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    DOGE Cuts Hobble Office That Would Aid NASA and SpaceX Mars Landings

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    The Astrogeology Science Center, which has helped astronauts and robots reach other worlds safely, is facing a substantial number of job reductions.An office in an obscure corner of the federal government that NASA has relied on to safely land astronauts on the moon and robotic probes on Mars is facing pressure to cut its tight-knit team of experts by at least 20 percent, according to two people familiar with the mandate.The thinning of the staff has already started at the Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., the people said, the result of an assortment of voluntary resignation offers put forward by the Department of Government Efficiency, led by the billionaire Elon Musk. More employees are expected to be laid off in the coming weeks, following a new open call for early retirements and resignations on April 4. The office, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior, has been subject to the cost-cutting efforts initiated in a mass email that Mr. Musk’s team sent across the federal government in January.Representatives for the Interior Department, the U.S.G.S. and the astrogeology center did not reply to requests for comment on the staff reductions or their potential ramifications.The cuts could affect crewed missions to Mars in the future, a key goal of Mr. Musk, who founded SpaceX. He has said he conceived of the company to make human life multiplanetary.Matthew Golombek, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the selection of landing sites for multiple probes to Mars, described the Astrogeology Science Center’s precision mapping as “the gold standard that basically everyone in the community uses.”At the start of the year, the office had 53 employees. Eight are already set to leave, with more encouraged to consider the latest offer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dave Pelz, Scientist Turned Golf Instructor, Is Dead at 85

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      After working at NASA, he became a renowned expert on putting and shots close to the green through his coaching, books, television appearances and training aids.Dave Pelz, who left his job as a scientist at NASA to study the short game of golf, a detour that would make him a celebrated guru of putts and wedge shots, died on March 23 at his home in Dripping Springs, Texas, near Austin. He was 85.David Pelly, Pelz’s stepson and the chief executive of his company, Dave Pelz Golf, said the cause was prostate cancer.While most golfers focus more on how to drive long distances, Pelz concentrated on the short game — shots from within 100 yards, including putting and chipping and blasting out of bunkers with a wedge. In his early statistical research, he found that 80 percent of shots lost to par occur within that distance, and that putting makes up 43 percent of the game.“Golfers think that their first two shots are the game,” he said on the PBS talk show “Charlie Rose” in 2010. “They drive almost every hole. They hit to the green almost every hole. But what they don’t think about is that after you hit those first two shots, and you don’t hit the green, there are two, three or four more shots.”As a golf instructor, Pelz demonstrated putting techniques in 1999. He found that putting makes up 43 percent of the game.Bill Kennedy/The New York TimesPelz, recognizable in his trademark broad-brimmed sun hat, became a major influence on the short game. He developed training aids and created clubs (he had about 20 patents); wrote instruction books; had his own Golf Channel show; opened schools for amateurs at golf resorts; and coached professional golfers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Blue Ghost’s Long Day on the Moon

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      <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> –><!–> –>Landing<!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Several companies and countries have aimed to land on the moon in recent years. The map below shows the crewed Apollo moon landing sites, as well as more recent robotic landings from China, […] More

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      SpaceX Scrubs Launch of NASA SPHEREx and PUNCH Missions

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      The spacecraft, SPHEREx and PUNCH, had been expected to launch on a SpaceX rocket on Saturday.Two NASA missions will have to wait longer for a launch aboard a single rocket. Both aim to unravel mysteries about the universe — one by peering far from Earth, the other by looking closer to home.SpaceX on Saturday night announced on the website X around two hours before the scheduled launch time of 10:09 p.m. Eastern that it needed to continue checking the Falcon 9 rocket that was to lift the vehicles to orbit.The company said it would announce the next launch attempt when it was possible to do so from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.The rocket’s chief passenger is SPHEREx, a space telescope that will take images of the entire sky in more than a hundred colors that are invisible to the human eye. Accompanying the telescope is a suite of satellites known collectively as PUNCH, which will study the sun’s outer atmosphere and solar wind.What is SPHEREx?SPHEREx is short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer. The mouthful of a name is fitting for the vastness of its goal: to survey the entire sky in 102 colors, or wavelengths, of infrared light.The space telescope, which looks like a giant megaphone, will record around 600 images each day, capturing light from millions of stars in our cosmic backyard and even more galaxies beyond it. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will separate the light into different wavelengths, like a glass prism splitting white light into a rainbow of colors. The color spectrum of an object in space reveals information about its chemical makeup and distance from Earth.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 Moon Landing

