NASA

5–7 minutes

WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said he expects to provide details about several agency priorities, including lunar exploration and commercial space stations, in the coming weeks.

In a recent interview, Isaacman said announcements on how the agency plans to proceed with several key programs will follow NASA’s response to a White House executive order on space policy issued in December.

Among the directives in the order is a plan “for achieving the policy objectives in this order regarding leading the world in space exploration and expanding human reach and American presence in space,” as well as separate guidance for a “National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power.” The policy also includes directives regarding procurement reviews and acquisition reform.

The order came as NASA was already working on new initiatives, such as the Fission Surface Power program to develop a nuclear reactor to support lunar operations, as well as proposed changes to the Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development, or CLD, program to support commercial space stations that would succeed the International Space Station. Those efforts also include the ongoing procurement of lunar rovers for future Artemis missions.

Many of those programs have been on hold in recent weeks as industry awaits new solicitations or contract awards, with little information from NASA.

“This notice is to advise you that NASA’s procurement activities remain ongoing as the agency works to align acquisition timelines with national space policy and broader operational objectives,” NASA stated in a Jan. 28 update on the CLD program. “You should anticipate that additional clarity regarding procurement milestones will be provided in the coming weeks.” NASA issued a similar notice the same day for the Fission Surface Power program.

Isaacman said the agency is currently focused on responding to the executive order. “Even though some of these programs may have been underway previously, we have a national space policy that is an executive order,” he said. “We have a timeline to communicate back, and that’s quickly approaching.”

For those interested in the affected programs, he said, “we will be communicating that shortly after submission of our response to the executive order.” He added in the Jan. 30 interview that it should be “approximately a month from now.”

Those topics, he said, remain priorities. “I do think America is going to get underway on nuclear power before the end of 2028, and we’ll share details on it soon.”

Industry officials have had mixed reactions to the pause in plans for programs such as commercial space stations and lunar nuclear reactors.

“I think this is a pretty substantial acquisition for him during the first few years of his tenure as administrator, and I think it’s warranted that he takes a pretty significant look at this,” Jonathan Cirtain, president and chief executive of Axiom Space, said of Isaacman and the CLD program during a Feb. 12 call with reporters about the company’s new funding round.

Others are less patient. “It’s been a case of hurry up and wait,” said one industry official, speaking on background about the Fission Surface Power program. The official said companies moved quickly to respond to NASA’s announcement last summer about the initiative, providing feedback on two draft solicitations while preparing for a final version, but have received little in the way of updates since December. MSR uncertainty

There is less certainty about plans for Mars Sample Return, or MSR. Congress did not provide funding for MSR in its final spending bill for fiscal year 2026 but did allocate money for technologies that could be used for future Mars missions.

“With near clarity now on the human exploration focus on the moon, we can free up some of our resources to consider how we would go and retrieve the Mars samples,” Isaacman said. “Step one is closing out the old program.”

He said he would examine alternative proposals submitted to NASA in 2024 for MSR. At the end of the Biden administration, NASA said it would continue studying two approaches: one based on a concept by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and another using unspecified commercial landers.

“We’re going to have to take a look at it and see which of those, if any of them, are economical and can be achieved in a reasonable time period,” Isaacman said. “If not, we have to reformulate and think what is an alternative approach to it.”

He said he remains interested in returning the samples being cached by the Perseverance rover to Earth, some of which could contain evidence of past Martian life.

“Am I interested in getting those samples back? You bet,” he said when asked about the status of MSR during a Feb. 13 news conference after the Crew-12 launch. “This is an opportunity for what could be the most consequential discovery in human history.”

4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — A NASA test to confirm repairs to seals in the Space Launch System’s liquid hydrogen fueling system was only partially successful because of problems with ground equipment.

In a statement late Feb. 13, NASA said it performed a “confidence test” the previous day on the SLS core stage fueling system, partially filling the stage’s liquid hydrogen tank to test seals that had been replaced in a fueling interface.

The seals were the suspected cause of hydrogen leaks during a wet dress rehearsal Feb. 2, when the SLS was loaded with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as part of a practice countdown. The leaks forced an early end to the test, and NASA later said it planned to replace two seals in hydrogen lines that transfer fuel into the rocket.

In its latest statement, NASA said the confidence test, not announced in advance and first reported by Spaceflight Now, was intended to evaluate the new seals. However, the agency said that “teams encountered an issue with ground support equipment that reduced the flow of liquid hydrogen into the rocket.”

Despite the reduced flow, NASA said it was able to “gain confidence in several key objectives” and collect data at the interface that had been the source of the earlier leak.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman mentioned the test, which he described as a “mini wet dress rehearsal,” during coverage of the Crew-12 launch Feb. 13.

“We’re doing a series of mini wet dress rehearsal tests today to make sure we give that vehicle the highest probability of success to get off the pad in early March,” he said during NASA’s webcast of the launch.

At a news conference after the launch, Isaacman said program officials wanted to review data from the tests before deciding whether to proceed with a second full wet dress rehearsal.

