Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - U.S. space science in flux: Grant rules, rockets, and reorganization

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

Between budget battles, proposed grant rule changes, and an exploding Blue Origin rocket, there's a lot to cover in U.S. space policy right now. Jack Kiraly, The Planetary Society's director of government relations, joins host Sarah Al-Ahmed to walk through a cascade of developments affecting NASA and the broader U.S. science community, including a proposed rule change at the Office of Management and Budget that would hand control of federal research grant decisions to political appointees, bypassing the peer review process that has underpinned U.S. science for decades. Kiraly also discusses a major reorganization at NASA, a new competition for the management of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the fallout from the New Glenn explosion, and what it means for the future of Artemis. Plus, in What's Up, the names of the Artemis III crew are revealed. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-us-space-science-in-fluxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big decisions could be reshaping science funding in the United States. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah al-Ahmid of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Space policy is moving fast, and the choices that are being made right now could reshape the future of U.S. science and exploration for generations to come. This week, I sit down with Jack Corelli,

our Director of Government Relations, for an update on everything that's shaking up NASA right now. And in What's Up with our chief scientist, Bruce Betts, we'll be revealing the long-awaited names of the Artemis 3 astronauts. If you love Planetary Radio, I want to stay informed with the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. This week, we're covering a lot of ground. Jack Corelli, our Director of Government Relations, joins me to walk through. some of the biggest developments in U.S. space policy right now. We will be talking about the

ongoing fight over NASA's science budget, but there's an even more pressing matter right now, a proposed rule change at the Office of Management and Budget that would hand control of federal research grant decisions to political appointees. This is a proposal that would bypass the peer review process that's underpinned U.S. science for decades. We're also going to be discussing a proposed major reorganization at NASA and a new competition for the management of the Jet Propulsion Lab. We're going to go out with the bang discussing the fallout from the rapid, unscheduled, disassembly, less technically described as a giant explosion of Blue Origins New Glen Rocket on May 28th,

and what that means for the future of Artemis. Before we get into this grab bag of topics, I want to say something. The things we're going to be discussing today might feel really heavy, and for good reason. There's a lot at stake right now for space science and exploration, and science in general in the United States. But I also want you to know that across the planetary society and organizations throughout the science community, there are people working every single day to support space science.

We're trying to protect the missions that we've built and stand up for the people that make it all possible. So while this episode might feel like a lot, know that you're not alone and caring about this, and that really matters. When enough of us come together to work for the betterment of humanity, we always have a chance of making a brighter future, especially in space exploration. Here's my conversation with Jack Corelli.

Hey, Jack. Hey, Sarah. How's it going? I mean, there's so much going on in space policy right now that I feel like, I know, it's hard to take it all in right now. And I bet that means that your life in D.C. right now is even more hectic than all of us that are just kind of trying to learn and deal with these things as they come, right? I guess when it rains, it pours, because you're right. And it feels like it's something new every day and some stuff out of our control, pads exploding, rockets not rocketing. But then some of it is massive reorganizations of NASA and policy updates going crazy over here.

So, yeah, it's been nonstop few weeks for us. Right. I mean, honestly, a nonstop two years for us, right? I mean, all of this is kind of in the, context of what's been going on with our Save NASA Science campaign. And for people who have been falling along with the adventure, there was a situation last year where the Office of Management and Budget proposed this almost 50% cut to NASA Science funding. And we rallied together and we won.

And then they came back again this year with another proposal to cut NASA Science by 46%. So before we get into anything else, I think we should take a little time to give an update on where we're at with the progress for the Save NASA Science campaign. Yeah. So I will say the state of the campaign is good. We are continuing to flood Capitol Hill with messages on a near daily basis. We've had a number of events, including our big day of action in April. I know many of folks are familiar with this flagship event, but it's been a very, very exciting few. weeks, so since Administrator Isaacman testified to the House and Senate Appropriations committees, and I think that was maybe a few shows ago, though both feels like yesterday and much longer ago, the House of Representatives has put forward a budget, and that budget includes a pretty substantial cut to science, not nearly as much as the OMB is proposed, but a 17%

cut to science, all part of keeping NASA's top line flat. I think we talked about this recently, but the important part of that is that the House of Representatives, the more, we'll say, conservative, fiscally conservative of the two chambers right now, although I will note Republicans are in majority in both the House and Senate. The House is the lower of the two, always, at least in recent memory. The House has put forward the lower end of the error bar of potential funding outcomes for this budget cycle. And so even with that cut to science, which we're not happy about that, that's not great, keeping the overall NASA top line flat is the, I think, should be the headline item here. And that means that the lowest possible, right,

