year. Once in orbit around Mars, it will spend three years examining its two moons at close range, then collect a sample from Phobos and return it to Earth. For more on this ambitious effort, see: https://www.mmx.jaxa.jp/en and https://www.mmx.jaxa.jp/en/science.
- I’ll end this segment with a SMILE, the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere link Explorer, a joint ESA/China satellite that will investigate the details of the interaction between the charged particles of the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere. It’s due to launch some time in April or May. For more information about SMILE, see: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Smile/Smile_factsheet2 and https://english.news.cn/20240927/e5ca27fef8484f8c8665f3b228f2810b/c.html.
NEW FROM NASA FYI
Jared Isaacman Becomes NASA’s Administrator: “Jared Isaacman was sworn in Thursday [18 Dec] as NASA’s 15th administrator by District Judge Timothy J. Kelly. The oath was taken during a ceremony held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.” For more information, see: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-welcomes-15th-administrator-jared-isaacman. Joe Anselmo, Editor-in-Chief of Aviation Week & Space Technology, shares his thoughts here: https://aviationweek.com/space/budget-policy-regulation/editor-can-isaacman-reinvigorate-nasa .
NASA Launches ESCAPADE mission to Mars Successfully: “A pair of NASA spacecraft ultimately destined for Mars will study how its magnetic environment is impacted by the Sun. The mission also will help the agency prepare for future human exploration of Mars.
“NASA’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft launched at 3:55 p.m. EST, Thursday, aboard a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.”
“The twin spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, will investigate how a never-ending, million-mile-per-hour stream of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, has gradually stripped away much of the martian atmosphere, causing the planet to cool and its surface water to evaporate.” For more, see: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-blue-origin-launch-two-spacecraft-to-study-mars-solar-wind. See also: https://aviationweek.com/space/space-exploration/mars-bound-science-satellites-launched-new-glenn.
NASA – ISRO Radar Satellite is Operational: “The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth-observing radar satellite’s first images of our planet’s surface are in, and they offer a glimpse of things to come as the joint mission between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) approaches full science operations later this year.
“Images from the spacecraft, which was launched by ISRO on July 30, display the level of detail with which NISAR scans Earth to provide unique, actionable information to decision-makers in a diverse range of areas, including disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and agricultural management.”
For more information, see: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-isro-satellite-sends-first-radar-images-of-earths-surface.
NEW FROM NASA LINKS AND OTHER INFORMATION
Apollo 12 Graphic Novel Updated! Tuesday (11/19) was the 56th anniversary of the landing on the Moon of Apollo 12’s LM, Intrepid, with astronauts Pete Conrad and Al Bean aboard. Celebrate this milestone two ways: See the two previous Items of the Week that spotlight the mission here and my personal hero, Al Bean, here. Also, check out the NASA graphic novel of the Apollo 12 mission augmented by info about Artemis (The NASA links to it are dead, but I downloaded it from Wikipedia Commons, and it is listed as being fully in the public domain; you can find it in the “Archive: Other Stuff” section of my website at: https://www.airandspacethisweek.com/otherstuff.
JPL Von Kármán Lectures: Theodore von Kármán was an aerodynamics expert who came to the USA in 1930, fleeing rising tide of Nazism. He was a member of the National Academy of Science and one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL hosted a lecture series named for him that offered a number of interesting Space-related lectures, “Shake and Bake,” being one from last year. For more information on the Von Kármán Lectures, see the archive at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jpl-and-the-community/lecture-series .
Did you know that NASA has an entire Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center? The data they make relatable is really terrific, check it out at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov.
Latest News Releases: https://www.nasa.gov/2025-news-releases
Media Contact Info:https://www.nasa.gov/news/media/info/index.html
JPL News:https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news