Keith’s note: Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro just gave a plenary overview of NASA science at NAS Space Science Week [audio] This was a clear snapshot of what NASA science is, how the agency leads the world in this endeavor, its importance as an economic multiplier, and its value as an enabling tool for all forms of exploration. Of course, no details were offered on budgets, personnel, etc. Petro said “While I cannot speculate on decisions that have not been made yet, I can tell you this: NASA’s commitment to scientific excellence has never waivered and it will not waiver now.” “NASA is and will continue to be the global leader in space exploration and scientific discovery”. Of course, this is all moot if the White House/OSTP/OMB/OPM/DOGE says “Yea, yea, yea. So what. You’re still cut.”

Keith’s note: In opening Space Science Week at the National Academy, Rep. Mike Haridopolos (FL-08) just said that President Trump “has spared NASA from the large budget and personnel cuts” due to the importance of Artemis and “The only people who left are those who took the buyout.” People at NASA have already been fired and looming budget cuts will gut NASA science. Someone needs to brief the Congressman about the facts on the ground. Just sayin’.

Keith’s note: I just learned of my friend Jack Boyd’s death. I met Jack shortly after I joined NASA In 1986 and stayed in regular contact with him ever since. Jack WAS NASA – having lived 99 years, starting at the agency before it was even called NASA – longer than anyone at NASA Ames. When he retired in 2020 I sent an email to NASA Ames PAO asking if this announcement was a typo. Jack was not the retiring type. Jack always had something valuable (and funny) to say to me and was probably one of the nicest people to have ever worked on America’s space program. #AdAstra Jack.

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: as has been the case since the 1990s I will be featuring reports from my long time friend Dale Andersen as he continues his astrobiology exploration work at Lake Untersee, Antarctica. You can find an archive of the reports here. Meanwhile here’s the latest: “Keith, After our arrival, we settled into one of the small huts at the ice runway operated by Ultima-Antarctic Logistics (formerly ALCI) and began preparing for the 125 km traverse to Lake Untersee. The past two days have been highly productive. UAL, having collaborated with us for multiple seasons, understands our needs quite well. Working together, we are approaching our departure date, potentially set for next Wednesday. We still have a significant amount of work to complete before beginning the traverse. Today’s conditions are challenging, featuring blowing snow, low visibility, and periodic whiteouts, so outdoor activities will be limited.” More.

Keith’s note: Today’s “Obvious Question Begging An Answer Award” goes to Dennis Lees for his op ed “Earth’s ocean is in crisis. Why spend $5 billion to study the one on Jupiter’s moon Europa?“ in the LA Times which asks “As a marine ecologist, I’ve studied marine sedimentary ecosystems since 1972. My studies show that our current knowledge of these ecosystems is quite poor. Therefore, in this age of existential threats to species habitability and survival on Earth, I have serious objections to spending $5 billion on a project to explore the sea on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to see if it contains chemicals that might support life. What real good will that do us? Can you imagine how much good it would do to spend those funds here to learn how our own oceans function and how to deal with injuries we humans are causing? What are our funding priorities? What benefits will knowing the chemistry of Europa’s sea create for us here as our planet becomes less habitable?”. If NASA has not explained this mission adequately to the broader scientific community – especially one wherein oceanography is constantly evoked – then maybe NASA PAO (Marc Etkind et al) need to do some clean up. IMHO the first thing you’d want to see is a response to the LA Times from NASA JPL Center Director Laurie Leshin and/or NASA SMD AA Nicky Fox (and whomever does the semi-invisible chief scientist stuff at NASA HQ) – with a broadcast via NASA’s vast web and social media presence. NASA should take these rather simple and credible questions as a challenge to be more transparent to its “stakeholders”. NASA needs to not only speak in a rational way to the scientific community since their support is often needed to keep the NASA science gravy train running but also to the remaining 99.999999% of humanity in the real world who is faced with existential problems right now – and is being asked to pay for these missions.A good place to start would be with the “Artemis Generation” since they are the ones who are going go home with excited questions about space for their parents and the parents need to give quality answers that feed these dreams.. At least that is what happened to those of us who are the “Apollo Generation” and look what we did. Just sayin.