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      The lunar lander is the first of three robotic spacecraft aiming to set down on the moon this year.Blue Ghost during an orbit of the moon about 62 miles above the surface on Feb. 24. The footage is sped up 10 times.By Firefly AerospaceThe moon will be a busy place this year. There are three robotic spacecraft in space right now that are aiming to set down on the moon’s surface.The first of those to arrive — the Blue Ghost lunar lander, built by Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas — will attempt to land early Sunday.When is the landing and how can I watch it?The landing is scheduled for 3:45 a.m. Eastern time on March 2. Firefly will begin live coverage of the landing at 2:20 a.m. from its YouTube channel.What is Blue Ghost’s destination?This mission is headed to Mare Crisium, a flat plain formed from lava that filled and hardened inside a 345-mile-wide crater carved out by an ancient asteroid impact. Mare Crisium is in the northeast quadrant of the near side of the moon.What is Blue Ghost taking to the moon?The lander is carrying a variety of scientific and experimental payloads to the lunar surface, including 10 for NASA. Those include a drill to measure the flow of heat from the moon’s interior to the surface, an electrodynamic dust shield to clean off glass and radiator surfaces, and an X-ray camera.That cargo is part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Service, or CLPS, which aims to put NASA equipment on the moon at a cheaper price than if NASA built its own lunar lander. The agency will pay Firefly $101.5 million if all 10 payloads reach the lunar surface, and a bit less if the mission does not fully succeed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NASA’S Lunar Trailblazer Hitches Ride to the Moon to Map Water for Astronauts

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      Lunar Trailblazer, an orbiter that shared a launch on Wednesday with the commercial Athena lander, will help scientists understand where the moon’s water is, and what form it takes.The moon is not bone dry, scientists now know. But how many drops of water will thirsty astronauts find? No one knows for sure.A robotic NASA spacecraft called Lunar Trailblazer, which launched Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is aiming to provide a detailed map from orbit of the abundance, distribution and form of water across the moon.Lunar Trailblazer tagged along for the ride to space on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as Athena, a commercial lunar lander built by Intuitive Machines of Houston, which will deploy a NASA instrument to drill in the moon and sniff for water vapors.Athena will study one spot on the moon. Lunar Trailblazer will provide a global picture of water on the moon.“That’s another exciting thing for us as we get more science into space with one launch,” Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, said during a news conference before the launch.Less than an hour after liftoff, Lunar Trailblazer and Athena went their separate ways. Athena is taking a direct path to the moon, with landing scheduled for March 6, while Lunar Trailblazer set off on a meandering but fuel-efficient journey that will take four months to reach its destination. After it enters orbit, the spacecraft will make observations for at least two years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Earth Safe From Asteroid 2024 YR4, NASA Says

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      The odds that the space rock, 2024 YR4, will smash into our planet in 2032 have dropped to nearly zero, leading astronomers to conclude that we are no longer in danger.A NASA video showing the shifting odds that Asteroid 2024 YR4 would crash into Earth.Graphics by Nasa Jpl/cneosAstronomers have been carefully watching 2024 YR4, a space rock with a heightened chance of hitting Earth in 2032. But fear not: NASA announced on Monday that it posed a threat no longer — the odds that the asteroid would smash into our planet have dropped to nearly zero.“I knew this was likely to go away as we collected more data,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “I was sleeping pretty well.”Days after skywatchers reported their observations of 2024 YR4 on Dec. 27, 2024, scientists calculated that it had more than a 1 percent chance of striking Earth — the only large asteroid known to have an impact probability so big.As scientists studied more data on the object, the odds of impact continued to rise through January and February, from 1.2 percent to a peak of 3.1 percent on Tuesday last week.That may sound small, but the probability was higher than any ever recorded by NASA for an object of this size or bigger.Somewhere between 130 and 300 feet wide, 2024 YR4 is big enough to potentially wipe out a city. Early estimates of the asteroid’s trajectory showed it could possibly slam into or explode in the air over large metropolitan areas, including Mumbai, India, and Lagos, Nigeria. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on fiction and nonfiction works about space exploration that were adapted into popular films.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their movie versions. More

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      Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Already a Leader in Satellites, Gets Into the Spy Game

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      The Pentagon needs what the company offers to compete with China even as it frets over its potential for dominance and the billionaire’s global interests.The breakthrough came last month, about 600 miles above Earth.For the first time, the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency used lasers transmitting data at light speed to communicate between military satellites on a secure network, making it easier to track enemy missiles and if necessary shoot them down.It was a milestone not only for the Pentagon. This was a defining moment for a certain up-and-coming military contractor that had built key parts of this new system: Elon Musk’s SpaceX.SpaceX over the last year started to move in a big way into the business of building military and spy satellites, an industry that has long been dominated by major contractors like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman as well as smaller players like York Space Systems.This shift comes as the Pentagon and U.S. spy agencies are preparing to spend billions of dollars to build a series of new constellations of low-earth-orbit satellites, much of it in response to recent moves by China to build its own space-based military systems.SpaceX is poised to capitalize on that, generating a new wave of questions inside the federal government about the company’s growing dominance as a military space contractor and Mr. Musk’s extensive business operations in China and his relations with foreign government leaders, possibly including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Musk is also unpredictable in a sector in which security is often perceived to be synonymous with predictability. He chafes at many of the processes and rules of government, saying they hold back progress, and wants to make his own calls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More