Janet Petro NASA Update 21 March 2025

Keith’s note: the following was sent to NASA Employees today: “This week, Crew-9 returned safely to Earth, with Butch, Suni, Nick, and Aleksandr splashing down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida late Tuesday afternoon. I want to commend our teams for their outstanding work in ensuring a smooth return and for executing a seamless handover with Crew-10 aboard the International Space Station this weekend. Our crews and all of us on the ground really embraced the challenge from President Trump of an updated, and somewhat unique, mission plan to bring our crew home early – navigating it with professionalism, skill, and dedication. It was a spectacular liftoff for Anne, Nicole, Takuya, and Kirill, and a very clean countdown leading to their arrival at the space station on Saturday. I’m looking forward to the vital science investigations and technology demonstrations they’ll conduct during their stay.

Here are some other highlights from around the agency:

• Advancing our understanding of space weather: On March 14, NASA’s Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base. This trio of small satellites will study auroral electrojets – intense electric currents flowing high above Earth’s poles – helping us better understand space weather and its effects on our planet.
• Moon to Mars momentum: Teams at Kennedy Space Center are working toward stacking the Artemis II core stage alongside the boosters that will launch astronauts around the Moon next year, and workers have installed the fairings that protect Orion’s service module during launch and ascent. Meanwhile, a new mobile launcher continues to rise with teams set to install the sixth of ten 40-foot modules next week.
• Blue Ghost Technology Update: The SCALPSS 1.1 instrument collected 9,000 images throughout the Blue Ghost Mission 1, offering valuable insights into the plume urtace interaction during descent and landing and observing the lunar sunset. Firefl oncluded its mission on March 16, and NASA’s payload teams are now diving into th 51 gigabytes of science and technology data collected.
• Reducing airline delays and operating costs: In Houston, United Airlines pilots successfully conducted operational tests of NASA-developed technologies designed to reduce flight delays. Using technologies from the Air Traffic Management Exploration project, pilots flew efficient re-routes avoiding airspace with bad weather upon departure. United plans to expand the use of these capabilities, another example of how our innovations benefit all humanity.

Today, we will debut a new tool for the “Five Things” request. Civil servants, be on the lookout this afternoon for an email from Jeff Seaton, our chief information officer, about the new weekly accomplishments app. This secure, internal tool makes it easier for you to track and share the incredible work you do each week – streamlining reporting while giving you a running record of your contributions over time. Each week, I will continue to submit our weekly accomplishments and activities on behalf of all agency employees to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and this tool will provide a straightforward way to share your work as part of that process.

Additionally, our initial submission in response to President Trump’s Workforce Optimization Initiative was delivered to OPM yesterday. Over the past few weeks, an internal team has defined a strategy to identify and act on opportunities for optimizing our organization – whether by streamlining operations, redueing duplicative reporting and analysis, finding areas to accelerate decision velocity, or identifying cost-savings measures. Rather than prescribing specific changes at this point, our initial submission outlined areas we will explore to find the best approach for our agency’s future. In the coming weeks, we will evaluate where we can make these changes, while also considering the potential for any new priorities from the administration and the next administrator once confirmed.

Finally, I’d like to revisit how I sign off my emails to you. If you recall, in my first email as acting administrator, I explained that since becoming director of Kennedy Space Center, I have signed each correspondence “Embrace the Challenge,” as a reminder to each of you to lean into what’s new and stretching, because when we avoid challenges, we miss the opportunity to grow.

I won’t deny that since I’ve been in this role, we’ve dealt with a lot of new items – things that have tested us in ways we didn’t expect. But “Embrace the Challenge” isn’t about making light of our reality – it’s about how we choose to move forward. We may not control every decision, but we do control how we show up, adapt, and bring our best to the work ahead. I’ve seen this team do just that – facing uncertainty with resilience, supporting one another, and delivering on NASA’s mission. In moments like these, in the face of uncertainty, we don’t just endure – we rise.

Embrace the Challenge,

Janet