Keith’s note: So … his is certainly trending right now ….

Source: PSI Planetary Exploration Newsletter: “As many of you will have seen, earlier this week NASA made the shocking decision to cancel the VIPER project following completion of the rover’s build. It now faces the prospect of being dismembered. We have organized an open letter to Congress from the wider science community asking them to refuse any request to cancel this mission, by ensuring that it continues to be included as a budgetary line-item. You can find this letter here: https://forms.gle/XDSzTra4NPSS1VC27 If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the letter’s organizers, Dr Benjamin Fernando ([email protected]) or Dr Parvathy Prem ([email protected]) who have organized this letter in a personal capacity.”

Keith’s note: I am on hiatus for a week or three in the woods here and there. Even If I post something once in a while, I am still on hiatus. So …

Astronaut Joe Engle, pioneer of winged spacecraft — Kansas native, dies at 91, JC Post. Ad Astra

Keith’s note: On this day in 1997 the film “Contact” hit theaters etc. I wrote something in 1997 about a visit I made to West Virginia, Green Bank, hanging out with Jill Tarter, and driving around radio telescopes in a diesel taxi cab. I am posting this from a climber’s hostel in New Hampshire which seems appropriate. “Going Off Source: Time Away With SETI In West Virginia“.

Keith’s note: It would seem that none of International Space Station Research & Development Conference (ISSRDC) will be webcast. No mention whatsoever is made on their website. No mention of any webcast is made at NASA.gov either. NASA recently issued a contract to destroy the International Space Station. Not even bothering to webcast this event – which supposedly exists to promote and explain all that the ISS has done – is too much for CASIS or NASA to bother setting up. No one at NASA seems to care since they all have Artemis Go Fever. As such, the 300+ million U.S. taxpayers who put billions into this amazing resource aren’t entitled to learn what NASA did with all their money or why ISS needs to be splashed. The scheduled death of the ISS is not even on the meeting’s agenda. And of course, as Artemis delays mount, NASA will come back for more money without ever truly explaining why they are throwing this astonishing resource away or why they need to build another space station out near the Moon to support missions are moving ever further into the future. And then NASA’s Administrator has the audacity to whine and complain that China may beat the U.S. back to the Moon. DUH, Bill. China has a plan and they stick to it. NASA does not. Update: CASIS sent me a note: “While we are not actively promoting the livestream component to the conference yet (similar to last year), it will be made open to the public during the event. We will promote the livestream component for those not able to physically attend in a media advisory prior to the conference. Additionally, there will be social pushes during the event driving the public to the livestream.”

Keith’s note: The draft FY 2025 spending bill is working its way through the House. NASA Science gets the same amount as it was supposed to get in FY 2024 which equates to a ~$230M cut. NASA education programs get $89 million – the same as it was supposed to get in FY 2024 i.e no big increase as The White House had requested. Looks like the Artemis Program will do OK – even if the education for the Artemis Generation will not.

Keith’s note: In case you missed it while the Starliner thruster issue has been in the headlines, yet another EVA was canceled due to a spacesuit issue. First there was a problem with a suit’s comfort/flexibility. Then there was a water leak the other day. Scratch two EVA attempts. These suits are 50-ish years old – older than some of the astronauts who wear them. Now NASA is going to the Moon for long duration stays and new space suits are needed. Axiom and Collins had xEVAS contracts. Now Collins has decided to discontinue their work leaving only one company to produce the new spacesuits. Redundancy in terms of suppliers has been a smart thing that NASA has been doing. Now they will have only one spacesuit option and if it is delayed then that becomes a big pacing item for the whole Artemis thing – as if there are not already enough of those.

