NASA says it is “very unlikely” the agency will be able to recover a Mars spacecraft that has been out of contact for more than a month.

On Monday, Congress made good on those promises, releasing a $24.4 billion budget plan for NASA as part of the conferencing process, when House and Senate lawmakers convene to hammer out a final budget. The result is a budget that calls for just a 1 percent cut in NASA’s science funding, to $7.25 billion, for fiscal year 2026.

NASA and DOE aim to deploy nuclear reactors on the Moon and in orbit, and that also includes the development of a lunar surface reactor by 2030. This is part of the Trump administration's American Space Superiority plan. Beyond the jingoism, it is not exactly clear how this plan will actually become a reality.

Exploration advocates are pushing back against the planned cancellation of NASA's Mars sample return project, saying it could potentially find evidence of Red Planet life.

A Congressional bill restores funding for most NASA space science missions, but there is no money for returning samples already collected on the red planet.

NASA lost contact with the MAVEN probe in Mars orbit, and teams are working to reestablish communications after an unexpected anomaly.

Last year President Trump pitched a severe chop to NASA’s proposed annual budget for 2026, but the House and Senate on Monday released an appropriations bill that would mostly ignore those cuts. The minibus bill put forth by both congressional bodies’ appropriation committees includes NASA as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Science Foundation,

The bill would cut the Office of Fossil Energy down to $720 million, including $140 million in prior year balances from the IIJA. This would be a 16.8% cut from fiscal year 2025 levels. It includes especially deep cuts to methane mitigation technologies and to natural gas decarbonization and hydrogen technologies.

On January 7, a day ahead of the first EVA of the year by NASA, the spacewalk was canceled over a medical situation onboard. On 8th Jan, NASA admin Jared Isaacman announced that Crew-11 will return ahead of their scheduled stay at the ISS.

Envision, which began construction in 2025, will map the atmosphere and geology of Earth's closest neighbor, the fiery Venus. The spacecraft will rely on a NASA-made instrument called VenSar — a novel synthetic aperture radar — to map the planet's surface in three dimensions and with a resolution of up to 3 feet (10 meters).

A new NASA spacecraft called Pandora is awaiting launch ahead of its journey to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, and