Federal space agency
Appears in 37 stories · Last updated Nov 11, 2026
Co-author of the annual ozone hole measurement
On September 18, the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica covered 10.5 million square miles, about 90% of the largest single-day extent ever measured. Averaged across the peak depletion season from September 7 to October 13, it was the seventh-largest hole in 48 years of satellite records.
Updated 18 minutes ago
Funds and oversees the mission through its Heliophysics Division
On November 7, one of NASA's two ESCAPADE spacecraft skimmed about 1,000 miles above Earth and fired its engine for roughly nine minutes. Two days later, its twin did the same at about 650 miles. Both are now on course for Mars.
Updated 2 days ago
Swift reentered Earth's atmosphere on November 4, 2026, after the rescue attempt failed
LINK launched July 3 on the final Pegasus rocket and reached orbit. It never closed on Swift: the spacecraft began tumbling, and NASA and Katalyst called off the rescue in August.
Updated 3 days ago
Awarding authority for Moon Base transportation and lander contracts
NASA will pay Impulse Space to move cargo most of the way to the Moon. On Nov. 7, 2026, the agency gave the Redondo Beach company two task orders under its Moon Base program, with flights scheduled to begin in 2028.
Updated 4 days ago
Buying commercial launch and orbital transfer for lunar cargo
NASA on Nov. 7 named the companies that will ferry cargo between Earth orbit and the Moon, and Quantum Space's Ranger tug made the list. Flying on an Arrow Science and Technology team, Ranger is slated to carry NASA's CAPSTONE-2 spacecraft toward lunar orbit under a $185 million award, about 25% of which goes to Quantum.
Outlined a three-launch Artemis III sequence on October 31; NASA will commit SLS only after Blue Origin's lander is in orbit.
Artemis II returned four astronauts from a trip around the Moon in April 2026, the first crewed lunar flight since Apollo 17 in 1972. On October 23, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman outlined a faster path to the surface: a 14-day Artemis III test in 2027, then a crewed landing in 2028.
Updated 6 days ago
Received $24.44B in FY2026 appropriations; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act adds $10B over six years
Congress preserved federal science budgets for 2026, rejecting President Trump's proposed cuts of 40% to 57%. The administration has kept pressing through agency actions. The National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion from its research account and awarded no new grants in economics or archaeology this year.
Updated Nov 3
Tracks Arctic sea ice via satellite
Arctic sea ice hit its annual minimum on September 12, covering 4.60 million square kilometers. That tied 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest daily extent in the satellite record.
Updated Nov 2
Funded and publicized the Teghaza 001 research
Of roughly 435 known Martian meteorites, almost all formed within the last 2.4 billion years. Teghaza 001, 798.5 grams of rock picked up in the Sahara in Mali in 2022, crystallized at least 4.1 billion years ago. Most of the mass is now held by the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum.
Updated Oct 31
Partner on Project Olympus lunar construction program
ICON printed its 270-plus homes with its own robots. Now it's selling the robots — the Austin company raised $200 million on October 13 to manufacture the Titan multi-story printing system and put it in other builders' hands.
Owns the Mars Exploration Program; approved Perseverance's first mission extension
Perseverance set a new off-world driving record on October 11, 2026, when its odometer read 45.22 kilometers. Opportunity needed nearly 15 years to reach 45.16 kilometers. Perseverance took 5.5.
Updated Oct 30
Partner — provides instruments, navigation support, and sample curation
Japan's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft is healthy two days after launch, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said on October 21, with the critical first sequence of operations complete. The probe lifted off from Tanegashima Space Center at 4:41 a.m. local time on October 20 aboard an H3 rocket.
Updated Oct 26
Mission owner and sample curator for OSIRIS-REx
NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission returned 121 grams of asteroid Bennu to Earth in 2023. New isotopic analysis of that material is rewriting the story of how the solar system formed, and it points a surprising finger at Jupiter.
