The Lucy mission has reached its five-year mark. NASA’s spacecraft to explore 11 asteroids in 12 years launched almost exactly five years ago, on Oct. 16, 2021. Since then, Lucy has flown by the asteroids Dinkinesh and Donaldjohanson. Its next visits will be to the Jupiter Trojan Eurybates and its satellite Queta in August 2027. Pictured: An artist’s impression of Lucy at an asteroid target. Image credit: NASA.
This year, NASA is skipping one of its biggest programs for funding space science research. The agency said it will not solicit 2026 proposals for its Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) program. ROSES is a major channel through which NASA awards money to scientists at universities and research institutes across the U.S. Typically, ROSES funds hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research projects. NASA said it will release a 2027 batch of funding opportunities by January.
Scientists have recommended new landing sites for crewed Moon missions. A new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that NASA should prioritize landing astronauts at four sites near the Moon’s equator: an impact basin, a crater, a volcanic plateau, and the region where Apollo 15 landed. These sites could complement the scientific questions Artemis is expected to answer by exploring the lunar south pole.
NASA is overhauling the way it competes and selects science missions. The agency announced an overhaul of how NASA asks for and decides between ideas for science missions, with the goal of speeding up mission selection and formulation. NASA leadership will explain the changes and take questions from the science community at a virtual NASA Science Town Hall, the first in two years, on Monday, Oct. 26, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.