According to a Netherlands Government press release: “Minister Adriaansens also announces that the Netherlands will sign the so-called Artemis agreements. These international agreements were established by the United States to promote transparency and accountability among countries in the exploration and exploitation of the moon and other celestial bodies. It also involves sharing scientific data, granting rights for the use of natural resources in space and reducing space debris.”

Keith’s note: First we hear that Blue Origin and Sierra Space partnership for a commercial space station (Orbital Reef) is falling apart. Now we hear that Northrop Grumman is going to end its independent effort and is going to join with the Voyager Space/Nanoracks team. What was once 4 different space station ideas with NASA funding is now suddenly two i.e. Axiom Space and Voyager Space/Nanoracks/Northrop Grumman. The question is whether this helps NASA as budgets tighten or frees up more funds to make things happen faster. Or both. Or neither. Stay tuned.

Keith’s note: I was just on Alaraby TV in Qatar talking about the recent discovery of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of super-earth exoplanet K2-18b by the Webb Space Telescope and what this means in terms of Astrobiology and the search for life in the universe. It is fun to not have to talk to jaded American TV. Surprise: People outside of our Americo-centric news bubble are interested in things we don’t seem to care much about. Among many other international networks, I have been on Alaraby, Al Arabiya, Alhurra, and Al Jazeera. Also, since I am being translated into Arabic in real time, it is fun since I used to be a professional American Sign Language interpreter (often on TV) and the translators like that I am good at parsing technical things for translation at a pace that facilitates translation – in real time. Keith’s fun aside, I get the clear impression that NASA has little – if any – interest in making people available to this vast viewing audience. I have asked NASA PAO about this in the past but they always declined to answer. To be certain, the viewership of these Arabic language networks overlaps – but the core audience is somewhere between 200-300 million located in over 150 countries. NASA has an astonishing soft power and branding reach and it rarely takes full advantage of it. This is one example. Baffling. Anyway: here’s the [Audio]

Keith’s 29 Sep note: OK Team NASA – if you are a civil servant then the OPM Guidance for Shutdown Furloughs is a must-read If you are a contractor or grantee check with your local HR office. Regardless, everyone is going to get royally screwed over due to a dysfunctional clown train also known as the U.S. Congress. Update: Administrator Nelson statement: “If House Republicans force a shutdown, it will have devastating consequences for NASA, families across the country, and America’s global competitiveness. “We are deciding what actions are needed in the event of a congressional Republican-led government shutdown. NASA will maintain the people to protect life and property – operational missions, such as satellites, landers, and rovers, as well as the International Space Station and its crew.” 30 Sep Update: The clowns on the Hill played musical chairs and punted the shutdown for 45 days. So … it looks like everyone’s Thanksgiving may be miserable.

Keith’s note: According to NASA SMD PAO: “NASA has announced an updated plan to continue New Horizons’ mission of exploration of the outer solar system. Beginning in fiscal year 2025, New Horizons will focus on gathering unique heliophysics data, which can be readily obtained during an extended, low-activity mode of operations. While the science community is not currently aware of any reachable Kuiper Belt object, this new path allows for […]

Keith’s note: The Foreign Minister of Bhutan and his entourage made a “courtesy visit” to NASA HQ on Wednesday. NASA only posted a few pictures. Why was the Foreign Minister of Bhutan visiting NASA? Did Bill Nelson talk about Artemis Accords with him? Perhaps issues associated with Himalayan climate change? China? A personal interest in space by Bhutan? Of course NASA Public Affairs and the Office of International and Interagency Relations are silent on this. Oh yes: the fancy shiny new NASA.gov website search engine finds no mention of this visit even though pics are posted at NASA.gov

Keith’s note: How are we going to train the Artemis Generation for the worlds that they will one day explore? Not just people in the U.S. – but everywhere on Earth where an aspiring space scientist/engineer/explorer is looking for their chance to join in on this adventure? On NASA TV yesterday some NASA folks checked the OSIRIS-REx SRC at its landing site in a remote desert for damage and moved it to a lab – just like a Star Trek Away Team might do. Where do you go to learn how to do field excursions like this? Think about it. There are thousands of locations on Earth that are analogs for the extraterrestrial environments that we might encounter with our droids and/or ourselves. What would it take to have an analog exploration program in every nation? Dylan Taylor and I put some thoughts together here on how to start to address this: “Why The Space Industry Needs A Space College“. More info on the concept can be found here. As the JPLers say ‘Dare Mighty Things’.