Lead drafter and host of the Artemis Accords
Uzbekistan became the 77th signatory on October 19, 2026, at a ceremony in Samarkand. Eighteen countries have joined the U.S.-led framework this year, the biggest annual expansion since 2024, when 19 signed.
Updated Oct 23
Customer for Starship Human Landing System under Artemis program
Starship reached orbit for the first time on September 28, 2026, deploying 26 next-generation Starlink satellites. One Raptor 3 engine shut down during the climb, and SpaceX ended the flight early, splashing the ship down in the northern Pacific instead of spending hours in orbit.
Provided satellite data
The Upper Colorado River Basin lost 4.6 trillion gallons of groundwater during the 2020-2022 drought, nearly twice the loss in the drier Lower Basin. Over the full study period from 2004 to 2023, the basin lost about 14 cubic miles of groundwater, the Virginia Tech team reported in Water Resources Research.
Updated Oct 22
Operates the James Webb Space Telescope
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope found that WASP-17b, a scorching gas giant 1,300 light-years away, has a lopsided atmosphere that bulges outward on one side. The finding, published in Nature Astronomy on October 14, comes from a technique called transmission strings that maps the atmosphere's outer edge at many angles during a transit.
Updated Oct 18
Assisted with crystal imaging
A meteor crater buried beneath Oklahoma is nearly 100 million years younger than scientists thought. Zircon crystals from the Ames impact structure date the strike to about 370 million years ago, not 467 million years ago as previously believed.
Updated Oct 14
As of October 2026: Active eclipse research coordinator
An annular solar eclipse swept across Antarctica on February 17, 2026, creating a 'ring of fire' visible for 2 minutes and 20 seconds when the Moon covered 96% of the Sun. Research stations including Concordia and Mirny were in the path of annularity, and satellites from ESA, NOAA, and Eumetsat captured the event from orbit.
Updated Oct 7
As of October 2026: Runs the ISS and Commercial Crew program; leads the Crew-13 mission
SpaceX sent four astronauts to the International Space Station on Thursday, and their capsule caught up with the lab in 7 hours 55 minutes. That's the fastest launch-to-docking trip of any American spacecraft.
Updated Oct 1
As of September 2026: Supplied gravity and magnetic data
ETH Zurich researchers combined gravity and magnetic measurements from orbiting probes and found a buried, strongly magnetized volcanic complex beneath the Moon's far side. The 4.2-billion-year-old structure, roughly 60 kilometers wide, is the strongest evidence yet that the Moon once generated its own magnetic field.
Updated Sep 26
As of September 2026: Operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
A routine data-quality check turned up the largest newly formed crater ever found in the solar system. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a 728-foot-wide crater on the Moon that wasn't in 2011 images.
Updated Sep 19
As of September 2026: Funded the Keck Observatory Archive; operates the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Astronomers have confirmed a planet less than a million years old, the youngest ever found. Elias 2-24 b is a Jupiter-size world still gathering gas from the disk of dust around its host star, 450 light-years from Earth.
Updated Sep 17
As of September 2026: Operates the New Horizons spacecraft
Pluto's surface was supposed to be inert. New analysis of New Horizons imagery reveals dark streaks on Sputnik Planitia, the huge nitrogen glacier, that look like liquid nitrogen recently flowed across the ice. It is the first evidence that liquid has moved across Pluto's surface in the modern era.
As of September 2026: Co-developer and primary mission owner
NASA is targeting 2028 for humans to walk on the Moon again. Before astronauts land, scientists must find ice in shadowed craters and identify safe terrain. On September 11, that mapping work got a new tool: an open-source AI model built by IBM and NASA.
Updated Sep 11
As of September 2026: Operating Europa Clipper, en route to Jupiter
Six moons in the outer solar system hide oceans of liquid water beneath frozen shells, with at least six more candidates. The evidence comes together in Maciej Cegłowski's essay 'Icy Moons Are Ocean Worlds,' which circulated on Hacker News on September 6.
