Keith’s note: NASA and ESA are celebrating Hubble’s 35th birthday today. But the next 5 birthdays will be sad. According to space science community sources the pending budget from OMB orders NASA to start shutting Hubble off ASAP with a 20% budget cut in the next year’s budget with a zeroed budget after 5 years (2030). Grant money will evaporate. ACS, WFC3 IR channel, STIS CCD, will be turned off. Instrument scientists, software developers and flight controllers will be laid off. Oh well. Its been fun Hubble. Oh yes: NASA Roman is toast too. Lots of people would like to weigh in on this and other science cuts but they cannot. For now.

Keith’s note: The Fram2 crew and their SpaceX ship “Resilience” are in orbit after a flawless ride uphill. I did launch commentary on Bloomberg Radio [audio] and was also on Deutsche Welle TV [audio].

Keith’s note: I now have an up-to-date NASAWatch account on Bluesky at @nasawatch.bsky.com in addition to @nasawatch on Twitter.

Keith’s update: Now the page is approved and online again. WTF Meta? Keith’s earlier note: Here we go again. Meta has suspended the Facebook NASAWatch page – again for “community standards violations” . They took it down a week ago, denied my repeated protests, then suddenly restored it. It has been online for ~20 years. This is what you have to put up with if you try and get news to NASA people affected by layoffs, DOGE etc. See As DOGE focuses on NASA, Facebook suspends NASAWatch. ‘A curious coincidence’? from the Houston Chronicle on 21 Feb 2025 about the earlier suspension. Oh yes – on the shutdown notice it says “Good news: no violations to show”. So – there are no violations, so why was it taken down for “violations“?

Update: To all NASAWatch supporters – we reached our fundraising goal – with a little extra to spare. Thank you. The new warp core and enhanced shields are now online. Time to engage the DOGE. Ad Astra

Keith’s note: Here are my two tweets to the NASA world today. The professional organizations that supposedly support NASA and the space community are too sheepish to stand up and say anything. And the people in the NASA community are scared of standing up to say anything. It’s a perfect storm of silence. Ad Astra y’all,

Keith’s note: NASA PAO just sent this important clarification on science advisory groups to Marcia Smith @SpcPlcyOnline – but not to other media (see below). It would seem that NASA PAO and OCOMMS are simply clueless as to how external media sources are trying to get messages out regarding things that are going on – in a way that NASA cannot. If NASA is too lazy to be smart and proactive about this then why should we bother? Be certain to follow @SpcPlcyOnline to catch the things @NASAWatch is not provided with. Ad Astra y’all. Update: I finally got a response from PAO late Monday night. Apparently you can only get certain information of direct relevance to the entire NASA family if you ask for it. PAO will not proactively release this information to all media.

Keith’s note: Have a look at “CDC Researchers Ordered to Retract Papers Submitted to All Journals“ at MedPage which says “In the order, CDC researchers were instructed to remove references to or mentions of a list of forbidden terms: Gender …” OK, so that apparently means a lot of NASA scientific research needs to be retracted too. It took 60 seconds and a simple word search to find these papers at PubMed containing at least one term forbidden in CDC papers:

• Sex-specific cardiovascular adaptations to simulated microgravity in Sprague-Dawley rat
• Women in space: A review of known physiological adaptations and health perspectives
• Spaceflight induces changes in gene expression profiles linked to insulin and estrogen
• Adaptation to full weight-bearing following disuse in rats: The impact of biological sex on musculoskeletal recovery

Keith’s note: I just spoke with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio about the future of NASA, the Moon, China, Elon Musk, and Jared Isaacman, etc. [audio].

Keith’s note: I was just on CNN talking about the new Artemis program delays, SpaceX, and the stark contrast between NASA programs which cost too much and are constantly delayed – and private sector efforts such as SpaceX and Blue Origin where they make rocket science seem easy and see all of this rocketry as an enabling consumer product. And yes, that is an Enterprise NX-01 crew cap in the background, Mike Gold. [Audio]