SPACE/COSMOS

Moon or Mars? NASA's future at a crossroads under Trump

Agence France-Presse
February 21, 2025 

The planet Mars (AFP)

by Issam AHMED


Is NASA still Moonbound, or will the next giant leap mean skipping straight to Mars?

Speculation is mounting that the Trump administration may scale back or cancel NASA's Artemis missions following the departure of a key official and Boeing's plans to lay off hundreds of employees working on its lunar rocket.

Late Wednesday, NASA abruptly announced the retirement of longtime associate administrator Jim Free, effective Saturday.

No reason was given for Free's departure after his 30-year rise to NASA's top civil-service position. However, he was a strong advocate for Artemis, which aims to return crews to the Moon, establish a sustained presence, and use that experience to prepare for a Mars mission.

Though Artemis was conceived in President Donald Trump's first term, he has openly mused about bypassing the Moon and heading straight to Mars -- a notion gaining traction as Elon Musk, the world's richest person and SpaceX's owner, becomes a key ally and advisor.

Musk's SpaceX, founded to make humanity a multiplanetary species, is betting heavily on its prototype Starship rocket for a future Mars mission.

Trump has also tapped private astronaut and e-payments billionaire Jared Isaacman, a close Musk ally who has flown to space twice with SpaceX, as his next NASA chief.

Boeing this month told employees it could 400 jobs from the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket program to "align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectation."


"This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act," the aerospace giant told AFP.

Boeing "saw the writing on the wall," Keith Cowing, a former NASA scientist and founder of NASA Watch, told AFP.

To date, SLS has flown just one mission -- 2022's uncrewed Artemis 1 -- and has proven exceedingly costly. It's "likely to fly only one or two missions, or they'll cancel it outright," Cowing added.

- Reform or scrap? -

Skepticism about the exceedingly expensive SLS and the Orion crew capsule -- whose heat shield issues delayed future Artemis missions -- is widespread among space watchers.

Still, many advocate reform, not repeal.


"We need to stick with the plan we have now," Free said at an American Astronautical Society meeting in October.

"That doesn't mean we can't perform better... but we need to keep this destination of the Moon from a human spaceflight perspective. If we lose that, I believe we will fall apart and wander, and other people in this world will pass us by."

Space policy analyst Laura Forczyk noted Free had been in line to become NASA's interim administrator before being passed over in favor of another official, Janet Petro.


She warned that eliminating the Moon would remove a crucial testbed for technologies needed to ensure a safe Mars journey.

While Musk has called Artemis a "jobs-maximizing program" and said "something entirely new is needed," the initiative enjoys strong congressional backing.

It supports tens of thousands of jobs in states including Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, with support from key Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz.


Abandoning the Moon would also leave China unchallenged to plant its flag on the lunar south pole with a planned 2030 crewed mission.

Forczyk believes Artemis is more likely to be reformed than scrapped, with SLS potentially limited to one or two flights before private companies -- such as SpaceX or Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin -- assume key roles.

"However, the Trump administration is unpredictable, and we really cannot get in the minds of Donald Trump or Musk," she told AFP.

Another looming uncertainty has been how Trump's broader effort to downsize the federal government could affect NASA.


A NASA spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday that about five percent of the workforce had accepted a "deferred resignation" offer allowing them to remain on administrative leave while continuing to receive pay until September.

© Agence France-Presse



'City killer' asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth: NASA

Agence France-Presse
February 19, 2025 

This handout picture provided by NASA shows asteroid 2024 YR4 as observed by the Magdalena Ridge 2.4m telescope at the New Mexico Institute of Technology on January 27, 2025 (Handout)

by Issam Ahmed with Daniel Lawler in Paris

An asteroid that could level a city now has a 3.1-percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released Tuesday -- making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting.

Despite the rising odds, experts say there is no need for alarm. The global astronomical community is closely monitoring the situation and the James Webb Space Telescope is set to fix its gaze on the object, known as 2024 YR4, next month.

"I'm not panicking," Bruce Betts, chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society told AFP.

"Naturally when you see the percentages go up, it doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy and good," he added, but explained that as astronomers gather more data, the probability will likely edge up before rapidly dropping to zero.

2024 YR4 was first detected on December 27 last year by the El Sauce Observatory in Chile.

Astronomers estimate its size to be between 130 and 300 feet (40–90 meters) wide, based on its brightness. Analysis of its light signatures suggests it has a fairly typical composition, rather than being a rare metal-rich asteroid.

The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a worldwide planetary defense collaboration, issued a warning memo on January 29 after the impact probability had crossed one percent. Since then, the figure has fluctuated but continues to trend upward.

NASA's latest calculations estimate the impact probability at 3.1 percent, with a potential Earth impact date of December 22, 2032.


That translates to odds of one in 32 -- roughly the same as correctly guessing the outcome of five consecutive coin tosses.

The last time an asteroid of greater than 30 meters in size posed such a significant risk was Apophis in 2004, when it briefly had a 2.7 percent chance of striking Earth in 2029 -- a possibility later ruled out by additional observations.

Surpassing that threshold is "historic," said Richard Moissl, head of the European Space Agency's planetary defense office, which puts the risk slightly lower at 2.8 percent.

- Webb observations in March -

"It's a very, very rare event," he told AFP, but added: "This is not a crisis at this point in time. This is not the dinosaur killer. This is not the planet killer. This is at most dangerous for a city."

Data from the Webb telescope -- the most powerful space observatory -- will be key in better understanding its trajectory, said the Planetary Society's Betts.


"Webb is able to see things that are very, very dim," he said -- which is key because the asteroid's orbit is currently taking it out towards Jupiter, and its next close approach will not be until 2028.

If the risk rises over 10 percent, IAWN would issue a formal warning, leading to a "recommendation for all UN members who have territories in potentially threatened areas to start terrestrial preparedness," explained Moissl.

Unlike the six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, 2024 YR4 is classified as a "city killer" -- not a global catastrophe, but still capable of causing significant destruction.

Its potential devastation comes less from its size and more from its velocity, which could be nearly 40,000 miles per hour if it hits.

If it enters Earth's atmosphere, the most likely scenario is an airburst, meaning it would explode midair with a force of approximately eight megatons of TNT -- more than 500 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

But an impact crater cannot be ruled out if the size is closer to the higher end of estimates, said Betts.

The potential impact corridor spans the eastern Pacific, northern South America, the Atlantic, Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and South Asia -- though Moissl emphasized it is far too early for people to consider drastic decisions like relocation.

The good news: there's ample time to act.

NASA's 2022 DART mission proved that spacecraft can successfully alter an asteroid's path, and scientists have theorized other methods, such as using lasers to create thrust by vaporizing part of the surface, pulling it off course with a spacecraft's gravity, or even using nuclear explosions as a last resort.

© Agence France-Presse