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NASA has created an emeritus status for Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, the commander and pilot of Artemis II, five months after their lunar mission splashdown. The designation lets them leave active astronaut duty and pursue outside careers—Glover is taking a leadership role at Cal Poly—while remaining available unpaid to train and advise NASA staff on Orion spacecraft systems.
NASA has directed Axiom Space to develop a lighter, less complex spacesuit variant called the Sortie Suit for the first crewed Artemis lunar landings, aiming to hit a 2028 target date at the Moon's South Pole. The decision, announced internally by Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons, will see the simplified suit used on both SpaceX and Blue Origin landers, cutting mass and easing integration with the spacecraft.
NASA has selected Blue Origin to build the Mars Telecommunications Network, a deal potentially worth $700 million. The orbiter is due to be operational by December 31, 2028, relaying science data, imagery, navigation details, and mission-critical communications for spacecraft near and on Mars.
NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel reported that after reviewing data from the Artemis II mission, the Orion capsule's heat shield showed only about nine sites of char loss, a dramatic improvement from the more than 100 sites, some over an inch deep, seen after Artemis I. NASA had altered Orion's reentry trajectory rather than redesign the heat shield following the 2022 issues, and the approach appears to have worked as the crew safely splashed down in the Pacific.
Adebola Festus Adekunle, 26, and Mudasiru Afeez Olawale, 24, were extradited from Nigeria to face U.S. charges tied to sextortion schemes that led to the deaths of two minors in Mississippi and North Carolina. Both men were arrested in Nigeria in August 2023 as part of 'Operation Artemis,' an international crackdown on sextortion rings targeting American minors, and now face charges including sexual exploitation of a minor resulting in death, production of child sexual abuse material, and coercion of minors.
President Trump awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, who flew around the moon in April. At the same ceremony, he signed an executive order establishing a Presidential Commission, chaired by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, to draft plans within 120 days for a new United States Space Academy meant to train personnel for NASA, the Space Force, and private space companies.
President Trump signed an executive order at Johnson Space Center establishing a commission to develop the first US Space Academy, a NASA-run institution rather than a military service academy. The signing came during a ceremony honoring the four Artemis II astronauts with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is leading the effort as part of his broader Project Athena plan to reshape the agency's workforce strategy.
NASA has repainted one of its T-38 supersonic training jets with a new black-and-white design featuring blue and red stripes, the Artemis program logo, and Moon graphics on the rear fuselage. The design, proposed by pilot Sean Brady of the Aircraft Operations Division at Johnson Space Center, was applied during the jet's scheduled repainting rather than for any special ceremony. The aircraft, tail number N924NA, is now the only one of NASA's 14 active T-38s that doesn't wear the agency's traditional blue-stripe livery.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch revealed she spent her first week back from the 10-day Artemis II lunar mission journaling about the experience while deliberately avoiding any mission photos. She wanted to capture her memories as they actually felt before the widely shared images could reshape them. Koch, along with commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and specialist Jeremy Hansen, completed the farthest human trip around the moon in over 50 years in early April.
A team from Texas A&M, NASA's Johnson Space Center, and Purdue University developed a system for managing multiple spacecraft around Gateway, the lunar-orbiting station NASA plans to launch no earlier than 2027. Using thousands of simulations, they created a 'string of pearls' approach that spaces waiting vehicles at set intervals ahead of or behind the station along its near-rectilinear halo orbit, accounting for navigation and thruster errors.