Keith’s note: Look what book Charity Weeden swore her civil servant oath with at NASA “Contact” by Carl Sagan. Good things lie ahead. According to NASA “NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Monday Charity Weeden will serve as associate administrator for the agency’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS), effective immediately. Weeden succeeds Bhavya Lal, who left the agency in July, and Ellen Gertsen, who had been serving as the office’s acting leader since then.” More

Keith’s note: OSIRIS-REx has returned samples to Earth. I was on BBC World TV just after midnight last night [Audio]. I was on Deutsche Welle this morning at 11:00 AM EDT [Audio] and again at 1:00 PM EDT [Audio] I did ABC Radios Breakfast News morning show – in Australia (no recording). Finally, I was on CGTN at 5:10 pm EDT [Audio]. Meanwhile there is more info from NASA.

Keith’s note: NASA has issued another report (“New NASA Report Looks at Societal Considerations for Artemis“). Titled “Artemis, Ethics and Society: Synthesis from a Workshop“ the report “seeks to foster discussion about how the agency can make such dramatic progress in a way that takes ethical and societal considerations into account”. I have read through it and decided to make an annotation of the overall findings with my usual snark. This is a typical NASA report – one that spends a lot of time in less than normal stilted and cautionary English talking about the process of writing the report – and less time on providing useful information. It is mostly ‘OMG we’re actually going to do this whole Artemis Moon thing for real and we jumped into this without thinking things through ahead of time. Or maybe some other part of NASA has done this for other programs and lost that report or who cares this is different. But we need bullet charts and action items in boxes to show that we are serious’. To be fair some people involved actually rose to the occasion and said some smart things – but in many cases NASA punted because they were afraid to step outside of their sandbox or look out of their organizations’ stovepipe. In addition, NASA, as an agency is risk adverse in every imaginable way. And when to comes to public affairs, education, and public outreach or talking to real people on the street they are terrified of bad results. So they stay in their cubicles and have meetings about sentences and do not venture out beyond what the groupthink sees as safe. This whole Artemis thing is about going to live on the Moon long-term and then go to Mars. That is a bold undertaking – on steroids. NASA needs to stop finding excuses not to interact with the real world and new partners and instead “go boldly” into this endeavor. Back when the whole exploration re-visit/reboot happend post-Columbia, the Exploration AA Craig Steidle had a simple exploration logo with the latin phrase “audaces fortuna juvat” – “Fortune favors the bold”. I see nothing remotely “bold” in this report. Below is a stream of consciousness annotation of the four main observations starting on page iii:

Keith’s note: Will someone please explain how a bunch of older folks (all well-intentioned, to be sure) on the NASA Advisory Council are expected to have clear knowledge of what the Artemis Generation actually wants their future in space to be? Based on these official photos, there is no one on the NAC who is apparently under 50. Many are over 60, several are well over 70. Two are over 80. The youngest of them will be in their 60s if/when we land on Mars. Just sayin’ Oh yes I am 68.

Keith’s note: I just sent this off to a bunch of people at NASA. Not really expecting a response. Then again …

Its me again. Complaining. I guessed a few emails so sorry if they bounce. I am ignoring NASA PAO since they show little interest in what I have to say. You have three female NASA scientist/engineer/explorers with real world expeditionary expertise – in the field – or in orbit – or training to go to the Moon. And many more I am not mentioning. Little if any effort is given by NASA to cross over boundaries and stovepipes to bring the full scope of this wide breadth of pure expeditionary expertise together – for the sake of pure exploration – to show that NASA’s reach crosses all boundaries and borders on Earth and in space. A soft power projection bonanza is thus left unrealized.

Keith’s note: This 8 hour video of Space 18th SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) at the United Nations has no one under 50. Most speakers are over 60. 98% are male. Where is the next generation when it comes to speaking about THEIR future in space?

Keith’s note: I came across this photo by Morgan Cable standing in an ice cave and was instantly reminded of the iconic photo taken by Herbert Ponting in Antarctica in 1911. I hope NASA PAO starts to pay a little more attention to the parallels between terrestrial and extraterrestrial exploration as we move out into the solar system with humans and droids. Indeed, that core notion was the impetus for a NASA Administrator’s Symposium that Astronaut John Grunsfeld and I organized for NASA in 2004: “Risk and Exploration Earth, Sea And The Stars” (proceedings for which I was co-editor) Photos: [LEFT] NASA JPL scientist Dr. Morgan Cable tweeted via @starsarecalling on 16 September 2023. Her caption says: “Mapped a moulin today with LIDAR! We’re here at Athabasca Glacier in Canada to do science and engineering testing for the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) Project @NASAJPL Dare mighty things!” [RIGHT] This photo was taken by Herbert Ponting on 5 January 1911 during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ‘Terra Nova Expedition’ aka ‘The British Antarctic Expedition’. Charles Wright and Thomas Griffith Taylor are shown standing in the ice cave or “grotto”. Imagine the Ponting photo updated with Morgan Cable standing in an ice cave on Europa with a lander against. dark sky in the background while Jupiter looms on the horizon.