“On Artemis 1, we were combating hydrogen leaks multiple times,” he said. “We obviously encountered that again on the Artemis 2 wet dress rehearsal.”

“From some of the early views, we did not see some of the leaks for the portion of the test we were running that at a comparable period during the full Artemis 2 wet dress we did,” he said. He did not mention the reduced flow of liquid hydrogen into the stage, which could affect the ability to fully evaluate the new seals.

“We will continue to do everything available to gain confidence going into the full wet dress,” he said.

In the new statement, NASA said it plans to inspect the ground support equipment and replace a filter believed to have caused the reduced hydrogen flow.

The agency has not announced a date for a second wet dress rehearsal, but Isaacman said there was still time to conduct one ahead of the next Artemis 2 launch opportunity in early March.

“We have a lot of time ahead of us,” he said. “We could undertake more than one wet dress, if necessary. We’re going to make absolute most use of the time that we have leading up to the start of the window.”

5–7 minutes

WASHINGTON — After losing about 20% of its civil servant workforce in the past year, NASA’s administrator says the agency plans to bring more expertise in-house and reduce its reliance on contractors.

In a social media post Feb. 6, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a new workforce directive aimed at addressing what he described as a loss of technical competency within the agency.

“NASA has outright lost or outsourced many core competencies in engineering and operations that once enabled the agency to undertake the near-impossible in air and space,” Isaacman said in a video accompanying the post.

He said about 75% of the people working at NASA are contractors, employed by “multiple primes [and] hundreds of subcontractors” with “excessive management layers.”

“Not only is this highly inefficient and leads to continuous program delays, but it’s costly to the tune of nearly $1.4 billion a year in needless expenses,” he said. Isaacman did not explain how NASA calculated that figure.

In the video, Isaacman said field centers and mission directorates will determine within the next 30 days which technical and operational roles should be brought in-house. That assessment will be followed within 60 days by what he described as “rapid onboarding” of new civil servants.

“The future state aims to use contracted workforce primarily for limited-term assignments, surge staffing and specialized functions outside NASA’s core competencies,” states the directive, a copy of which SpaceNews obtained.

Besides developing a new process for quickly hiring civil servants, the directive calls on agency officials to develop a strategy for moving work from contractors to civil servants. That includes a plan “to convert or add targeted roles to civil service, addressing contract changes, renegotiations or terminations, timelines, and cost implications.”

Other goals for the next 60 days include improving the agency’s “talent pipeline.” Isaacman said that effort will involve working with the Office of Personnel Management on its “Tech Force” initiative, which brings private-sector engineers into government agencies for two-year assignments. The directive also calls for enhanced training programs and expanded internship opportunities.

Isaacman said the directive will also require future contracts to include “right-to-repair” provisions that give NASA access to the tools and intellectual property needed to maintain contractor-provided equipment. The agency will also work to establish makerspaces at all field centers for hardware prototyping.

“We’re restoring in-house engineering and operational excellence to reclaim technical autonomy and concentrating our resources on the most needle-moving objectives,” Isaacman said in the video.

The directive follows a year in which NASA, under acting leadership, offered deferred retirement programs that led to the departure of roughly one-fifth of its civil servant workforce, including many senior employees. The reductions were part of broader personnel departures across the federal government.

In an interview conducted before the directive’s release, Isaacman downplayed the magnitude of the civil servant departures, pointing to the size of NASA’s contractor workforce. He acknowledged, however, that the agency had become overly dependent on contractors.

“One of the bigger surprises is that in certain areas within NASA, we have either lost or outsourced some of our core competencies,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that we have some external dependencies on that I would not have expected.”

Isaacman said then that rebuilding those capabilities internally was a priority. “Is this an opportunity to bring more talent into the organization? The answer is yes,” he said. “There are certain capabilities and areas of expertise that I consider essential for NASA to execute its mission that have been either degraded, lost or outsourced over the years and that we have to rebuild.”

Asked for specifics, Isaacman said there are issues “across the board” in its spaceflight and aeronautics programs. “There are a lot of external dependencies that you would think are pretty core to the mission of trying to change the world in air and space,” he said.

The directive follows Isaacman’s visits to all of NASA’s field centers. He said that before beginning the tour, he reviewed suggestions submitted by employees and contractors through an internal “ideas box,” as well as more than 300 questions posed during his first town hall meeting.

“So before I even hit the road, I felt like I had a reasonable pulse of how the workforce was thinking about certain things, where there were good opportunities to do better, and where there were obstacles or problems to clear,” he said.

4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — NASA is no longer planning a February launch of the Artemis 2 mission after encountering hydrogen leaks during a fueling test of the Space Launch System.

In a statement early Feb. 3, NASA said it completed a wet dress rehearsal for Artemis 2 but determined the vehicle will not be ready to launch during the February window, which closes Feb. 11.

“To allow teams to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test,” the agency said.

“With more than three years between SLS launches, we fully anticipated encountering challenges,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a social media post.

