3–4 minutes

WASHINGTON — A Rocket Lab Electron launched a set of cubesats sponsored by the Japanese space agency JAXA April 22 on the company’s second dedicated mission for the agency.

The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 11:09 p.m. Eastern on a mission called “Kakushin Rising” by the company. The rocket’s upper stage deployed its payload of eight cubesats into a 540-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit nearly an hour later.

The eight satellites on JAXA’s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration-4 mission were developed by Japanese companies and universities to test advanced technologies in space. Those technologies include a multispectral camera, sensors to detect electromagnetic precursors of earthquakes, and an antenna that unfolds to 25 times its stowed size using origami techniques.

JAXA originally planned to launch those eight cubesats along with a larger technology demonstration satellite, RAISE-4, on an Epsilon rocket. However, that rocket has been grounded since a 2022 launch failure and subsequent issues during static-fire tests of the rocket’s solid-fuel motors.

Because of those problems, JAXA signed a contract with Rocket Lab in October 2025 for two Electron launches, one for RAISE-4 and the other for the cubesats. RAISE-4 successfully launched on an Electron in December.

This launch came a few weeks after the previous orbital Electron launch, carrying a pair of European Space Agency navigation technology demonstration satellites called Celeste. ESA opted to launch Celeste on Electron because of a lack of near-term European launch options for the satellites and a May 2026 deadline to put their reserved frequencies into use.

“Two successful missions in a matter of months, deployed precisely where they needed to be on orbit, shows exactly why Electron is the preferred small launcher for national space agencies,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in a statement. “JAXA is a world leader in space and it’s been an honor to be trusted with these back-to-back missions growing Japan’s aerospace economy.”

The launch for JAXA took place a little more than 24 hours after the suborbital variant of Electron, HASTE, lifted off from Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Island, Virginia. Rocket Lab did not disclose the launch, codenamed “Bubbles,” including the customer for the launch or its outcome. The JAXA mission was the eighth Electron launch overall this year, including two HASTE flights.

4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — Jordan is the latest country to sign the Artemis Accords as NASA works to attract more countries to its lunar exploration efforts.

In an April 23 ceremony at NASA Headquarters, Dina Kawar, Jordan’s ambassador to the United States, signed the Accords on behalf of the country. Jordan is the 63rd country to sign the Accords and the second to do so this week, after Latvia signed April 20.

Signing the Accords, she said, is part of Jordan’s efforts to turn itself “into a regional and global hub” in science and technology. “This is a wonderful day for us, and the start of wonderful cooperation.”

“Space exploration represents the ultimate expression of optimism for the future,” Mike Gold, president of Redwire Space and a former NASA associate administrator who helped lead development of the Accords, told SpaceNews. “While the Middle East has faced a difficult period, Jordan signing the Artemis Accords shows that the spirit of exploration and optimism remains undiminished in the Hashemite Kingdom and in the region generally.”

The Accords, unveiled in 2020, outline best practices in safe and sustainable space exploration, building on the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements, from interoperability to deconflicting space activities. Increasingly, NASA is using the Accords as a vehicle for coordinating cooperation in the broader Artemis exploration effort, particularly with the lunar base program the agency announced in March.

“NASA’s pivot to the lunar surface and ramping up surface missions to one per month will create unparalleled opportunities for Jordan and numerous other nations to develop and contribute payloads, instruments and science that can travel to the moon,” Gold said. “Via NASA’s renewed focus on Artemis Accords signatories becoming a part of the Artemis program, the whole world will be able to join in this singular journey of discovery.”

At the event, neither the ambassador nor U.S. officials discussed specific contributions Jordan might make to Artemis. The country has flown a student-built cubesat and conducted analog missions in the country’s Mars-like terrain, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said.

“Jordan is moving fast and building a strong reputation in the greater space community,” he said at the signing ceremony. “They joined at a pivotal moment as we take the Accords’ principles and put them into practice with humanity’s return to the moon.”

Officials said at the ceremony they are working to get more countries to sign the Accords. “There is no time to lose. We must keep building on these achievements, and I know Administrator Isaacman is doing just that,” said Ruth Perry, acting principal deputy assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs at the U.S. State Department. “This is only the beginning as we expand the Accords and unlock the potential of outer space.”

