Laura Lopez

Hi Yvette, I changed my settings so it is visible outside bsky now.

A mission competition going from two to one candidates directly because of NASA complying with the White House's Presidential Budget Request—which was ultimately ignored by Congress.

I want to emphasize that AXIS's demise largely arose from Goddard being forced to align with FY26 president's budget request (PBR) which zeroed the Probe program. Goddard lost SO MUCH following the PBR, even though the Congressional budget kept that funding! Remember that as FY27 PBR comes soon. 🔭🧪

oh my god
while I was disappointed that AXIS was selected over STROBE-X, I would not have ever wanted their concept study not to proceed and this is a loss for the entire field and a sign of how much Donald Trump and his goons have damaged science in the United States and NASA in particular 🔭🧪

Just awful. AXIS would have provided the next step in the study of the high-energy universe. How stupid of NASA management to actively implement Trump's insane NASA budget cuts, which were eventually forestalled anyway in a burst of sanity by congress. Lots of eggs broken for no reason

The gutting of NASA Goddard has had a devastating effect on high energy astrophysics. The AXIS probe mission proposal was rejected without review. (The Goddard X-ray mirror lab was significantly impacted by shutdowns and pressured retirements, against the congress approved budget for NASA.)

For reference, without AXIS, the earliest that a high-resolution X-ray imaging mission can launch -- the successor to the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- is 2050s or 2060s. 🔭

Email from Chris Reynolds to the AXIS Team. Subject is disappointing AXIS news. Text of e-mail reads: Dear AXIS Friends, The AXIS team has received some very disappointing news – we have been informed by NASA HQ that AXIS is not eligible for selection and hence the Concept Study Report (CSR) will not be subjected to the full review process. AXIS represents the scientific aspirations of a large international community. As a member of one of the AXIS science working groups, you deserve a candid explanation from the PI of what happened and why. That is the purpose of this note. NASA’s decision was programmatic and not based on a review of the technology or science; the mission profile described in the submitted CSR was over the allowed budget and schedule. How was such a thing possible? In short, with NASA-GSFC as the AXIS managing center, the mission formulation process was critically compromised by the seismic shifts occurring in NASA and the Federal government. The AXIS study team was hit hard by three unprecedented challenges: NASA’s Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) and the pressure at GSFC to resign/retire created a rapid and uncontrolled loss of over 20 personnel with key expertise during a critical mission formulation period, including the main GSFC Project Manager (Jimmy Marsh) and the X-ray mirror lead (Will Zhang) and many discipline engineers.

GSFC priorities rapidly realigned to the FY2026 President’s Budget Request (PBR) that eliminated the Probe program, further reducing the availability of GSFC engineering and mission formulation personnel (incl. cost analysts and schedulers) over the critical Summer and Fall months. Key work was halted for almost seven weeks when the core GSFC AXIS study team, dominated by NASA civil servants, was furloughed during the government shutdown. NASA HQ’s extension to the CSR submission deadline (from 18-Dec-2025 to 29-Jan-2026) was inadequate compensation for the disruption and lost time. Taken together, these factors disrupted the basic grass-roots costing process (which requires extensive “reach back” to the discipline engineers to assess labor requirements) as well as the cost-design iteration process that is central to the formulation of a cost-capped and schedule-constrained mission. While the mission design was finalized in April, our initial grass-roots costing (which was ~10% over budget) could only be completed in September due to the lack of assigned resources. With the subsequent government shutdown and then “pens down” in early-December forced by the GSFC Executive Review process, there was no opportunity to work through the set of cost/schedule savings that had already been identified by the AXIS team. Ultimately, the GSFC executive council gave AXIS leadership the choice of submitting a CSR with a non-compliant schedule and cost, or not submitting a CSR at all. We of course proceeded with the submission, including a narrative that we understood the path to a cost-compliant profile (that we would have discussed with the review panels during the Site Visit). NASA HQ has ruled this stance to be unacceptable. It is important to stress that NASA’s programmatic decision was before any technical review had been conducted. The decision was NOT due to any concerns about AXIS technology. Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering

Indeed, the AXIS Phase A work had major successes with furthering the key technologies. GSFC’s Next Generation X-ray Optics (NGXO) team successfully demonstrated iridium-coated, stress-compensated mirror segments that meet AXIS baseline requirements (i.e. segment-level performance at sub-arcsecond level).  NGXO also built the first AXIS demonstrator mirror module, learning critical lessons about mirror alignment, mounting and bonding. On the detector side, MIT quickly moved to fabricate AXIS-like CCDs and, working with our colleagues at Stanford, recently demonstrated that they achieve the required readout rate and spectral resolution. Similarly, NASA’s decision was NOT a judgment of the importance of AXIS science. The AXIS science case was rated excellent in the Step 1 review, and it only became stronger during our Phase A study. The AXIS Community Science Book, which many of you contributed to, is an extremely powerful demonstration of the relevance and importance of high-resolution X-ray observations to all areas of astrophysics. The Science Book is one of the most important legacies of the AXIS Phase A study and, I believe, will help define future mission concepts for many years to come. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all of your work on this. AXIS has been a long journey; we started under the leadership of Richard Mushotzky more than nine years ago. During that time, it’s been an enormous privilege to work with amazing people; the AXIS science team, the incredible/brilliant GSFC and Northrop Grumman engineers, and the wider astrophysics community. I am, quite frankly, livid that AXIS ultimately fell victim to the programmatic chaos of 2025. The astronomical community deserves better. I hope that NASA leadership, especially at GSFC and HQ, can have an honest discussion about how to better support and protect programs during extraordinary times.

For now, as a community, we must look forward. There is still one excellent mission under consideration for the Probe program, PRIMA, and we wish them a smooth and speedy path to selection and flight. In X-ray astronomy, the SMEX and MidEX programs represent concrete pathways for focused, high-impact missions, and the scientific case we built for AXIS provides a strong foundation for those concepts. The technologies we advanced in Step 1 and Phase A, particularly the NGXO mirror work and the MIT/Stanford detector demonstrations, can anchor the next generation of proposals. Most importantly, the AXIS Community Science Book, representing more than 500 scientists across, is a living document and a powerful signal to NASA leadership that this community is organized, serious, and not going anywhere. I encourage everyone to use it actively, as a resource for future concept development, for Astro2030 engagement, and for building the next mission that will deliver high angular resolution X-ray imaging to address the fundamental questions about black hole growth, galaxy evolution, and the hot universe that motivated AXIS from the beginning. This community built something remarkable over nine years and that doesn't end here. Thank you again for your support of AXIS over these times. Best Chris and the AXIS leadership team

The @axisprobe.bsky.social team learned that the phase A concept study report of AXIS (the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite) will not be reviewed because the lost personnel at NASA Goddard and government shutdown impacted our schedule and budget. 🔭 Here is the PI's e-mail with the explanation.

President Emeritus E. Gordon Gee Returns to Ohio State with Glenn College Residency The former Ohio State president will spend the next year in academic residencies to engage with university leadership, faculty and students on higher education.

So many bad options! Gee came back this academic year to OSU as a consultant to help with the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society to promote intellectual diversity. 🫠 glenn.osu.edu/news/pa/pres...

I have read many articles about Carter's resignation today, and every one talks about how he was awful for this university. I worry we will have someone worse next (I hope Santa Ono doesn't apply for the job 🤢)

AAUP-OSU statement on Ted Carter’s resignation as OSU president: “The students, faculty, and staff of Ohio State deserve so much better than the failed leadership that has been inflicted on this institution over the years. The repression of free speech, the dismantling of diversity, the lack of accountability to survivors - the list goes on and on. We demand a more transparent presidential search that involves the input of faculty, staff, and other university stakeholders.”