“That is precisely why we conduct a wet dress rehearsal. These tests are designed to surface issues before flight and set up launch day with the highest probability of success,” he said.

The wet dress rehearsal is a two-day countdown test that includes fueling the Space Launch System’s core and upper stages with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and proceeding through a countdown that concludes at T-minus 29 seconds.

During propellant loading Feb. 2, NASA reported a hydrogen leak at the interface where liquid hydrogen flows into the core stage. Fueling was paused to study the issue and later resumed.

Crews fully fueled the rocket and completed closeout procedures at the pad. Delays in that work led NASA to opt for a single terminal countdown, starting at the T-minus 10-minute mark, rather than the two planned.

The countdown was halted at T-minus 5 minutes, 15 seconds when hydrogen leak rates increased at the same interface that experienced problems earlier in the day. NASA ended the rehearsal at that point and began draining propellants from the vehicle.

Several other issues occurred during the test. A valve in Orion’s hatch pressurization system was accidentally vented during closeout work, requiring additional time to repressurize the system. Unseasonably cold temperatures, which had already delayed the rehearsal by two days, caused further issues, including delays in tanking operations and problems with cameras and other pad equipment. NASA also reported intermittent audio dropouts in communications among ground teams.

Hydrogen leaks are not new for the program. Similar issues affected preparations for the Artemis 1 launch in 2022, leading to multiple wet dress rehearsals and scrubbing the first two launch attempts. NASA officials said last month they were confident those issues had been addressed.

The next launch period for Artemis 2 runs from March 6 to 11, with five two-hour windows available. Another launch opportunity extends from April 1 to 6.

With a February launch no longer possible, NASA said the four Artemis 2 astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — will exit preflight quarantine. They entered quarantine Jan. 23, two weeks before the first February launch opportunity, to avoid getting sick before launch, and will reenter quarantine two weeks before the next launch attempt.

The delay also clears the way for NASA to proceed with the Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station as soon as Feb. 11. Agency officials said in a Jan. 30 briefing that if Artemis 2 had launched in February, Crew-12 would have been delayed until after Artemis 2 completed its approximately 10-day mission. A scrubbed Artemis 2 launch attempt would have postponed Crew-12 to no earlier than Feb. 13.

4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — One of the largest antennas in NASA’s Deep Space Network was damaged in September and may be out of service for an extended period, further straining the system.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed Nov. 10 that the 70-meter antenna at the Deep Space Network (DSN) site in Goldstone, California, has been offline since Sept. 16, with no timetable for its return to service.

“On Sept. 16, NASA’s large 70-meter radio frequency antenna at its Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, over-rotated, causing stress on the cabling and piping in the center of the structure,” JPL said in a statement to SpaceNews. “Hoses from the antenna’s fire suppression system also were damaged, resulting in flooding that was quickly mitigated.”

The antenna, designated DSS-14, is the largest at the Goldstone site and among the largest in the entire DSN. Two other 70-meter antennas operate at DSN sites near Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia. The 70-meter antennas are essential for communicating with spacecraft in the outer solar system and can also be used for closer missions requiring higher data rates or experiencing technical problems. Each DSN site also has several smaller antennas.

Rumors of significant damage to DSS-14 had circulated for weeks. A website that provides real-time monitoring of DSN communications showed no activity at DSS-14, displaying only an “Antenna Unplanned Maintenance” status. JPL said last month that it could not comment on the antenna’s status, citing difficulties coordinating with NASA offices during the government shutdown.

The new JPL statement did not specify when DSS-14 might resume operations, noting that NASA has convened a mishap investigation board to review the incident.

“The antenna remains offline as the board members, engineers and technicians evaluate the structure and make recommendations and repairs,” JPL stated. “NASA will provide information on the board’s findings and next steps for returning the antenna to service after the federal government reopens.”

Extended outages of DSN’s 70-meter antennas are not unprecedented. The 70-meter antenna in Australia, DSS-43, underwent 11 months of upgrades in 2020 and 2021 that prevented it from transmitting. That antenna is the only one capable of communicating with Voyager 2, now operating in the outer reaches of the solar system.

The loss of any DSN antenna adds pressure to a network that NASA and its watchdogs have warned is already overstretched. The agency’s Office of Inspector General found in a 2023 audit that the DSN “is currently oversubscribed and will continue to be overburdened by the demands created by an increasing number of deep space missions.”

That strain was exacerbated by the Artemis 1 mission in 2022, which used the DSN to communicate with the Orion spacecraft in cislunar space as well as several cubesat secondary payloads. Other missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, had to adjust operations because of reduced access to the network.

“When Artemis comes online, everybody else moves out of the way, and it’s an impact to all the science missions,” Suzanne Dodd, director of the interplanetary network directorate at JPL, said during a 2023 advisory committee meeting.

She said those challenges are compounded by declining budgets for maintaining the network. “Looking out to the 2030s, that really scares us on the DSN,” she said.