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.)
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.
What do a property speculator, a scrapyard operator and a former Packard Plant owner have in common? They have tax debt on Detroit properties that should have put them in foreclosure.
We pressed Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree on how he decides who avoids foreclosure. No answers.
![4-panel comic: Astronomers asking researchers from different departments to help them identify the “little red dots” in JWST images: (1) Entomologists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 2 with shoulder-length hair.] PERSON 2: Clover mites. (2) Computer Scientists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 3 with beanie.] PERSON 3: Stuck pixels. (3) Dermatologists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 4 with ponytail.] PERSON 4: Cherry angiomas. (4) Graphic designers [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 5 with short hair.] PERSON 5: No, those are vermillion, or maybe jasper. Can I see your color settings?](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreibrbvioeobwphczl4xzdck62bsx6gzi3hhjfbqwup2vyzhxerjnay)
4-panel comic: Astronomers asking researchers from different departments to help them identify the “little red dots” in JWST images: (1) Entomologists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 2 with shoulder-length hair.] PERSON 2: Clover mites. (2) Computer Scientists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 3 with beanie.] PERSON 3: Stuck pixels. (3) Dermatologists [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 4 with ponytail.] PERSON 4: Cherry angiomas. (4) Graphic designers [Person 1 behind easel that is black with red dots on it, looked at by Person 5 with short hair.] PERSON 5: No, those are vermillion, or maybe jasper. Can I see your color settings?
Little Red Dots
xkcd.com/3212/
We obtained the Dilley detention center’s 911 call logs.
Among them are pleas for help for toddlers having trouble breathing, a pregnant woman who passed out and an elementary-school-aged girl having seizures.
PMR 1, the Cranium Nebula, seen with JWST's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). Look at the interior structure and the outer, expanding shell!
The Cranium Nebula, seen with JWST's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) camera. Compared with the NIRCam image, the interior structure is less well defined, but dust is better resolved.
Two new #JWST images of the Cranium Nebula, one in the near-infrared (left) and one in the mid-infrared (right).
The Cranium Nebula (or PMR 1) is 5,000 lightyears away. JWST's imaging capabilities reveal the intricate structure of shells of material being ejected from a dying star.
Thank you @gizmodo.com for covering this illegal actions by OMB. Full article: gizmodo.com/white-house-...
Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.
We can look in shock at what was said & done a decade ago, but similar things are probably happening right now, and possibly right under our noses too - as wealthy individuals are becoming increasingly part of the science funding ecosystem for universities.
Indigenous communities nationwide are increasingly reporting encounters with immigration agents, including detention — despite them being U.S. citizens and members of sovereign tribal nations.
This x 10^6
Wow. 🤯
In his confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told U.S. senators that he would not cut funding for vaccine research or change the nation's official vaccine recommendations. He did both. n.pr/46QDn9p
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.
Hundreds of kids are still detained.
We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵
“Renee was not the first person killed, and she was not the last,” Becca Good said. “You know my wife’s name and you know Alex’s name, but there are many others in this city being harmed that you don’t know — their families are hurting just like mine, even if they don’t look like mine.”
Many people have wondered why the Chien-Shiung Wu never won the Nobel Prize for Physics. New findings from the Nobel archives, exclusively revealed in Physics World, show she was nominated 23 times by 18 different physicists - and yet was still left empty-handed. 🧪⚛️
physicsworld.com/a/twenty-thr...
Can’t stop thinking about the gargantuan gulf between the kid glove, caveat-laden, “having your name all over the Epstein files doesn’t mean you did anything wrong”-treatment of the men in Epstein’s inbox… and the brutalize first, ask questions later policing in Minneapolis.
We know that 4more children from Liam's school are still in ICE custody in TX. But we still do not know how many children from MN in total have been detained by ICE.
The number of children in ICE detention on a given day has skyrocketed, jumping more than sixfold since the start of the second Trump administration. We analyzed data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and found that ICE held around 170 children on an average day under Trump.
Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days.
His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.
#SaveNASA #NASAcuts
The NY Times and other news outlets reported that GSFC decreased its workforce by 11%.
This figure is misleading; the actual reduction was significantly higher. Here are at least two reasons why:
1- Timing of Retirements: These statistics are from November 2025, a
1/4
Funding opportunity! Check out this new program from NASA. Looking for PIs at smaller schools who want to collaborate with NASA scientists and researchers!
science.nasa.gov/researchers/...
🔭🧪
On the birthday of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, we’re also remembering the life of fellow civil rights activist Claudette Colvin, who passed away on Tuesday at age 86.
Jan. 16, 2025: A SpaceX Starship rocket explodes over the Caribbean.
Suddenly, dozens of planes in the area must scramble to get out of a newly designated FAA "debris zone."
Their passengers are now unwitting participants in a test run gone wrong. (THREAD)
The dinosaur extinction event is my personal unit for getting a sense of astronomical time. For instance, if the local bubble formed 1-2 Myr ago, that’s After Dinos = very recent!!
Today, after months of requests, I toured the Broadview ICE Processing Facility. I want to share what I saw.
The facility has no food vendor, no medical care, and detainees have to use toilets in the middle of shared cells. These are in no way suitable conditions to be holding anyone — period.
Viola Fletcher, one of the last two known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and a plaintiff in a symbolic lawsuit seeking reparations for the attack — one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history — has died. She was 111.
Gender-affirming care saves lives