the lower of the error, you know, on the error bar, the lowest possible path forward for a budget this year is flat. And so that's really good for the, the Save NASA Science campaign. Again, we still have these cuts that we're facing. The administration, despite calls from senators and members of the House of both parties, calling on Administrator Isaacman to be transparent about the missions that are at risk and the programs that are at risk under these budget cuts, no information has been provided to Congress or the public. This is a very, as we've talked about before, the part of the problem with this budget proposal is in the lack of transparency. And we don't really know what's, there's no formal accounting of what's at risk,

which is very odd for a process that's supposed to be like pretty open book, hey, here's what we're putting forward. This has been a total reversion on all of those, all of those points of transparency for this, for the budgeting process. And Congress has taken note and complained, and the administrator has not fulfilled that obligation to make a publicly available list of proposed canceled missions. So we made our own. Anyway, that's all to say we're in a very good place if the lowest of possible outcomes is a flat budget. We're still waiting on the Senate to put forward their funding proposal. That'll then be the top part of the error bar and then somewhere in the middle is where compromise sits.

The Senate was expected to do their markup in early June, but related to issues not concerning NASA or science in general. The J of the C.J.S. Commerce Justice Science. The Department of Justice issues related to that has really upended a lot of the deliberation on the budget process. And so this should be new to longtime listeners of the show and of followers of space policy. that something completely unrelated to space has thrown the future of the budget into an uncertain place. But we have hoped that the Senate will convene at some point in the next few weeks to put together their budget proposal. Hopefully it's something that's higher. The Senate put forward an authorization that called for a two and a half percent boost to NASA's budget.

So not a huge increase. Wouldn't even offset the cost of inflation over the last year. But it would be an increase. it would be the first increase in four years for NASA's budget. Good that they're making progress on it, right? We were kind of just waiting on the edge of our seats for a lot of last year before we got, you know, this kind of level of progress, right? So I think this bodes well.

Well, and I'll just note there, I'm expressing a frustration that they're not moving fast enough. They're moving faster now than they did at the same point last year. We got the budget around the budget request from OMB, around the same time as we got it this year. And Congress is moving about two months ahead of schedule. It's still June. We didn't see the first budget proposal, sort of counter proposal to the request until July of last year. And so for us to be able to say that it is early mid-June, and we already have one proposal on the books and were maybe days or weeks away from the other chamber submitting their proposal. That's huge. All before July has even happened, right? We are then going to be at a point

where we have both proposals and the PBR will officially be dead. Fingers crossed. Yeah, but this is just kind of one front in the fight to save NASA science right now because, you know, what's going on with the budget is one thing, but just in parallel, the Office of Management and budget is trying to enact other ways to kind of control funding for science. And we did a show on this. This is actually the topic of last week's space policy edition, but I think this is an important enough topic that I want to bring this to the rest of our audience, which is that the Office of Management and Budget is trying to change grant funding rules in the United States. And this is something that's not just going to be impacting space science, but also medicine, in general,

all research in the United States that is given through grant funding. So, for listeners who aren't caught up on Casey's whole show last week, can you give us kind of the general top headline of what OMB is trying to actually propose here? Yeah, this was kind of came at a surprise and is, like you said, the other side of the equation, right? It's not just funding. It's the policies and procedures that govern these things that matter. And what the OMB has proposed is a wholesale rewriting of how science,

is done. So let's take a step back. Science involves, you know, coming up with a hypothesis, developing a methodology to test that hypothesis, collecting data, determining whether or not the hypothesis is holds up or not, right? Basics of science. Another basic tenet of science is peer review, is that if you're going to publish something and say, my hypothesis is that X will happen, and here is the data to prove it, my methodology to prove it, you expect that a group of that scientist's peers, people who have a similar maybe understanding of the issue, would review it and say, yeah, this actually does advance the body of scientific work, actually answers some fundamental question that the original scientist sought out to answer. Like, that's how this is

supposed to work. This is how the Allies won World War II, right, was that you had a federally backed fundamental science program. And that's how we have supercomputers in our pockets, right? This is the result of that is commercial products, but also is just the society in which we live, right? It's the fundamentals of modern life would not exist without peer-reviewed meritorious science. In comes OMB. The proposed rule set, all 412 pages, would rewrite federal regulations so that a political appointee, someone who is aligned with an administration, a political person, would have not just oversight. We're not talking about oversight here.

We're talking about absolute control over whether or not certain science activities, are funded. Doesn't matter what the topic is, doesn't matter. The discipline or the agency involved, every single dollar that goes out the door from the federal government would have to be reviewed and approved so that it conforms to a set of political, ideological principles, not the meritorious, peer-reviewed, consensus-based science that has underpinned modern life. and the number of changes are astounding. Clearly, Russ Vote or somebody at OMB had done their homework and figured out how science works so they can fundamentally change the rules. And so this isn't just a threat to space science or to NASA's priorities, but to all of science.