Keith’s note: NASA has released its latest UAP report. There is a media briefing at 10:00 am EDT and of course, NASA PAO made sure that news media only saw the report by waiting until 29 minutes before the event to release it so we could all speed read it and ask intelligent questions. I spoke with the BBC World Service about the report moments before the press briefing began [Audio]. In a nutshell the report offers nothing new and simply repeats what was said at the committee’s 22 May 2023 meeting in other words – there is weird stuff going on out there and we need to study it more – and maybe dial down the stigma and add some more science. — Update: In the media briefing NASA speakers tried to put forth the notion that NASA should – and will – take study of UAP sightings much more serious using scientific rigor and with transparency to the public. There is no proof for/against the origin of these things – terrestrial or extraterrestrial. The committee chair David Spergel said “NASA can be a key player in a whole of government approach to UAP”. Bill Nelson said that NASA will announce a new Director of UAP research. Moments later a reporter asked who that person is. NASA SMD AA Nicky Fox said that they have a person who has been working on this for a while but she refused to give out “his” name. Dan Evans, NASA SMD assistant deputy associate administrator for research added that they are not going to name the person but that “Science should be free”. The whole stigma/trolling/harassment issue was cited – which is real. Oddly the entire panel was named. That said, what happened to all of that talk of “transparency” Bill Nelson? — Second Update: Here is the [Audio] from my second interview on the BBC World Service as the press event was ending.

Keith’s Note: According to the Times of India: “I congratulate you on the Moon landing. But as an economist let me congratulate you for doing it in a budget less than that of the movie, ‘Interstellar’. Bravo!” International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Georgieva was quoted by a source as saying at a meeting during the G20.” FYI “Interstellar” cost $165 million. “Gravity” cost $100 million. “The Martian” cost $108 million. Chandrayaan-3 will end up costing around $75 million. Just sayin, NASA.

Keith’s note: As was the case with the prior NASA UAP event no one will actually say anything other than “we need to looking this UFO UAP thing“. According to NASA PAO: “NASA will host a media briefing at 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 14, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington to discuss the findings from an unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) independent study team it commissioned in 2022. About 30 minutes before the briefing, the agency will publish the team’s full report online, which aims to inform NASA on what possible data could be collected in the future to shed light on the nature and origin of UAP. The report is not a review or assessment of previous unidentifiable observations“ More

Keith’s note: I was just on the BBC World Service talking about Frank Rubio’s new record on the ISS – and about the Moxie unit making oxygen on Mars. NASA’s press release about MOXIE
NASA says in its release that “MOXIE has generated a total of 122 grams of oxygen – about what a small dog breathes in 10 hours”. OK, so I am (was) an actual NASA space biologist once upon a time. As such I had a few opinions on this. Yes, I mentioned English bulldogs and suggested that they’d last a bit beyond 10 hours. I was on the BBC, so … [Audio]

“The closure of the mishap investigation does not signal an immediate resumption of Starship launches at Boca Chica. SpaceX must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and apply for and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next Starship launch.” More

Keith’s note: According to a GAO report issued today: “Space Launch System: Cost Transparency Needed to Monitor Program Affordability“: “Because the original SLS version’s cost and schedule commitments, or baselines, were tied to the launch of Artemis I, ongoing production and other costs needed to sustain the program going forward are not monitored. Instead, NASA created a rolling 5-year estimate of production and operations costs to ensure that the costs fit within NASA’s overall budget. However, neither the estimate nor the annual budget request track costs by Artemis mission or for recurring production items. As a result, the 5-year estimate and the budget requests are poor measures of cost performance over time. In 2014, GAO recommended that NASA develop a cost baseline that captures production costs for the missions beyond Artemis I that fly SLS Block I. NASA intends to fly SLS Block I for Artemis II, planned for 2024, and Artemis III, planned for 2025. NASA partially concurred, but has not yet implemented this recommendation. A cost baseline would increase the transparency of ongoing costs associated with SLS production and provide necessary insights to monitor program affordability.” Here are More posts in the continuing saga of what SLS actually costs. As if NASA will ever actually know who much these things cost. Why start now?