6–8 minutes

WASHINGTON — Members of the House Science Committee rejected a proposed fiscal year 2027 budget for NASA because of sweeping cuts as the agency’s administrator argued it could do more with less.

During an April 22 hearing by the full committee that spanned nearly four hours, including a lengthy recess for votes on the House floor, members of both parties criticized the budget proposal released April 3 that sought a 23% cut in overall NASA spending with steeper reductions in areas like science and aeronautics.

“I simply do not believe that this budget proposal is capable of supporting what President Trump himself has directed the agency to accomplish over his two terms, nor what Congress has directed by law,” said Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, chairman of the committee, in his opening remarks.

Babin described himself as a fiscal conservative who wants to reduce government spending but argued the NASA budget proposal went too far. “Shortchanging NASA is simply not smart,” he said, citing competition with China.

“We see this the same way,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the committee’s ranking member. She laid the blame for the budget cuts on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rather than on NASA itself.

“Like the ’26 request, OMB tried to argue that NASA and the United States will continue to lead in space and Earth science, human exploration, aeronautics and space technology, while all but exploration would see draconian cuts,” she said.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman argued that the agency should be more efficient, citing in his opening statement major budget overruns and delays on programs like the X-59 experimental aircraft, Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, Mars Sample Return and the Space Launch System Block 1B.

“This is not good capital allocation or execution,” he said. “American exceptionalism is being challenged in the high ground of space. To win, we cannot establish programs that are designed to be too big to fail but, at the same time, too costly to succeed.”

“Can we do more with the resources being contemplated in the president’s budget request? I would say absolutely, and I draw that based on the work that I’ve done understanding where our inefficiencies are,” he said later in the hearing.

Members did not appear convinced by the argument that NASA could achieve more despite the reduced funding. “So, you think the 47% cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate will still yield the same results?” asked Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va.

Isaacman cited as one example his belief that the growing capabilities of the commercial Earth observation sector can take over for the decades-long Landsat program after the Landsat-10 mission is launched in the early 2030s. “The constellation providers may reduce costs by 80 or 90%.”

“Do you think we can cut 50% across the board and still yield the same results or better?” asked Subramanyam.

“My commitment to Congress is to maximize the scientific value of every dollar you give us,” Isaacman responded. “We can do far more with the resources available, even with a reduction in the budget.”

Subramanyam disagreed, and other members in the hearing raised similar concerns about cuts to science and aeronautics. Some of the strongest complaints, though, were about the proposed elimination of NASA’s education office, known as the Office of STEM Engagement, or OSTEM. That office received $143 million in 2026, less than 1% of NASA’s overall budget.

The elimination of the office — also proposed in the 2026 budget as well as several budget proposals in the Trump administration’s first term — generated bipartisan criticism because it would eliminate funding for programs like Space Grant and Minority University Research & Education Project.

“The budget request proposes eliminating funding for the NASA Office of STEM Engagement. Can we fix that, do you think?” asked Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, after noting the support it offered to universities in his district.

Isaacman told him and other members that NASA offered other ways to support educational institutions through research grants and internship programs, but did not discuss how NASA would compensate for the elimination of the OSTEM programs. He also argued that NASA can best provide educational motivation and inspiration through its activities.

A counterargument came from Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., who, like many members, praised the recent Artemis 2 mission. She noted one of the astronauts on the mission, Christina Koch, graduated from North Carolina State University in Ross’s district. Koch, she added, had received funding from Space Grant to attend a NASA summer program while a student there.

“You stated that a dedicated STEM engagement program is unnecessary because, if we can execute our mission and get the inspiration, the STEM education will take care of itself,” she told Isaacman. “I beg to differ.”

Speed-running the budget

The hearing was the first of what Isaacman, at an April 21 event, described as “the grand hearing testimony tour” on NASA’s 2027 budget request. House and Senate committees did not hold similar hearings for the 2026 budget request because of the delayed release of the final budget proposal and a lack of confirmed NASA leadership.