It is a complete reversal of how science has been done, how capital S science has done, how capital S science has done. on across the country. And some of the other changes, so in addition to a political appointee, grants can just be terminated for any reason for convenience, put quotes on that, for convenience. So, awards that are already out the door can be rescinded. For scientists who are in the middle of doing work, for those that aren't familiar with the scientific process, you're working on timelines of like three or five years, sometimes longer, but typically when we're talking about science on kind of three to five year time scales. And so you like, you know, you hire some graduate students or some research assistants and, and they're kind of on these term bases that

allow them to do their work and they have like some funding stability for that period of time. This throws that out the window. These rules would prevent scientists from without prior written approval. So even before they get the grant, they have to get approval to possibly use the funds to submit their research that us, the taxpayers are paying for, to scientific journals, which is where these conversations happen, right? Also, conferences, right? So every scientific discipline, I mean, you talk about the mass spectrometers, right? People that deal with mass spectrometry, they just had a conference in San Diego.

You'd think the scientists that do, you know, mass spectra have a science community. every discipline has a science community and people that gather to talk about the latest developments in their very niche, nerdy, scientific interest. You wouldn't be able to use federal money to go to those conferences to share the research that we, the taxpayers, have paid people to do and then share the results of. And then also public outreach. And so you can't even use this to go to your local astronomy club or to your local community association. and talk about the work that you're doing, maybe even in the community that you represent.

So you can go to our website, planetary.org slash save NASA science. We have a couple resources there. There's actually a new dashboard on our site that allows you to align by line through the Federal Register and see exactly where these changes would be made. And so this would totally rewrite how science is done and how science is then presented.

So even if something gets funded, Say it does, quote unquote, align with administration priorities, which, again, that's not how science has ever been done. Science is guided by the greatest questions. I don't expect a political bureaucrat to understand the nuances of some scientific discipline. All of this information is buried under 412 pages of pretty out there partisan ideological content, text. that this was presented, quote unquote, presented to the public as. So you can actually go through and you can skip all that. Go to a website, planetary.org, and then we have a dashboard right there that lets you go line by line and see what this would change.

Yeah, I've been trying to speak with friends and family about this. And it's an interesting thing. It's one thing to say to someone, hey, there's a budget proposal that's literally cutting half of NASA science. That feels very concrete. Here we're talking about procedural nitty-gritty rule changes. and it seems like an interesting tactic given that they already have this lever of power over having the presidential budget request

and trying to dictate funding. And given what this happened over the last year with grant funding in the United States, I came to begin to express to people what a massive change this would be for the scientific community, right? And because it's not the same as like the normal process

for dealing with budgets in Congress, there's a different way that Congress can deal with a rule change like this. So what are kind of our tools for maybe fighting back against this? There's a couple pathways. So the first and foremost, so before, this is not enacted. So maybe I should have said that up front.

This is not enacted rules. We are facing a proposal to change the rules in such a dramatic fashion. Because it is they're going down this path of adding regulations to the Federal Register, they have to go through, according to the administration, Procedure Act have to go through a period of public comment. And so they have to have a minimum of 45 days, which is a very short amount of time, I will say, for maybe something that's a handful of pages long, sure, 45 days, but 412 pages. Changes, and you expect us to review all of that, you know, the public to review that and share information about this over 45 days. It's a very

quick period of time. But regardless, they have to have it open for 45 days for public comment. As of this morning, there are more than 10,000 comments on the Federal Register site, and we have a tool at planetary.org slash action that allows you to write a comment. And this is not reserved for people with standing or who have a degree set. Like any person, this system is set up so that you, the individual, the member of the public, can have a meaningful impact on how regulations are written. And that's what this is, right? This is a series of brand new regulations that kind of came out of nowhere.

And over the course of 45 days, I think they had anticipated it was going to largely fly under the radar. Radar, by the way, also an invention thanks to basic fundamental research. And it's through that process. So through July 13th, unless there is an extension, there is a possibility of an extension. Through July 13th, the public can make comments. And the important part about this is, is it's not just you saying, hey, I don't want. like this rescind your proposed rule. Again, using some of the tools on our website, you can actually go in and if you cite specific source sections, specific sections of the regulation, and say,

I don't like section 200, please don't do this. This would have these disastrous effects. If you do that, just that extra five minutes of work in writing your comment adds to the body of substantive complaints that then Congress and the courts can use to strike down this rule. So again, this is a huge change. It's sweeping. We're working with other organizations who are identifying areas in which this affects their scientific disciplines that they care about. You know, the more we can get this out there, the more we can point out where areas of these regulations will cause substantial harm to science and to, you know, the American economy, to jobs, to, you know, all of these, these things that we care about, the better chance we have

that Congress will come in and enact what they call a CRA, which is a called the Congressional Review Act. And Congress can actually come in and override a regulation. Congress is the ultimate legislative body in the nation and can override regulations. Regulations are not laws, right? They're the application of law. And so Congress can come in and implement a CRA and say, we don't approve of all of these changes. The courts, equally, a co-equal branch of government, can come in and say, we see that this is going to cause demonstrable harm in particular. What they're looking for is, how do these regulations hurt the agencies themselves? Because Congress writes a lot of laws, right? and says, you know, NASA, thou shalt return humans to the moon for a sustained presence.