Keith’s note: OK. 3 expert military aviation witnesses with solid careers serving their country are currently talking about UAP sightings in public before Congress. No tin foil hats, no talk of abductions or Elvis. Just details about totally inexplicable aerodynamic performance. Just sayin’. One witness said he can’t comment in open session if government has had contact with aliens and that non-human biological remains have been recovered from crashes. The whole Life in the universe thing is a long standing feature of NASA’s research portfolio. This congressional testimony begs an inquiry to NASA Public Affairs. Alas, if I asked Marc Etkind and NASA PAO to comment they’d either 1. not respond 2. tell me that they have a committee that is working on the topic and that I am welcome to read their report whenever it comes out.

Keith’s Note: we did the big move to WordPress. Now I need to figure out how to get NASAWatch back out on the racetrack again. We picked a slow time to do this. And then NASA decided to try and launch SLS on 29 August. Oh well.

Blue Origin “Gambled” with its Moon lander pricing, NASA says in legal documents, The Verge “Overall, NASA effectively called BS on that argument, saying “Blue Origin made a bet and it lost.” Blue Origin “made an assumption about the Agency’s HLS budget, built its proposal with this figure in mind, and also separately made a calculated bet that if NASA could not afford Blue Origin’s initially-proposed price, the Agency would […]

Multi-Agency Research and Development Priorities for the FY 2023 Budget, OMN/OSTP “This memorandum outlines the Administration’s multi-agency R&D priorities for formulating fiscal year (FY) 2023 Budget submissions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The priorities covered in this memo require continued investments in R&D; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and engagement; STEM workforce development; technology transfer and commercialization; and research infrastructure, with emphasis on Historically Black […]

GAO: Priority Open Recommendations: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, GAO “In April 2020, GAO identified 12 priority recommendations for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Since then, NASA has implemented one of those recommendations when it calculated the Space Launch System program’s developmental cost growth using a baseline adjusted to reflect the scope of work planned for its first mission. GAO also closed two recommendations as not implemented. Since […]

Watch TIME’s Exclusive Footage of NASA’s Most Powerful Rocket Ever Under Construction, Time Time’s Jeffrey Kluger says “A rocket this big does not come cheap. Developing both the SLS and the ground systems that will support it will cost $11.5 billion, NASA says. And this is for a rocket that, unlike the space shuttle or the reusable boosters built by SpaceX, will be flown once and thrown away. According to […]

Keith’s update: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki just made the following comments at the daily press briefing: “Kristen … asked a great question about the Artemis program – which I dug into and I am very excited about it now to tell my daughter all about it. So .. for those of you who have not been following it as closely, through the Artemis program, the United States government […]

Keith’s note: NASA held a Mars Perseverance media briefing today. I asked a question that follows up on my earlier post “NASA’s Mars 2020 Websites Are Not Ready For Prime Time” wherein I noted that NASA PAO and the Aeronautics and Technology directorates are not paying all of the attention to this mission as you’d expect them to be. My question: “My question should be addressed to people who are […]

Heads up Michoud and Stennis. #HurricaneDelta pic.twitter.com/EPycGeaG7B — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 7, 2020 Keith’s note: Let’s hope that the SLS hardware weathers the storm.

Keith’s note: NASA has an Astrobiology rover heading to Mars. Time to dial up the Astrobiology stuff, right? Guess again. Check out the NASA SMD website. Do a search for Search for “astrobiology”. These are the top search results – yes they are rather stale. Not exactly the top shelf outreach that you’d expect SMD to be doing for a $2 billion Astrobiology mission on its way to Mars. Just […]

Boeing tried to amend bid after guidance from NASA official, raising concerns it received inside information, Washington Post “A person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said: “I can tell you with 100 percent confidence that no laws were broken. What we are talking about are conversations that occurred outside the normal dictated channels but didn’t violate the […]

Keith’s note: At a ASEB virtual meeting today SMD AA Thomas Zurbuchen announced that Webb will not be launch in March 2021 saying “That is not in the cards right now.” Delays due to COVID-19 resulted in single shifts of work instead of the planned double shifts. No new launch date has been offered but Zurbuchen was optimistic that a launch in 2021 is still possible.

NASA HEOMD AA @DouglasLoverro was asked to resign and he has agreed to do so. Details to follow. — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) May 19, 2020 Well @VP Pence told @JimBridenstine and @NASA to land on the Moon by 2024 "By any means necessary". So @DouglasLoverro did and the powers that be got nervous. So he is gone. So much for the whole #Artemis #Moon2024 thing. #NASA no longer takes risks. […]