After just over two years on the job, Ohio State University President Ted Carter has resigned from the university after he disclosed an inappropriate relationship to the board of trustees. Carter, 66, resigned over the weekend after a rare three-hour executive session for the board on March 7. Excerpt of article from the Columbus Dispatch: "Carter told trustees in advance of that meeting that he had an inappropriate relationship with "someone seeking public resources to support her personal business," according to a university statement. He offered to resign and the board accepted."

OSU president Ted Carter resigned. Good riddance! www.dispatch.com/story/news/e...

😂

Coh-spar among X-ray astronomers!

‘Very Republican, very patriotic’: right-leaning civic centers now offer courses at US public colleges Republican lawmakers push for conservative professors to counter purported leftwing indoctrination in schools

Want to know more about the sweeping trend of state mandated taxpayer financed and hyper empowered civics centers, and the political project they embody, as in Ohio? See this excellent @theguardian.com article @osuaaup.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Bringing this skeet back up because the THREE $90M each ($270M total) F-15s shot down today by friendly fire in Kuwait could pay for FOUR Chandra X-ray Observatories at full operations. Let's remember that when the 2027 president's budget request comes out soon. 🔭

Follow-up comment on how bad it is on the ground at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. 🔭

Screenshot of zoom chat. "Person 1: Its hard to convey the depth of the destruction of GSFC and the lack of planning - this has not been well covered by the press or communicated to the community; Person 2: I strongly agree ^^; Person 3: Agreed. It is a shame that the best source of what is going on at GSFC is the Greenbelt News Review, so a weekly volunteer newspaper that typcially mainly reports on church meetings, Roosevelt high school, and the Greenbelt city council (but their articles on GSFC ARE very good)."

Anonymized chat from a telecon right now on the scale of destruction at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and how the best news source about it is the volunteer Greenbelt News Review (www.greenbeltnewsreview.com). ☹️ 🔭

LOL. Conversely, I also found Hegseth calling MIT "woke" hilarious as someone who went there for undergrad and postdoc and saw my academic advisor and my hiring committee chair in the Epstein e-mails. 🫠

Thank you, Randall!! Glad you got to hear the ACX shout-out! 😀 I want people to appreciate how much it changes temperature and metallicity estimates!

YouTube video by CfA Colloquium Laura Lopez: A Multiwavelength View of Feedback and Outflows from Nearby Galaxies

Check out @ohdearz.bsky.social great talk at the CfA colloquium on feedback and outflows from nearby galaxies at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Nh.... And thanks for the shout-out for the AtomDB CX model!

Astrobites is partnering with @blackinastro.bsky.social this year for Black Space Week! If you’d like to register to participate as a writer or interviewee you can fill out the Google Form below or in the QR code in the flyer! The deadline is Friday March 6th.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Harvard just announced they will be remote tomorrow, so I may do my colloquium remotely... from my hotel room in Porter Square? 🤣

View out a window of a red house, fence, and snow drifts during the blizzard in Boston.

View of houses, fences, trees, and snow drifts from a window during a blizzard in Boston.

Here's the views outside my hotel room window in Cambridge, MA. The roof/balcony ledge (and snow) are above my knee!

That picture looks even more apocalyptic than Boston in "Last of Us"! 😂

LOLZ. This is going to be one of my "walking uphill in the snow to work both ways" stories in my life.

Me too, and I live in Columbus, so these kinds of people were the pickings! 🫣

Central State University is one of two historically-black colleges & universities (and the only public HBCU) in Ohio, and alumni include the Columbus US congressperson Joyce Beatty. CSU will have lost 38 faculty in the last 3 years, which this Dispatch article says is 1/4 of their total faculty.

I hope they make it! Flights out of Boston were still leaving when I arrived at ~10am, but flights coming into Boston/NYC/EWR this afternoon were cancelled, so they may not have planes to get out depending on their departure time.

Cool cool. Just in time for my colloquium at Harvard this week! 🫠 Got the last flight out of Columbus this morning! All flights to the Northeast are cancelled the rest of today and all of tomorrow.