If we can draw that connection that these rule changes will demonstrably harm NASA's ability to pick the right landing sites to select the right samples, which I think it would, because it would put political reviewers over peer reviewers, right? You'd have landing site selection being done by political bureaucrats, not by scientists. that causes demonstrable harm to the agency. And so for all of these reasons, planetary.org slash safe NASA science, we have all of our resources available there. It's the top thing that we're asking people to do.

And so before July 13th, please submit your comments. And then after July 13th, stay tuned for how this story plays out. Because as with the budget request last year, as with a lot of things that this OMB in particular is doing, it's one, not aligned with the policy priorities of the rest of the administration. I can't see how administrator, Isaacman, or anyone at NASA currently could support these proposals. So this is coming on from the OMB, from, again, a very partisan standpoint that they're implementing these, not building coalition, not trying to socialize this and get this put into into law, but just trying to get through as much as they can. But we also don't know where their red line is, right?

and this is, I think, an important element of it. It is flabbergasting, looking at these proposed rules. And I don't think anyone in their right mind would implement these rules as is. It just simply does not make sense. You don't need a graduate degree in the history of science to understand that peer review is very important. That is a very fundamental thing. So where is the red line that OMB is looking for? Same thing with the budget cuts.

they don't want to cut NASA science by 46%. But they want to get somewhere between zero and 46%. Where is that number? And we can't let them succeed because if you give a mouse a cookie, they'll want a glass of milk. I want a glass of milk. In the same way, we can't give Russ Vote. Any cuts to NASA science, any demonstrable changes to the way science is done,

because then they're only going to come back for more. And we've beat Russ Vote before. We've beat O&B before. I think we can do it again. I want to pivot now. You mentioned a little bit earlier that NASA also recently announced that it's going to be going through potential reorganization. They announced this back in May. Can you talk a little bit about basically like headline version, what kind of reorganization is NASA going to be going through? This is probably the largest reorganization of NASA, really, I mean, at least in the last three decades. I mean, yeah, really since the beginning of the Dan Golden.

era of NASA. So top-line version of this, so human exploration, human spaceflight broadly, up until 2021, it was the human spaceflight mission directorate, as pretty self-explanatory name. And then they split it into deep space exploration systems, which is your Artemis space launch system, Orion, ground system support, human landing system, is your exploration. Systems Mission Directorate, and then you had space operations, which was the International Space Station, crew and cargo. The proposed reorganization, I emphasize proposed reorganization, would have them merge back together really with the idea that, well, exploration, deep space exploration, meaning beyond the Earth orbit, has become operational, which would, I think requires maybe

a very loose definition of operational, given that we've only had the Artemis 2 test flight, right? And we're about to have the announcement of the crew for Artemis 3. As of recording this, we don't know who that crew is. But you'd have human spaceflight merged back into one human spaceflight mission directorate. You would also see aeronautics, the first A in NASA, and space technology merged into a new research and technology mission directorate. And now this is also a relic of the past. This under a very similar name existed prior to, I believe, 2008, where they were, they had been merged together into one entity. And then you have a number of directives.

Science overall stays the same, although there are some proposals to consolidate spacecraft operations into one, like extended mission operations, things that are like well beyond their designed. lifespan where you'd have the space operations center, that the idea being that if you could centralize the management of missions and extended operations, which remember, this is like paying people to monitor the spacecraft and send command functions when necessary and solve problems. You're not, I mean, each mission is so distinct from one another. Just by moving them all under one, you know, one roof doesn't necessarily like guarantee there's going to be cost savings. I guess maybe save on HVAC and the coffee pods, but that's one of the proposals. It would change some of the direction for the Office of Legislative Affairs at NASA.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a pretty wholesale reorganization. This is, this is something that had sort of been thought was in the pipeline for the past year and a half. And it's finally kind of come to fruition, though it's gone through a number of different iterations, as I'm aware. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jack Corelli after the short break. Hi, y'all. Lovar Burton here. Through my roles on Star Trek and Reading Rainbow, I have seen generations of curious minds inspired by the strange new worlds explored in books and on television. I know how important it is to encourage that curiosity in a young explorer's life. That's why I'm excited to share with you a new program from my friend,

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Give the gift of the cosmos to the explorer in your life. I also understand that the mission directors are now going to be reporting directly to the administrator instead of going to like, you know, the deputy administrator and the assistants. Like there used to be a different structure of reporting. And I'm wondering kind of what is the driving force behind this proposed reorganization? Like, what are they trying to gain by making these changes? Well, I think there is a streamlining of the chain of command. Administrator Isaacman seems to be someone who cares a lot about being directly involved in day-to-day operations of the agency.

