Space News and Discussions

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NASA's Newest Space Telescope Is Ready to Begin Investigating Dark Energy
Construction has wrapped up on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
By Graham Templeton December 8, 2025

https://www.extremetech.com/science/nas ... ark-energy
No, not that Nancy Grace. NASA's newest space telescope, named after the agency's first Chief of Astronomy, is physically complete and ready to begin ramping up to launch. It's slated to enter orbit no later than May 2027, carrying with it several high-precision devices and a mission to investigate the fundamental physics of the universe.

Infrared astronomy mainly involves looking at the coldest, most distant, or hidden parts of the universe, obscured by storms of confounding information. The new Roman telescope, as it's also known, is equipped with two main instruments: the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument.

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The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is complete
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-nancy-gra ... scope.html
by Evan Gough, Universe Today

If you feel a thrill every time we discover something new about the cosmos, then November 25th may have been a noteworthy day to you. That's the day that NASA completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. The two main segments of the powerful space telescope were joined together in the large clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center that day. This means that the telescope is on track for launch as early as Fall 2026.

The Roman is an infrared telescope that's set to become a flagship in the telescope fleet. It has only two instruments, the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) and the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI). Its WFI gives it a view that's 100 times larger than the Hubble's, and its coronagraph will let it block out the starlight when observing exoplanets and exoplanet-forming disks. Its main science objectives are the study of dark energy, completing an exoplanet census, detecting primordial black holes, and using its coronagraph to directly image nearby exoplanets and their spectra.

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Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman confirmed as new NASA chief

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/b ... rcna248690

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For the 1st time ever, a person who uses a wheelchair will fly to space

December 18, 2025

Blue Origin will make history when it sends the first person who uses a wheelchair past the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary of space that's 62 miles above Earth, on its next mission.

On Thursday, a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket will take Michaela 'Michi' Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer who suffered a spinal cord injury after a mountain biking accident, along with five others, on a journey past the Kármán line. New Shepard rockets are fully reusable spacecraft that Blue Origin says require less maintenance between flights, saving money and reducing waste.

The NS-37 mission will be the 16th human flight for Blue Origin, which has taken 86 people -- 80 individuals -- above the Kármán line.

Benthaus, who works for the European Space Agency, has dedicated her career to scientific collaboration to advance interplanetary exploration, according to Blue Origin. Since her 2018 accident, she has advocated for greater access to space.

Benthaus flew aboard a Zero-G research flight in 2022 -- also known as the "Vomit Comet" -- and completed an analog astronaut mission, simulating space activities on Earth. She continues to pursue sporting activities outside of work, including wheelchair tennis, according to Blue Origin.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/1st-time-pers ... =128483608



Blue Origin via AP

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US House and Senate Push for Regular NASA Budget
The final appropriations bill aims to maintain NASA's budgets from 2024 and 2025, instead of cutting the agency's allocations by nearly a third.
By Jon Martindale January 6, 2026

https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/u ... asa-budget
Despite the Trump administration's attempts to slash NASA's budget by nearly a third in 2026, House and Senate appropriators have proposed a final bill that would see the space agency maintain its budgets from 2024 and 2025, SpacePolicyOnline reports. Although this represents a real-terms cut due to inflation, it is far grander than the proposed budget by the second Trump administration.

In a budget proposal from May 2025, the White House suggested a mere $18.8 billion in funding for NASA. This would have led to the cancellation of dozens of planned projects and to the derailment of key missions, including Mars sample recovery and lunar exploration. The new House and Senate proposal, however, would instead provide NASA with $24.438 billion in funding for fiscal year 2026: only slightly less than the $24.875 billion it received in 2024 and 2025.

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Watch SpaceX launch NASA's Pandora exoplanet-studying satellite on Jan. 11

https://www.space.com/space-exploration ... -on-jan-11

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Ailing astronaut, colleagues return to Earth in first NASA medical evacuation

https://thehill.com/homenews/space/5690 ... plashdown/

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NASA's new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-nasa-moon ... onaut.html
by Marcia Dunn

NASA's giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts' first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.

The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.

The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket began its 1 mph (1.6 kph) creep from Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile (six-kilometer) trek was expected to take until nightfall.

Throngs of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket's exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA's new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.

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