Keith’s note: According to NASA Selects International Space Station US Deorbit Vehicle “NASA is fostering continued scientific, educational, and technological developments in low Earth orbit to benefit humanity, while also supporting deep space exploration at the Moon and Mars. As the agency transitions to commercially owned space destinations closer to home, it is crucial to prepare for the safe and responsible deorbit of the International Space Station in a controlled manner after the end of its operational life in 2030.” Simply throwing the ISS away when it has been shown to be upgradable and repairable is short sighted to say the least. Then again NASA simply does not have the money to operate ISS, build and operate Gateway, and fund whatever emerges from the whole Axiom/Starlab/Orbital Reef mix – and do the Artemis things on the Moon – not to mention the notional Mars exploration things that NASA also crows about. NASA’s 50-year-old space suits leak and one of the replacement efforts is quitting. Oh – and Mars Sample Return and other large space science projects want their share too. That said, throwing things away is defeatist, unimaginative, and not the way we’re going to expand throughout the solar system – all while reusability is the new paradigm in the space world. Indeed, SpaceX is making and improving Starships at a rate that is more like a consumer electronics company. One Starship flight could add a decade of life to the ISS. FWIW Here is the International Space Station Deorbit Analysis Summary which has this rather odd justification for not allowing a Starship near the ISS: “However, ascending to these orbits would require the development of new propulsive and tanker vehicles that do not currently exist. While still currently in development, vehicles such as the SpaceX Starship are being designed to deliver significant amounts of cargo to these orbits; however, there are prohibitive engineering challenges with docking such a large vehicle to the space station and being able to use its thrusters while remaining within space station structural margins.” Yet NASA is totally cool with docking a Starship to the Gateway space station 240,000 miles from Earth. But let’s splash ISS instead. NASA is at risk of being known for what it can’t do as opposed to what it can do. Imagination is no longer in NASA’s toolkit.

Keith’s note: This evening I spoke with CGTN about the return of the Chang’e-6 lunar sample return mission; global interest in lunar exploration; and space exploration in general. [Audio] Video below:

Keith’s note: I just recorded a piece for Scripps News that should be airing on its various networks/stations about the current Boeing Starliner status and the planned EVA. ICYMI according to a Friday update from NASA: “NASA and Boeing leadership are adjusting the return to Earth of the Starliner Crew Flight Test spacecraft … Mission managers are evaluating future return opportunities following the station’s two planned spacewalks on Monday, June 24, and Tuesday, July 2.” And today’s EVA was cancelled “due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit on Dyson’s spacesuit.” So … things are going to be TBD-ish for a while.

Keith’s note: according to GAO Report Open Recommendations: National Aeronautics and Space Administration: “Since our May 2023 letter, NASA has implemented four of our nine open priority recommendations. … We ask your continued attention to the remaining five priority recommendations. We are not adding any new recommendations this year:

• To provide the Congress with the necessary insight into program affordability, ensure its ability to effectively monitor total program costs and execution, and facilitate investment decisions, the NASA Administrator should direct the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate to establish a separate cost and schedule baseline for work required to support the Space Launch System (SLS) Block I Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) and report this information to the Congress through NASA’s annual budget submission.11 If NASA decides to fly the SLS Block I beyond EM-2, NASA should establish separate life-cycle cost and schedule baseline estimates for those efforts, to include funding for operations and sustainment, and report this information annually to Congress via the agency’s budget submission.
• To provide the Congress with the necessary insight into program planning and affordability, and to decrease the risk of cost and schedule overruns, NASA’s Administrator should direct the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate to identify a range of possible missions for each future SLS variant that includes cost and schedule estimates and plans for how those possible missions would fit within NASA’s funding profile.
• The NASA Administrator should ensure that the NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations creates a life-cycle cost estimate for the Artemis III mission.
• The Administrator of NASA should fully define and document the role of the senior agency official for privacy or other designated privacy official in reviewing and approving system categorizations, overseeing privacy control assessments, and reviewing authorization packages.
• The NASA Administrator should ensure the NASA Senior Procurement Executive uses a balanced set of performance metrics to manage the agency’s procurement organizations, including outcome-oriented metrics to measure (a) cost savings/avoidance, (b) timeliness of deliveries, (c) quality of deliverables, and (d) end-user satisfaction.”