That's a very demanding job to be NASA administrator. and so it involves the direct administrator into these procedures. And then, you know, within the mission director, you know, within human spaceflight, you would, you know, have sort of these verticals of people working on Moonbase and people working on Artemis and people working on the space station. I think with the idea that if you just had everybody in house with this very, again, I think it's a very streamlined, like kind of corporate structure where you have like these very clear like divisions of labor between each of them.

It does overwrite maybe some of the lessons learned in the past. Maybe things that aren't necessarily written down, but there's a reason that NASA exists the way that it currently does. But that's also not to say that that is the best way to go about it, right? And so I think every administration, you know, a new administrator, especially in their first few months, identifies some problems, especially things that maybe have been, you know, burrowed under the surface for a little while and you're like, why, why is this person reporting to that person? Why don't they report directly to me or report directly to a different, you know,

associate administrator? Should we be concerned that this reorganization would result in some kind of reduction in force or any kind of changes to the NASA facilities? They have been very clear that the administrator Isaacman has been clear that these changes are not going to include a reduction in force or not going to include layoffs or center closures. They've been very clear that. been very clear about that, which I know a lot of folks in the community are very happy to hear that. Of course, that needs to be backed up by action, but at least, you know, the words are there. Because after the last year, I think that's the first thing. Everyone, I remember about a year ago when there was the RIF plan, the reduction in force plan, phase one was about to begin.

No one knew what the plan was going to be, but it was maybe going to be upwards of 20% of the agency was going to be laid off over the course of just a few months. And of course, then, people left under fear that their jobs were going to be terminated anyway, and they took the DRP, the Deferred Resignation Program. But so as of yet, there is no announcement of any reduction in force or closure of any centers. And the very same day that they announced this potential NASA reorganization, they also announced something really interesting for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in Pasadena. JPL traditionally has been run by Caltech since the 1930s.

But for the first time ever, they're proposing that they should put that relationship up for competition. NASA is kind of reframing this as like a routine stewardship and efficiency like check essentially. But do you think that's a fair characterization of what they're trying to do here? I think so, yes. So JPL has a very different relationship to NASA itself. FFRDC, federally funded research and development center. Much like things like the Aerospace Corporation, right, is it's not a part of the government, but it is almost entirely federally funded.

And so there's, you know, the taxpayer pays for it, but the administration of it, the overhead is handled by an outside organization. And so in this case, JPL has been managed by Caltech, yeah, for almost 90 years. and routine is a very weird way to put it because it's never been fully done before. There was an attempt, I think in 2017, during the first year of the first Trump administration, where they had put together a proposal to potentially recompete the JPL management contract, and then they didn't go through with it. But other FFRDCs do go through this every so often.

It depends on the term of the length of the management contract. I think that the approach is benign and they want to see what proposals are out there, what other institutions might be willing to manage this location in Pasadena. The facilities would stay there, right? It's just the management, you know, what name is on the paycheck type relationship. Is this the kind of thing where they would be looking for another university or an academic institution to potentially take over management? or would this be open to, say, the broader kind of private space organizations as well?

It's a pretty broad open competition. So NASA did an industry day, which is just parlance for, you know, they invite a bunch of people from interested parties to come and learn about a potential opportunity that's coming down the pike. And so they held this industry day about a year ago and had people from private industry had academic institutions, both public and private institutions, research institutions as well, not just academic ones, here in D.C. to learn about what it means to manage JPL, like, what does the lab look like, which you'd think if you're applying to manage the lab, you've maybe been there

before, but, you know, this is like one of those sort of open informational sessions. And from the response to that, NASA sees that there is at least some interest, from the community, the broader space industry, to potentially take on management of the lab. In the same way, there's nothing written in stone that NASA's structure is the way it needs to be. There's also nothing written in stone that Caltech needs to be the one managing JPL.

But at the same time, there's nothing written in stone that anybody that comes in to do it otherwise is just intrinsically going to have some secret sauce that's going to make it however much cheaper or more streamlined or more effective. And so I think it's going to then be up to the proposers for this proposal to make their case, to NASA and to, I'm sure, congressional stakeholders as well, that, hey, we are the right people to take this on. And so I do know that Caltech is one of the folks that are competing for it, right? Why wouldn't you?

