Jonathan Lunine, chief scientist at JPL, in conversation with Sarah Al-Ahmed, host of Planetary Radio... discussing Perseverance, Europa Clipper, Titan Dragonfly and other missions. Open to anyone.

Hi!
I'm visiting Kennedy Space Center for a day or two in late October. What is the chance I get to see a launch?

Also, is one day enough to see everything (or most of what there is to see), or should I try for 2? I am taking the Explore bus trip

“Early cost estimates are approximately $2.1 billion, and NASA will continue refining that figure through the acquisition process,” the agency confirmed in a statement.

The agency plans to spend $640 million in fiscal 2026, $890 million in 2027, $415 million in 2028, and $180 million in 2029 on the program, according to a document sent to Congress and viewed by POLITICO. NASA will pull that money from the agency’s exploration account and from funding it received through the party-line reconciliation bill passed last year.

However, the document notes that the cost estimate does not include funding for SkyFall, the science mission that the new nuclear spacecraft will carry to Mars. NASA hasn’t released a cost estimate for SkyFall, but Mars researchers have warned it could cannibalize the agency’s science budget.

According to NASA's General Accountability Office's report on the Human Landing System, the Blue Origin Cislunar Transporter will like the Starship Propellant Depot require nobody knows but several flights of a New Glenn upper stage tanker to be filled up. The Cislunar Transporter will then need to fill up the Blue Moon Mark 2 and then be refueled a second time by a certain amount of New Glenn upper stage tankers and then travel to Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit and refuel Blue Moon Mark 2 a second time. This sounds just as complex if not more complex than the SpaceX Lunar Starship which would just need to be refueled in Low Lunar Orbit. The Spacex Starship propellant depot would also only need to be filled up once unlike Cislunar Transporter which needs to be filled up twice. Seems Blue Origin's plan is also extremely complex and threatens to derail the entire Artemis Program just like Lunar Starship.

Link to the document. See pages 7 - 9 for more details:

https://oig.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/final-report-ig-26-004-nasas-management-of-the-human-landing-system-contracts.pdf

Tomorrow we celebrate the Viking 1 landing on Mars!! I remember it clear as day and as the first day I fell in love with Planetary’s exploration. To the point I got into scratch building space models…….. why Revell never made a Viking lander kit is beyond me. Here is my celebration of the first landing on Mars!

Annual pass holder here but new to this. planning to watch Tuesday's 5:15 PM launch from SLC-40. Visitor Complex staff have given me conflicting suggestions — LC-39 Observation Gantry, Saturn V Center, the main entrance, Cocoa Beach, or the Marriott rooftop.

Park closes at 6 PM, so I'm not sure how staying at somewhere like Saturn V would work without getting asked to leave right before or during the launch. Which spot would you recommend given that closing time?

Thanks!!

Like the title says, LHS 1140b was recently in the news with a helium type atmosphere, potentially habitable with the right prep and infrastructure. How much has NASA done investigating and modeling colonization systems on different styles of planets? Has there been significant research on this kind of theory crafting?

If we ever send ships to Mars or outward, would we stay in “constant” contact as it traveled?

I’m watching Project Hail Mary and when Grace awakens, he’s on his own, with no backlog of years of stored messages from Earth. Would that be accurate as to how alone travelers would be?

With trips to the moon, there is a constant stream of two-way comms, albeit with the lag. Same with the probes we’ve sent to the planets and beyond (maybe not “constant” but sufficiently frequent to maintain control, send instructions, and receive data.)

So for example when the astronauts died in PHM, could the ship have sent a message back to Earth, and they could send updates to Grace, and so on? (Not literally as this is a movie, but conceptually.)

Hello everyone,

A few years ago I participated in several NASA "Send Your Name" missions and received the digital boarding passes. I also remember the NASA Frequent Flyers system, where multiple missions were combined into a space travel history with accumulated miles and mission patches.