Keith’s note: I just did an interview for ARD TV (German) which is being edited up for later use and also a live interview on Alhurra TV (VOA Arabic language) [audio] about the Boeing Starliner mission. Below: Screen grabs while I was waiting to go on Alhurra. Often the audiences don’t think about space and are preoccupied with more basic things in their daily lives. I actually consider it a priviledge to be asked to talk about space to these audiences. I wish NASA would do more of it. Just sayin’ [More]

“Since 2023, NASA’s cumulative cost and schedule performance has improved. Cost overruns decreased from $7.6 billion in 2023 to $4.4 billion in 2024. Schedule overruns decreased from a total of 20.9 years in 2023 to 14.5 years in 2024. These decreases are primarily because two projects, the Space Launch System and Exploration Ground Systems, demonstrated their initial capability and left the portfolio. Previously, these projects accounted for $3.6 billion in cost overruns and each experienced delays of 4 years. … Regardless of their category, most of the projects in development did not experience annual cost growth or schedule delays since 2023. Specifically, 11 out of the 16 major projects in development did not experience cost growth in 2024, and 13 out of the 16 reported no schedule delays this year. … Five of the 16 projects experienced cost growth since our last report, which increased the development portfolio’s estimated overruns by $476.6 million. … In March 2024, NASA announced that it was canceling OSAM-1, a category 1 project with a history of poor cost and schedule performance. … NASA delayed setting cost and schedule baselines for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a category 1 project with a potential life-cycle cost of $8 billion to $11 billion.” Full report

Keith’s note: I was just on CNN this morning talking about the current status of the Boeing Starliner which is currently docked with the International Space Station [Audio].

Keith’s note: Sources report that former JPL director and planetary science leged Ed Stone has died. Details to follow. Ad Astra Ed. Update from JPL: Ed Stone, Former Director of JPL and Voyager Project Scientist, Dies

Keith’s note: The NASA Astrobiology Graduate Conference (AbGradCon) is underway from 11-13 June at Cornell University. Yet there is no mention of this event at the official NASA Astrobiology website or its event page; at its 827,000+ follower Twitter feed @NASAAstroBio; at the NASA Science Mission Directorate webpage; The NASA STEM Education webpage; NASA+ scheduled events webpage; or even the Cornell University webpage. No email about links was sent out to the NASA Astrobiology mailing list or media. Here is the official AbGradCon webpage. Here are the live webcast links via the NASA Astrobiology YouTube page (that they tell no one about) starting at 9:00am EDT/1:00pm GMT each day: 11 Jun, 12 Jun, 13 Jun. Only NASA could take a subject as potentially profound as Astrobiology – the search for life elsewhere in the universe – and ignore even the most basic rudiments of outreach and public awareness. FWIW David Grinspoon and Lindsay Hayes I am not exactly sure who is in charge of outreach strategy for NASA’s Astrobiology program but they have failed miserably in this instance. Instead of offering access to students nationally – and globally – in what would be a wonderful exercise of soft power – NASA just sits on its hands. Someone needs to fix this.

Keith’s Note: according to William Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut, killed in San Juan Islands plane crash: “Retired American astronaut William Anders, who was a member of the Apollo 8 crew, was killed in a plane crash just off the San Juan Islands on Friday afternoon. Anders’ son, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Anders, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The plane that crashed was a vintage Air Force T-34 Mentor, which is owned by Anders, who is also a San Juan County resident.” I met Mr. Anders at an event that Leroy Chiao and I put on at LSU with Sean O’Keefe. He was totally approachable and funny and went into incredible detail about his mission including the famous ‘Earthrise” pictures. Ad Astra. Update: NASA Administrator Remembers Apollo Astronaut William Anders

Keith’s note: I was on Al Mashhad – المشهد today to talk about the SpaceX Starship launch and other space news. [Audio]