Right. But, you know, there's, I'm sure there's other institutions out there across the country that see the prestige that Caltech gets from managing JPL. I mean, these are the people that landed on Mars. You don't think you want those on your, those people on your payroll like that. That certainly helps with institutional credibility. Before I let you go, the last story I wanted to talk about was a rather explosive one. We've been seeing a lot of effort with commercial space trying to take on all these steps that we need to do, check all the boxes, in order to do the next steps for the Artemis program. And as part of that, Blue Origin, and for many reasons other than just Artemis, but they've been working on this new Glenn rocket for quite a while.

And their most recent test went horrifically wrong. And this has some potential big impacts on not just the Artemis program, but, other space companies as well. So I wanted to at least acknowledge what happened there. Yeah, I saw the footage the night it happened. I was tuning in. I mean, it was a routine, it was a hot fire test and wet dress rehearsal at the same time. So it was like, you know, they were trying to, because I think there is, there is this push from both Congress and the administration to really, you know, put the gas on for the Artemis program. And you had that massive fireball, the mushroom cloud that rose above launch complex 36.

And my immediate reaction was that this, well, one, this can't be good. It's not supposed to have it. But no, I mean, it's that this is a huge setback for the Artemis program. Blue Origin is one of the main partners on Artemis. And so I think this is a pretty big setback. after, you know, SpaceX had their less than successful test, flight test 12 of the Starship vehicle, where the booster re-entered off nominal and into the Gulf of Mexico. And, you know, space is absolutely hard.

And this underscores the bet that NASA has been placing for years, you know, investing in these commercial companies, which not. to mention that both SpaceX and Blue Origin are owned by two of the wealthiest people in the world, who are certainly putting up their own funds to make sure this is possible. But NASA has put a stake in these companies to potentially buy down costs later on for future Artemis missions. And so I think it's a very optimistic timeline to see Blue Origin launching by the end of this year, more intense things have have happened, more difficult things have been accomplished in less time for sure. But that is a very ambitious timeline, especially as we're on the eve

of the Artemis 3 crew being announced, I guess the day after, if you're listening to this. But you have the Artemis 3 crew. The solid rocket boosters are being integrated down at KSC. I think the last few built by Northrop Grumman are leaving their facility in Utah. I mean, we're going, you know, we're, we're going back to the moon. And I think the enthusiasm is really high. And there's plans, the moon-based plans, right, that are, that are starting to materialize, at least the kind of fabric that we're going to be pulling from for these plans. But something like this, like the disaster that happened there, I mean, really is, is a one, it's a reminder that space is a very difficult endeavor, that there's a reason governments do this. And why government, the U.S. taxpayer is underwriting a lot of this, but also just goes to show like this is the, this is the new approach, right, is that commercial companies are going to be able to provide these services. You look at SpaceX and the Falcon 9, but the U.S. put a lot of money into the Falcon 9 very early on in its development to make sure that that was a success so that we

had domestic access to space. And that's, again, all underwritten by us, the taxpayer. I'm just so grateful that no one was hurt. I mean, that was like the definition of rapid unscheduled disassembly. That blast was so huge. It just obliterated their launch pad. The fact that no one was hurt is just almost miraculous at this point. Well, it's why you have the regulations in place, the safety rules for doing those things. Those things are important. But I'm with you on them. Yeah. But unfortunately, you know, like we need Blue Origin to hopefully be on a good timeline. for this because it was only just a couple months ago we were talking about this ignition event announced

by NASA and the speed up of the timeline for going back to the moon. And this change in Artemis 3, which is it's now essentially like an Earth orbiting mission that's specifically designed to test these human landing systems, right? So if SpaceX is on target, but Blue Origin isn't, that could potentially derail the entire timeline, which I think was actually something that we talked about when we first announced that Ignition Day event. Like, what has? happens if, well, here's the moment, right? It exploded. How is that going to change everything that comes after? Right. I mean, you, so you have the notional plan for Artemis 3 being the astronauts, whomever they be, will dock using an Orion crew capsule, right, the vehicle that they're

going to take to the moon, and they're going to dock in Earth orbit to, with one or both of the human landing system providers. That's SpaceX, Starship and Blue Origins, Blue Moon Mark 2 land. And And if neither of those vehicles are ready, right, that's the forcing function for the Artemis three mission architecture, right? If neither of those are ready, I think it's something NASA will have to address up front because, yeah, this is, that is a huge setback. And again, SpaceX has not been accelerating their timeline. It was six months between test flights. And they need to get to a point where they can do orbital flights on a daily cadence to, get enough fuel to low Earth orbit to do the transluner injection burn and get to

cis lunar space and land the astronauts on the lunar surface. And that doesn't just happen overnight where you go from a launch every six months to a launch every day. That needs its a ramped up schedule as well. NASA is putting a lot of stock into the commercial providers. And that was the bet they made with commercial crew, right? And that's what we got SpaceX out of. But the whole architecture hinges on these handful of providers being ready. And as it stands, it's a very tenuous timeline, right? I mean, we're supposed to be doing Artemis 3 in mid-2020. I don't think I'd be the first person saying that that's probably not going to be the actual timeline.

