ISS astronauts are speaking up for the station. In response to Elon Musk’s claim that the International Space Station was no longer useful and should be deorbited, astronauts currently aboard the station spoke to the press about the important science still being conducted on the ISS, advocating for its continued operations. Pictured: The International Space Station in 2021. Image credit: NASA.
NASA is reducing its workforce to comply with an Executive Order. The agency announced this week that cuts will include shutting down the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, the Office of the Chief Scientist, and a branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Further layoffs are expected in the coming months.
Voyager 1 and 2 can continue collecting science data by shutting off some instruments. To manage the twin spacecraft’s dwindling power supply, Voyager mission engineers have turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument. This will allow the instruments most useful for studying the heliosphere and interstellar space to operate for longer.
SpaceX’s Starship exploded in a recent test launch. The eighth Starship Integrated Flight Test (IFT-8) took place last week, resulting in an explosion above the Caribbean. SpaceX did succeed in catching the Super Heavy booster.
The Intuitive Machines lunar lander mission ended prematurely. The private company’s IM-2 lander reached the Moon on March 6 but landed in a shadowed crater where its solar cells could not charge. The spacecraft, which was intended to operate for 10 days, ran out of batteries after 13 hours.