Loren Grush

Billionaire Isaacman Met With Trump Over Top NASA Job Jared Isaacman and President Donald Trump have met in recent weeks and discussed reviving the fintech billionaire’s nomination to lead NASA, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Jared Isaacman may not totally be out of the NASA game just yet www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Two Comets Are Moving Into Your Night Skies in October: How to Watch

Have a little cosmic wonder with your spooky season: My first story for @nytimes.com, about a pair of once-in-a-lifetime cosmic visitors gracing the northern skies this month www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/s...

This week is going to be revealing in a lot of ways. There's been plenty of speculation over how NASA will respond in the event of a shutdown and a CR, and the agency has been planning to a lot of different scenarios. Soon we'll find out exactly what the path forward is.

The Story of DOGE, as Told by Federal Workers WIRED spoke with more than 200 federal workers in dozens of agencies to learn what happened as the Department of Government Efficiency tore through their offices.

NEW

WIRED led the way in reporting on Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle the US government. My colleagues and I spoke to 100s of employees at dozens of agencies to understand what happened.

This is the definitive story of DOGE as told by those who experienced it

www.wired.com/story/oral-h...

White House Tells Agencies to Prepare for Job Cuts in Shutdown The White House budget office is telling federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings during a possible government shutdown.

As another government shutdown looms, OMB is telling federal agencies to plan for mass firings rather than just furloughs, bucking precedent www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Anna Menon of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission is among the new class

YouTube video by NASA NASA Selects 2025 Astronaut Candidates

NASA is about to get a new crop of astronaut candidates. Start your Monday on a high note: www.youtube.com/watch?v=frX3...

A $100-Million Mission to Another Star Just Disappeared An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

An absolute banger of a story from @sarahscoles.bsky.social about Breakthrough Starshot and its dreams of interstellar travel, a decade after the big-deal project was announced, including what happened to that dazzling $100 million promise: www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

House Appropriations has filed a CR that would keep the government open through November 21. appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

NASA Rover Finds Mars Rocks That May Be Signs of Ancient Life NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars stumbled upon rocks last year that scientists think may show signs that Mars once hosted microbial life.

And to cap it off, we've maybe, kinda, sorta found life on Mars... again! This time, enticing rocks found by the Perseverance rover hint at past microbial life, and the bot even grabbed a sample! Too bad they're trying to kill Mars Sample Return... www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

NASA Blocks Chinese Citizens With US Visas From Working on Space Programs NASA has blocked Chinese citizens with US visas from working on agency programs, people familiar with the matter said, as Washington escalates anti-Beijing rhetoric with both nations racing to the moo...

Then, NASA tells us that it is restricting Chinese citizens' "physical and cybersecurity access to our facilities, materials, and network to ensure the security of our work." w/ @eroston.bsky.social and Sana Pashankar www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Is Starship the Weak Link in the US Lunar Race With China? Greetings Earthlings, it’s Loren Grush, reporting this week from the US Chamber of Commerce’s aerospace summit in Washington. The pressure is on for the US to beat China in the race to put humans back...

Kind of a wild morning! First up some post-Starship analysis for the newsletter, with Elon's promise of reaching 100-ton payload capacity next year www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

SpaceX agrees to acquire EchoStar's AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses for up to $8.5B in cash and up to $8.5B in stock, resolving an FCC inquiry into EchoStar (Bloomberg)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Bridenstine ripping apart the complicated Artemis architecture with a specific focus on Starship and the decision to pick SpaceX between NASA administrators: "This is an architecture that no NASA administrator that I'm aware of would have selected had they had the choice"

Bridenstine is back, and so is the Mountain Dew

U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation

The Senate Commerce Committee's hearing on beating China to the moon is underway after a last minute witness reshuffle www.commerce.senate.gov

Trump will announce Space Command will move from Colorado to Alabama, AP source says President Donald Trump’s administration will announce U.S. Space Command will be located in Alabama, reversing a Biden-era decision to keep it at its temporary headquarters in Colorado.

BREAKING: President Trump will announce Space Command will move from Colorado to Alabama, reversing a Biden-era decision, an AP source says.

Such a sweetheart, Millie! So sorry Andrew

Ted Cruz Wants a Real Space Shuttle in Houston, Not a Fake One There’s money and desire to move a retired spaceship from Washington, but it’s a logistical nightmare.

Did a dive into the saga to transport a retired Space Shuttle to Houston. The story could have easily been twice as long, it's got so many wild parts www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Starship coming in for landing

SpaceX Starship Launches in Key Test After Fiery Setbacks Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket on its 10th major test flight on Tuesday evening, a mission that comes with high stakes after a series of explosive setbacks this year.

Relatively clean Starship launch so far. Finally demonstrated payload deployment after not getting the chance for most of the year www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Tim, please no. I'm tired

"Now let's talk about Mars" the hosts say on the SpaceX livestream, but let's not say a word about the $4 billion contracts we hold with NASA to send astronauts to the Moon

SpaceX Starship's Tenth Flight Test

Musk voice jumpscare on today's Starship livestream. I guess we're getting a combined technical update and launch viewing experience today x.com/i/broadcasts...

Thank you! Should be fixed now. And yeah, we'll find out soon...

After the mixed Starship test flights this year, SpaceX surged 20 percent of its Falcon engineering group to Starship for six months to help with testing and reliability. Now as the company heads into its next test flight, the pressure is on to show progress www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002, even as it’s received billions of dollars in federal contracts, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times. nyti.ms/45wGKkn

It's very good

The best response a reporter can possibly get to an interview request: "this is a topic I know a great deal about and have a lot of opinions on"

Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell has passed at 97 www.nasa.gov/news-release...
One of my early young journalist memories was getting to interview him and Ron Howard on a red carpet in Austin for a screening of Apollo 13. I bragged about it for a while! (I'm the mop of brown curly hair)