A little ambitious. Maybe a little later in 2027. With then a crude landing in early 2028, which I think then also, you know, the more that this slips to the right. But also let's remember where we were just a few months ago, where Artemis 3, the first human landing, was supposed to happen maybe in 2028 anyway. And so we've accelerated the timeline only for maybe the timeline,

the reality to set in a little bit. And so we're finding, I think, there is a resting place, right, for these timelines. And there's just been so much change over such a short period of time. and it is impressive to see how much that even a incident like this that should have been a massive setback for a company has, I think, really emboldened at least the company's leadership, and I know their workforce as well, to solve the problems. And so I think that mindset change is also, I think, a significant thing is like they realized that there were problems. And they're like, we have to fix them now. It's just can they do it at this timeline, at this, at the cost.

I mean, again, these are fixed price contracts. You hear a lot of people talk about firm fixed price contracting as like the preferred mechanism so that you don't get rampant cost growth as you get with the space launch system. But there's a downside to that where there is only so much money allocated to this contract. And if they need more money to rebuild the pad or to do anything related to getting the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander ready for prime time, that might require supplemental appropriations from Congress, which I know is not ideal. And there's only a handful of session weeks left before the midterm elections. Then Congress is going to change over.

So the timing of this is also kind of fraught. So there's just all these factors that I'm keeping in mind when I'm thinking about these things. Oh, and something I did also want to note was that it wasn't even just that the ignition event. Blue Origin won two contract, two delivery contracts to deliver the lunar traverse vehicle, or the two Astrolabs and Lunar Outposts, lunar traverse vehicles to the lunar surface, just earlier that week that the incident happened. And so Blue Origin has been accelerating both their crude and uncrewed manifests in support of the Artemis program, but then the sort of larger effort to build a, permanent or sustained human presence with the moon base. Man, a lot to pay attention to and keep track of these days. Things are moving so rapidly.

But, I mean, that's a double-edged sword. It is both a little scary and weird and also a bit exciting to see so much changing and having no idea how it's all going to pan out. So I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and unpack a lot of these because, you know, honestly, each and every one of these topics could be a whole episode on its own. Yeah, and it's just, it's been, it's been one thing after another. And so, again, I joked when it rains, it pours. I mean, it really is been probably the most, there have been the most new initiatives out of NASA, at least in the past two years. And that's, of course, acknowledging that the last year NASA was under interim leadership, really, since, since January 20th, when administrator Nelson resigned when the new administration was sworn in. And then December 18th of last year, when Administrator Isaacman was sworn in, right? That's a whole year that was lost of, I think, pretty substantive policy that could have been formed.

And, of course, the budget cuts were being proposed. And so there really wasn't much wiggle room in there either as to what NASA could have done because OMB was really running the show. So, yeah, I mean, it's been a very, very interesting few weeks. And I'm sure we'll get even more interesting with all the announcements coming out in the next few days. Oh, exactly, exactly. Well, thank you, Jack. And again, thank you for all the work that you and people in Washington, D.C. are doing right now, both on our Save NASA Science campaign, but also on this broader effort to try to combat these rule changes at OMB. I think this is not just absolutely pivotal for the space science community, but for the science community in the United States in general. This is such a big moment. So thank you for all your time and for everybody out there who is helping in this effort to go to our website and find resources to help. Put your name on this and say, say what you feel about it. So I really appreciate it. I appreciate you. And yeah, just remind everybody, July 13th is the deadline for comments.

Get them in. Even if you don't feel like you have a stake in this, you do. You are a U.S. taxpayer. You're a beneficiary of our investment in science overall, right? This isn't about any one discipline or another. But please share your story. All of that goes to a body of meaningful comments that really can show that science has a lot of allies right now, as it has needed for the past year. And so planetary.org slash save NASA science, you'll find all the resources there. Thanks so much, Jack. Let's do this. All right. Thanks, Sarah. As Jack mentioned, the Artemis 3 crew announcement was literally just around the corner when we recorded that interview.

But through the magic of media, the weight is finally over. On June 9th, NASA held a press conference with updates on Artemis 3, including the announcement of the Artemis 3 astronauts. I'm going to post the link to the entire video on the webpage for this episode of Planetary Radio. But next up and what's up with our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betz, we're going to be revealing their names. Hey, Bruce. Hey there, Sarah. There are so many stories going on in space policy right now. So, you know, Jack kept referencing the fact that we weren't going to be able to announce the astronauts at some point during that conversation.