Isaacman is set to testify before the House Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) subcommittee April 27, three days before that subcommittee marks up its spending bill. The Senate Commerce Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee are also expected to hold hearings on the NASA budget proposal in the coming weeks.

That schedule of hearings and markups is faster than usual. “If you had asked me about three weeks ago, I would have said we’ll have these committee markups sometime in May, maybe June,” said Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at The Planetary Society, in a presentation April 22 at a meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group.

Instead, the full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the CJS funding bill, which includes NASA, on May 13. He estimated Senate appropriations markups will run on a schedule about two weeks behind the House.

“This is a really ambitious timeline,” he said. By June, he estimated, “we very well could have significant action taken on the CJS budget.”

5–7 minutes

GREENBELT, Md. — NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now scheduled for launch in early September as agency officials hail its early completion despite ongoing budget uncertainty for its science programs.

NASA announced at a media event at the Goddard Space Flight Center April 21 that the space telescope had completed final assembly and testing ahead of shipment to the Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations.

“We just finished our comprehensive performance test that happens after environmental testing, and that all went really well,” Jackie Townsend, Roman deputy project manager, said in an interview. After some final closeouts, the spacecraft will be ready by mid-June to ship to KSC.

Roman, the top priority of the 2010 astrophysics decadal survey, features a 2.4-meter primary mirror with a wide field of view. It carries an imager as well as a coronagraph, an instrument designed to block light from individual stars to directly image planets orbiting them.

Astronomers plan to use Roman to perform extensive surveys of the universe, addressing scientific questions ranging from exoplanets to cosmology.

“Current observations hint that our standard model of the universe is incorrect. Roman will be able to confirm these and set us on the path to understanding what’s right,” Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, said at a briefing. “We’re going to perform a revolutionary census of planets around other stars in our galaxy. We’re going to conduct ambitious surveys that will transform and impact every area of astronomy.”

While Roman promises revolutionary science, what has been groundbreaking about the telescope’s development is that it has avoided the cost and schedule overruns of other major science missions. The mission’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy is eight months ahead of its formal launch readiness date of May 2027. The mission has also remained within its total lifecycle cost of $4.3 billion.

“Roman’s accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at the event.

Project officials said several factors contributed to completing Roman ahead of schedule. One is adding programmatic considerations to technical assessments of risk during the mission’s development.

“Something that we’ve done on Roman is we added the programmatics to that balancing equation, so everybody from the project manager all the way down to the techs on the floor understand how the cost and the schedule and the technical all have to come together on Roman,” said Townsend.

Another factor was that the mission had a cost cap since its early development and that the funding was “forward-phased” to prevent cash flow problems in its development. “That combination of a cost cap and forward-phased funding allows for smart decisions all the way through the life cycle,” she said.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, also credited the project team. “The power of a good team to overcome challenges is huge,” he said in an interview.

NASA hopes to use Roman’s development as a model for future missions, including the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a large space telescope recommended by the most recent astrophysics decadal survey in 2021.

“When we get things right and have success stories like Nancy Grace Roman, let’s learn from some of the magic that created that outcome and try and apply it to other programs,” Isaacman said.

The success of Roman, though, comes amid concerns about the agency’s overall science portfolio. NASA’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal seeks to cut science funding by 47% from 2026 levels, canceling more than 50 science missions in development or extended operations. That includes about a dozen missions in astrophysics alone, from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to contributions to international missions.

Isaacman, who will begin defending the budget proposal to Congress April 22 at a House Science Committee hearing, said he remained committed to doing flagship-class missions despite the proposed constrained budget.

“Nancy Grace Roman is not the last flagship mission for us,” he said. “I expect there’ll be plenty of flagship missions in the future.”

Such cancellation threats are not new. The first Trump administration proposed in three consecutive budgets to cancel Roman, then known as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope. In each case, Congress rejected the proposal and kept the mission funded.

“Right now, everybody is working on the appropriations bill that was signed into law by the President and that, for astrophysics, gives us the funding we need to bring Roman to the launch pad” and work on other missions, Domagal-Goldman said in an interview.

His advice to those working on astrophysics missions, including those threatened with cancellation? “I’m telling them to keep their heads down and focus on executing the budget that the President signed into law.”