This Week in Space 190

It's our annual holiday special for 2025, in which we look back at the past year in space—its ups, its downs, its all-arounds. What a year it's been, and after all the challenges and hullabaloo, we're grateful in a post-Thanksgiving fashion to welcome Jared Isaacman, at last, as the new NASA Administrator. What he will do and how remains largely unknown, but we do believe he has the nation's interests at heart, and the man knows people are watching. But there are a lot of other stories and we've done our best to stuff as many as we can into this virtual Christmas space stocking! Please join us for this year-end roundup!

Headlines & Looking Back at 2025:

• New Executive Order Targets Space Superiority
• Starlink Satellite Breaks Up in Orbit, SpaceX Responds
• Interstellar Comet ATLAS: Extraterrestrial Conspiracies and Public Fascination
• Isaacman Confirmed as New NASA Administrator
• Project Athena: NASA’s New Strategic Direction?
• Artemis 2 Mission Prep and Timeline Shifts
• Mars Sample Return: Uncertain Costs and New Proposals
• Commercial Spaceflight: SpaceX Successes, Boeing Troubles
• Perseverance Rover Finds Possible Mars Biosignatures Recap
• Space Shuttle Discovery Relocation Battle Heats Up
• New Moon Discovered Around Uranus
• Webb Telescope and Hubble Milestones
• International Space Station Celebrates 25 Years of Crewed Work
• U.S. Space Policy Shifts and NASA’s New Leadership
• Satellite Operations: Starlink’s Reliability and Space Junk Concerns

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Links

• Trump signs sweeping executive order aimed at 'ensuring American space superiority'
• What time will interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS be closest to Earth today?
• A SpaceX Starlink satellite is tumbling and falling out of space after partial breakup in orbit
• space.com on X
• Tariq saw a spent Falcon 9 Booster! - X
• Stories of Space
• NASA Admin Jared Isaacman on X
• Could NASA's Mars Sample Return be saved? Lockheed Martin proposes $3 billion plan to haul home Red Planet rocks
• Did NASA's Perseverance rover actually find evidence of life on Mars? We need to haul its samples home to find out, scientists say
• Trump's signing of 'One Big Beautiful Bill' includes $85 million to move space shuttle Discovery from Smithsonian to Texas
• 25 Years on the International Space Station
• Hubble's 35th Birthday
• New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus Using NASA’s Webb Telescope