¶The White House’s ‘skinny budget’. The Trump Administration’s proposed FY26 budget contains massive (~24%) cuts and signals a reprioritization for NASA. As previously reported, it would significantly cut NASA Earth and space science programs, “green aviation,” and “low-priority climate monitoring satellites,” while allocating $1B for crewed Mars programs. The document doesn’t seem to mention cutting the Roman Space Telescope, but we don’t assume that it is safe yet. The budget also reduces NASA workforce, STEM, and ISS spending, and would start the phase out of SLS (probably a good idea) and Orion (less clearly a good idea), ending them after Artemis III; eliminate the lunar orbiting space station Gateway (meanwhile the first module was recently delivered); and cut Mars Sample Return in favor of ‘human missions to Mars.’ (In our opinion, what will probably happen will be generalized panic when China now executes their Mars sample return in the early 2030s, well ahead of the US & Europe, and certainly ahead of any human landings. While MSR, as recently envisioned, is bloated, pursuing a slimmed-down version instead of cutting it entirely seems like a better approach. The US really likes to repeatedly start, cut, and then restart space programs… a costly habit.) It’s honestly worth reading through the budget to understand the sweeping governmental changes. The only increases are a significant ~13% increase to defense spending (to over $1 trillion), including large allocations for hypersonic and space-based weapon systems, a 65% increase for Homeland Security and border control, and a modest bump for the VA. To keep the illusion of a flat top line federal budget, US geopolitical spending, pollution and regulatory oversight, educational spending, climate and energy programs, weather forecasting, and health & basic science programs, in addition to NASA, have all been massively reduced—but those cuts aren’t enough to keep the budget flat, so additional defense spending will move to a sidecar $325B reconciliation bill (which will continue to increase national debt). This is definitely not final—Congress will draft their own version, and Isaacman may push back on the NASA cuts, but large shifts are certainly coming. |
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¶How China’s DRO-A and DRO-B spacecraft were saved. Launched from Xichang in March 2024, the DRO duo were sent toward the Moon with an intended distant retrograde orbit (anti-clockwise relative to Earth but clockwise/retrograde relative to the Moon). However, an upper stage failure left the pair, still conjoined, in a highly elliptical Earth orbit and with a high rate of spin, rotating once every 1.8 seconds, which resulted in their solar panels being bent and damaged. After stabilization, what followed was an impressive rescue plan formulated over an intense 40 hours which left the spacecraft connected while performing a combined apogee-raising burn followed by multiple maneuvers and gravity assists over four months, taking the spacecraft a million kilometers from Earth and using a low-energy capture to reach their intended orbit in August 2024. Once there, the two spacecraft separated and inspected each other, finding solar panels bent nearly 90 degrees. Despite these hurdles, they proceeded to complete their mission, demonstrating three-way communications and navigation/tracking links with each other and DRO-L, a third satellite in LEO. This success against all odds paves the way for a Chinese cislunar space-based navigation and comms network, reducing dependence on congested ground stations. DRO-A also hosts an all-sky gamma-ray burst detector. |
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 | Top left: Illustration of the attached DRO-A and DRO-B small lunar satellites; Bottom left: A schematic diagram of DRO-A, DRO-B, and Earthbound DRO-L spacecraft testing laser-based navigation between Earth and the Moon; Right: DRO-A and DRO-B as imaged by the other spacecraft after entering lunar orbit showing their bent solar panels. Images: CAS / CSU / Journal of Deep Space Exploration / SCMP (c/o Moon Monday) |
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¶News in brief. Lockheed Martin delivered Artemis II’s Orion spacecraft to Kennedy Space Center, where it will be integrated with its SLS rocket, now set to launch in April 2026 ● Meanwhile, on its SLS’s core stage, a 10-year-old RS-25 engine was swapped due to a hydraulic leak for an even older engine that flew twice on the Space Shuttle ● NASA’s Dragonfly, a rotorcraft set to launch to Titan in 2028, passed its critical design review and will soon begin construction (budget permitting, presumably) ● Near Space Lab raised a $20M Series B for their stratospheric imaging balloons ● The Senate Commerce Committee advanced Isaacman’s nomination for NASA administrator, bringing him one Senate vote away from confirmation ● China will lend lunar samples from its Chang’e-5 mission to 7 universities spanning 6 countries, including two US schools that received special Congressional approval ● SpaceX lost their bid to control public beach access near Starbase ● China launched the third batch of satellites for their Guowang megaconstellation ● Psyche turned off its electric propulsion system after detecting a pressure drop in the line that feeds xenon gas to the thrusters; the lack of thrust won’t impact the trajectory until mid-June, and it has a backup line as well ● Colorado-based True Anomaly raised a $260M Series C to support their defense-focused spacecraft missions ● The Progress 91 spacecraft on the ISS fired its thrusters to push the station out of the way of space debris from a 2005 Chinese Long March rocket ● Ahmedabad-based thermal imaging startup SatLeo raised $3.3m ● ESA conducted a qualification test of the P160C solid rocket motor which has 14 tons more fuel than its P120C predecessor while still integrating with Ariane 6 Block 2, Vega-C+, and Vega-E (if it materializes). |
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 | ESA’s P160C motor for future Ariane-6 and Vega missions was test-fired at the European Spaceport in French Guiana. |
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¶Etc.- The new Space Software Summit conference is Oct 6-8 in Boulder, CO.
- You can print a 3D model of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant.
- Terramind, a new generative AI model for Earth observation, was released by IBM.
- ‘Astra targets cargo delivery with Rocket 4 in Pentagon-backed plan.’
- A very high resolution image of the Sun from ESA’s Solar Orbiter, its widest to date.
- A somewhat unexpected set of names are countering the recent Whitehouse proposed NASA budget cuts: Newt Gingrich, Bob Walker, and Charles Miller penned a letter encouraging the president to reconsider, asking for “responsible reform, not reckless cuts.”
- What’s Going On Inside Io, Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon? Its volcanoes are probably due to pockets of magma formed by tidal heating, not a global lava ocean.
- Defunct satellite reentries have grown to 3-4 per day, with the possibility of 20-30 daily in the next decade. Letting them vaporize in the upper atmosphere is yet another unpriced externality, where the potential impact on the ozone layer is still mostly unknown.
- What did Hubble see on your birthday?
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On the Jezero crater rim, Perseverance took a fascinating image with its SuperCam Remote Micro Imager (RMI), shown below as a fused mosaic. The picture shows a section of a rock named “St. Pauls Bay,” which seems to be formed out of hundreds of millimeter-sized spherules. Their origin isn’t yet known. There is precedent for spherical petrology on Mars—in 2004, Opportunity found so-called “Martian Blueberries” at Meridiani Planum, Curiosity saw something similar at Gale crater, and Perseverance itself saw some “popcorn-like textures” in sedimentary rocks. All of these are assumed to be concretions, formed when groundwater circulates through pores in rock, although other origins, like frozen droplets of molten rock from a volcanic eruption or meteorite impact, are also possible. |  |
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