Unfortunately, I lost the saved files and I can no longer find the old Frequent Flyers page or a way to regenerate my boarding pass.

I have already searched my email, old files, and checked the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, but I haven't been able to recover it.

My question is mainly for someone from NASA or JPL:

Does NASA still have access to the old Frequent Flyers database, or is there any official way to retrieve a user's previous boarding pass/history?

I understand these were created as souvenirs and not as permanent accounts, but it would be amazing to recover this little piece of space history after participating in multiple missions.

If anyone from NASA knows:

• whether the old system still exists somewhere internally,
• whether the data was archived,
• or if there is any recovery procedure,

I would really appreciate any guidance.

Thank you for all the amazing work you do, and for giving people around the world the chance to be part of these missions.

Hi y'all!

I recently got selected to interview for the Fall 2026 NASA EarthRise Developers Academy, yay!

Can anyone who has done the program and/or interviewed before shed some light on what types of questions I may be asked? I'm really nervous/excited and want to be sure I'm preparing appropriately :)

I found an old report from mid-shuttle program era NASA, among other artifacts.

I was on Facebook Marketplace looking for a desk and stumbled upon a picker selling some NASA memorabilia found in New Smyrna Beach, FL.

It was all in rough condition, having been left outside. I set about a journey to preserve the documents to the best of my ability and uncover as much of the history behind them as I could.

First goal was to neutralize the mold on the manual. I carefully wiped any loose spores off and treated it with an isopropyl alcohol mist, let it dry completely, then a vinegar/water bath and left it in the sun to dry for multiple hours, turning the pages every half hour. The result was a bone dry manual! After scanning it in at my local library, it now lives in a sealed comic sleeve inside a plastic box.

The only unsalvageable artifact was what we believe to be a replica war bond from either WWII or the Civil War. It was nearly unidentifiable from the amount of mold on it and it was disposed of immediately. It also wasn't in the original listing so I wasn't as precious with it.

Here are some flyby highlights:

More images to come!

Now it all lives on the Charlie Day Conspiracy Board (CDCB) until I can unravel the mystery of who it belonged to and what their job was.

Link to WIP spreadsheet of all the items: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uytePvRE2OvaKW4GADlso3lBYz_Tielg5eE68bihueg/edit?usp=sharing

Scanned in manual/report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FKlggsnANhoX4YUuNm4hu_N3SUNKZeSg/view?usp=sharing

It is not my intention to sell any of these artifacts. I doubt it will be worth more monetarily than it does to myself as a newly minted Bridge Bucket Improvement Team Fan anyhows.

If anyone has any information about these artifacts, would like to lend their knowledge of the shuttle program, or is just plain interested, feel free to reach out!🧑‍🚀🚀⋆｡°✩

This is mostly out of simple curiousity, but I was trying to learn more about the crew quarters at KSC and JSC and, while there's plenty of info and even a full 3D walkthrough for the KSC facility, anything on the JSC location is extremely difficult to find. Some stuff comes up about its energy efficiency, along with a few photos of the exterior. But are photos of the interior just, nonexistent? I almost started to wonder if it had never been used, but the Artemis II crew stayed there at least some of the time, according to this.

Anyway, maybe a long shot, but wondering if anyone knew of any additional info, photos, or even some kind of tour of the JSC facility.

edit: typo

I just read some great background info on why NASA lost the race for the first manned mission into space in John Logsdon’s great book - John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon:

But the January 31 [1961] flight with Ham aboard had landed 132 miles downrange from its target point and had subjected the chimp to a 14.7 g force on reentry, 3 g more than planned. These deviations from the flight plan were primarily the result of the overacceleration of the Redstone launcher and early firing of the spacecraft escape rocket. Even after these problems, NASA managers at the Space Task Group and some at NASA headquarters were ready to commit an astronaut to the next flight. However, “key members of von Braun’s team quickly decided that they wanted another booster test before a man could fly” and von Braun did not overrule them.