And I'm glad that we actually have the time to do that now, even though it's past the conversation with Jack, because we need a little happy something after all of that. I mean, man. So let's get into it. Where do you want to go? Where are we going today? Well, we now officially have some Artemis 3 astronauts. And, you know, while Artemis 3 is no longer going to be the first mission to go back to the moon and, land. We actually have a whole new group of astronauts. We can be excited to see them go on their

next adventure, although it's going to be a low Earth orbit test of the human landing systems and things like that. But they just announced it this morning. And I got to say, that NASA press conference felt like different. Like it was very musical. It felt kind of like the Oscars, like them coming out on stage and doing their little waves. It was pretty cool. Well, I'm going to give the honors to you. thank you. Who do we have on the roster? I'm going to start big. We have Randy, Comrade,

Bresnick. Yes, his nickname is Comrade. He will be the commander. He is a two-time astronaut. Former Space Station commander, retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Test Pilot with over 7,000 flight hours. He likes walks in the rain and smelling flowers along the way. I made up that part. Sorry. We move on to

Luca Parmatano, an ESA astronaut, European Space Agency. He will be the pilot. He's a two-time astronaut in space and the first Italian Space Station Commander and Italian Air Force Colonel and, not surprisingly, test pilot. We then move on to our two mission

specialists, Andre Douglas, Test Engineer, U.S. Coast Guard Reserve Commander. It's his first space flight. He was actually a backup crew member from Artemis 2. And then finally, Frank Rubio, mission specialist. He was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot. He didn't do much. He was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, including combat hours. Oh, and then he became a doctor, U.S. Army flight surgeon, family medical physician, and he holds the record for the longest

American space flight at 371 days. Man, that's an impressive group of people, man. They usually are. For the backup crew, who is Bob Heinz, test pilot, U.S. Air Force Colonel, former SpaceX crew for pilot has spent 170 days in space across two ISS expeditions. And there you have it. You know, the people will fly in space and do good stuff. Those are astronauts. Round of applause. No, that was also really fun about that press conference, watching everyone. everyone like, the crowd goes wild, you know, and then all these astronauts from across, you know, both the previous Artemis mission, but also just across ESA and the United States.

I also saw some people they're representing the Japanese Space Agency. So it was cool, a good, good moment to celebrate everyone. And I hope they make a new astronaut poster. I think you can assume they will. I hope so. I still need to get a good print of that Artemis II poster. It's awesome. I'm not even sure which one you're referring to.

but I'm sure you will inform me after the show in great detail. We'll get you one. We'll get you one, Sarah. Yeah. No, I got to celebrate this new round of astronauts. I mean, I'm still really excited. You know, I need a little something to look up at the moon and fill hope for the future. Because we're going to do this, Bruce.

Keep fighting for space science. Oh, yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it. Crowd goes wild. Crowd goes wild. Woo! What is the crowd chanting?

Random space back. Random space. The International Space Station, which we've just been talking about, oddly enough, it's about the size of a football field. Now, that's mostly measured in the solar panels for power generation. But it's still, it's a pretty big beast. And it's also obviously got a unlike football field, say, third dimension. I mean, technically they have a third dimension.

Anyway, there you go. Pretty exciting. It's big and it flies in space. But still, it amazes me how bright it is, even if you put that much stuff up there and you put it 400 kilometers away-ish. It's bright. It's like Venus bright going across sky. It is. If you haven't checked it out, go find a NASA or others will tell you when to look in your area for ISS when it passes over. And they're, lest we forget, there are plenty of astronauts and cosmonauts hanging out on there. They just had a little fun, diving into the Orion capsule, the Americans, anyway, when they were, yeah, they've got some leaks in the Russian side. And I don't know why, but for some reason that worries them. I don't know why.

They've had them for a long time. Yeah, and they're hard to find. And I heard a really interesting trick that some of previous astronauts used, where they'd put just a little tea leaf into. the air and watch where it moved to try to figure out where the leaks were. Usually you don't want to be throwing stuff willy-nilly into the air on the International Space Station. So it's

the first time anyone to my knowledge has read tea leaves and they actually told them something real. All right everybody, go out there, look them in the night sky and think about happy balloons and stuff, mostly

stuff, but a lot of balloons. Thank you. good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetaria Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary radio t-shirts at planetary.org slash shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through planetary radio. And right now, we could use every voice behind us as we work to support space science.

You can also send us your space slots, questions, and poetry at our email, planetary radio at planetary.org. Or if you're a planetary society member, you can leave a comment in the planetary radio space in our online member community. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, as made possible by our members. You can join us as we stand up for space science at planetary.org slash join.

Mark Hilverta and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreyer is the host of our monthly space policy edition and Matt Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio.

And until next week, Ad Astra.