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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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      How Lauren Sanchez Helped Design Blue Origin’s Flight Suits

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      What do you wear for your first trip to space?If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit the company (or government agency) you are flying with provides. However, if you are Lauren Sánchez — journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist and fiancée of Jeff Bezos — the second-richest man on the planet, you have another idea. You think, “Let’s reimagine the flight suit.”“Usually, you know, these suits are made for a man,” Ms. Sánchez said recently on a video call from the West Coast. “Then they get tailored to fit a woman.” Or not tailored: an all-female spacewalk, planned in 2019, had to be canceled because NASA did not have two spacesuits that fit two women. (Instead they sent out one woman and one man.)But Ms. Sánchez is part of the first all-female flight since Russia sent Valentina Tereshkova on a solo flight in 1963. She will be going up on a Blue Origin flight with a pop star (Katy Perry), a journalist (Gayle King), two scientist/activists (Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe) and a film producer (Kerianne Flynn). Feeling like yourself is what makes you feel powerful, she said, and you shouldn’t have to sacrifice that because space has been — well, a mostly male space. Even if you are a space tourist, rather than a full-fledged astronaut.So five months ago, Ms. Sánchez got in touch with Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, the co-founders of the brand Monse, who are also creative directors of Oscar de la Renta (Mr. Garcia and Ms. Kim made Ms Sánchez’s 2024 Met Gala outfit). She wanted to know if they would work with Blue Origin, Mr. Bezos’ space company.“I was like: right away!” Mr. Garcia said over Zoom.The result of their collaboration will be unveiled on Monday, when Ms. Sánchez and crew climb into the Blue Origin rocket in West Texas, and take off for their approximately 11-minute trip past the Kármán line and into zero gravity.Details of the new Blue Origin/Monse flight suits, including the passengers’s name, mission patch, dual zippers, Blue Origin insignia, and customizable flared leg.Photographs by Justin Hamel for The New York TimesWe 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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      Chinese Lunar Rocks Suggest a Thirsty Far Side of the Moon

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      Using samples gathered from the Chang’e-6 mission, scientists found that the interior of the moon on the half we never see from Earth might be drier than the near side.The far side of the moon — the part that always faces away from Earth — is mysteriously distinct from the near side. It is pockmarked with more craters and has a thicker crust and less maria, or plains where lava once formed.Now, scientists say that difference could be more than skin deep.Using a lunar sample obtained last year, Chinese researchers believe that the insides of the moon’s far side are potentially drier than its near side. Their discovery, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, could offer a clearer picture of how the pearly orb we admire in our night sky formed and evolved over billions of years.That the water content within the lunar far and near sides differs seems “coincidentally consistent” with the variations in the surface features of the moon’s two hemispheres, said Sen Hu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and an author of the new result. “It’s quite intriguing,” he said.The moon was believed to be “bone dry” until the 1990s, when scientists began to discover hints of water on its surface. Those hints were confirmed when NASA slammed a rocket stage into the lunar south pole in 2009.Since then, studies have indicated that there is ice across much of the lunar surface. Water has also been found in the mantle, a layer of the moon below the crust and above the core.Last June, China became the first nation to return a sample from the moon’s far side. Chang’e-6, the sixth in a series of Chinese lunar exploration missions, scooped and drilled more than four pounds of regolith from the South Pole-Aitken basin, the deepest crater on the moon.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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      Orbital Rocket Crashes After First Launch From Continental Europe

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      The rocket, developed by Isar Aerospace, lifted off from Norway’s Andøya Space Center and crashed about 30 seconds later. The test flight was part of efforts to make Europe a center for private satellite launches.The engine shuddered to life around half past noon local time on Sunday, and with a guttural roar, the 92-foot-tall Spectrum rocket lifted slowly away from its launch tower, marking the first liftoff of its kind on the European continent.The rocket, launched by Isar Aerospace from within the Arctic Circle at a spaceport on the icy Norwegian island of Andøya, was the first orbital flight outside of Russia to leave continental Europe. About 30 seconds after the rocket cleared the launchpad, it pitched to the side and plummeted back to earth.But Daniel Metzler, the chief executive of Isar Aerospace, was upbeat. He said in a statement that the test flight had “met all our expectations, achieving a great success,” despite the crash.“We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our Flight Termination System,” Mr. Metzler said. The rocket fell directly into the sea, the launchpad was not damaged, and no one was harmed when the spacecraft crashed, he added.The Andøya Spaceport could not immediately be reached for comment. Earlier, it had posted on social media saying that “crisis management” had been activated following the crash, and that it was collaborating with the emergency services and Isar Aerospace.The test flight was seven years in the making for Isar Aerospace, a German-based company founded in 2018 with a mission to make satellite launches more accessible from Europe. European companies have been pushing ahead in space technology and research, exploring the potential of the space sector for defense, security and geopolitics.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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      Photos: Partial Solar Eclipse Captivates Much of the Northern Hemisphere

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      As the sun rose in the Northern Hemisphere on Saturday, the moon cut across Earth’s orbit and took a bite out of the sun.The partial solar eclipse, which occurs when the moon moves between the Earth and the sun, casting a shadow on our planet, was the first of the year and was visible in parts of the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Russia and Africa.Unlike a total solar eclipse, when the entire sun is covered, a partial solar eclipse creates a crescent sun.The event had already begun when dawn broke in the Northeastern United States, which had the best view in the country. People in northern and western Europe, as well as on the northwestern coast of Africa, were treated to the celestial show during the late morning and early afternoon.If you missed it, the next partial solar eclipse will be in September, and the best view will be in Australia.Borja Suarez/ReutersA composite image of seven separate photos shows the partial solar eclipse as seen at Castillo del Romeral on the island of Gran Canaria in Spain.Jon Nazca/ReutersIn Ronda, Spain, one viewer took in the eclipse using a homemade filter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesCloud cover didn’t spoil the view in Nuuk, Greenland.Borja Suarez/ReutersMarina Prol, 45, and her mother, Pilar Franco, 64, watch the partial solar eclipse on the island of Gran Canaria in Spain.Sem Van Der Wal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEclipse viewers gathered at the Sonnenborgh Observatory in Utrecht, Netherlands.Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated PressA view of the partial solar eclipse over St. Petersburg, Russia.Armando Franca/Associated PressA makeshift strategy for photographing the partial eclipse in Ericeira, Portugal.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressA partial solar eclipse rises over the Atlantic Ocean in Halifax on Saturday.Borja Suarez/ReutersEduvigio Marrero, 58, Agustin Artiles, 62, and Alejandro Polo, 50, on the island of Gran Canaria in Spain.Johan Nilsson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn Nuuk, Greenland, nearly 90 percent of the sun was covered at the height of the eclipse.Jonathan Wolfe 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