Updated Sep 7
As of August 2026: Funder of Sky for All concept of operations
Delivery drones and passenger air taxis are coming, but no one has decided how they will share the sky with commercial jets. NASA just paid Flight Safety Foundation $549,782 to start writing that plan, obligating the funds August 5, 2026, for the agency's Sky for All concept of operations.
Updated Aug 30
As of August 2026: Leads station operations and the summer spacewalk campaign
The space station's main high-speed link to Houston was wearing out. On August 18, 2026, two astronauts floated outside and swapped the aging antenna for a spare, restoring a backup for the data and voice that keep the crew safe.
Updated Aug 18
As of July 2026: Holds the unexplained imagery its chief described
For decades, NASA's public line on unidentified objects was that it had no data worth discussing. On July 9, that changed. Administrator Jared Isaacman said the agency holds imagery of objects it cannot explain: 'Based on the data that we have within that imagery, we don't know what it is.'
Updated Jul 10
As of May 2026: Mission sponsor and announcing institution
For 14 years, the Curiosity rover has looked for organic molecules on Mars by heating samples in a tiny onboard oven. The method works, but it destroys fragile compounds before they can be identified. On April 22, 2026, NASA reported that a different technique—squirting a chemical solvent onto a Martian rock sample before heating it—revealed more than 20 organic molecules the rover had never seen before.
Updated May 31
As of May 2026: Program manager and primary customer for ISS cargo services
For more than a decade, NASA has relied on private companies to haul groceries, lab equipment, and experiments to the International Space Station — a deliberate bet that commercial logistics would be cheaper and more reliable than government-built rockets. On April 11, 2026, Northrop Grumman's enlarged Cygnus XL spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9. It delivered roughly 11,000 pounds of science cargo, including hardware for quantum physics research and therapeutic stem cell production.
As of May 2026: ISS partner, maintained station access via SpaceX during Russian gap
Russia hasn't sent a spacecraft to the ISS since November 27, when a 22-ton service cabin crashed into the flame trench at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — the only pad for Russian crewed and cargo flights. On March 22, a Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrying Progress MS-33 lifted off from the repaired pad, restoring supply lines severed for 115 days.
Updated May 30
As of May 2026: ISS operator and program lead for solar array upgrades
The International Space Station's original solar arrays were designed to last 15 years. The oldest set has now been in orbit for 25, battered by radiation and micrometeorite strikes until the station's total power output dropped from 240 kilowatts to roughly 160 — a one-third loss. On March 18, 2026, astronauts Jessica Meir and Chris Williams stepped outside for a 6.5-hour spacewalk to prepare the final two power channels for new roll-out solar arrays that will restore the station's capacity.
As of May 2026: Managing ISS operations through 2030 while transitioning to commercial stations
For over two decades, the International Space Station has been the only place where humans can grow tissues, crystals, and cells in ways impossible on Earth. After 185 days in orbit, SpaceX's Dragon capsule undocked February 26.
Updated May 29
As of May 2026: Awarded the surface hardware contracts on May 27
NASA awarded $627 million on May 27 to four U.S. companies for the first hardware of a permanent moon base. The contracts cover rovers, crewed terrain vehicles, and drones meant to land on the Moon before astronauts arrive.
Updated May 27
As of May 2026: Managing evacuation and ISS transition
NASA evacuated one crew member from the International Space Station on January 14, 2026, for a serious but stable medical condition. The SpaceX Crew Dragon carried four astronauts home six weeks early, splashing down safely off California on January 15 after 167 days in space. This ended a 25-year streak without a medical evacuation, despite predictions of one every three years.
Updated May 21
As of May 2026: New administrator sworn in as White House order tightens exploration deadlines and demands procurement and program reviews.
One day after his 67–30 confirmation, Jared Isaacman was sworn in on Dec. 18, 2025 as NASA's 15th administrator—walking directly into a White House-driven acceleration campaign that now has his name on the clock, not just the contracts.
Updated May 15
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