Latest news with #NASAWatch
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
How Does Trump Musk Feud Impact US Space Exploration?
NASA Watch Editor, Keith Cowing, weighs in on how the current rift between President Trump and Elon Musk could impact US space exploration as Musk says he will decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft following the President threatening to end government contracts for Tesla and SpaceX. Keith speaks with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NASA Deletes Comic Book About How Women Can Be Astronauts
NASA has deleted two comic books about women astronauts from all its websites, NASA Watch reports, in what appears to be the latest victim of the Trump's administration's purge of "DEI" content from federal agencies. The online comics, titled "First Woman: NASA's Promise for Humanity," and "First Woman: Expanding Our Universe," tell the stories of young women training to become astronauts, in anticipation of NASA's upcoming Artemis missions, which had been set to see the first female astronaut to set foot on the lunar surface. Oh, except that promise has been dropped, too. The two volumes have been featured on NASA's website since being issued in 2021 and 2023, respectively. But as of March 2025, both have now been conspicuously wiped from the space agency's online presence. Shortly after Trump took office in January, NASA leadership issued a directive ordering employees to scrub a whole host of terms that the administration would deem "woke," including any content "specifically targeting" women. The space agency's acting administrator Janet Petro, who was hand-picked by Trump, also threatened employees with "adverse consequences" if they didn't speak up about any DEI efforts happening without official approval. It should come as no surprise, then, that the sweepingly discriminatory policy is censoring content with messages as wholesome and harmless as "women can be astronauts, too." Even more grimly, NASA pages about the Artemis mission no longer boast the promise that it "will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon." This dragnet censorship approach is being used in other wings of government, producing blunders that expose the racist and misogynistic underpinnings of its raison d'etre. Last week, for example, the Pentagon sparked an uproar when it deleted a webpage about the baseball player and civil rights hero Jackie Robinson — a supposed error officials blamed on an AI tool. A little known comic like "First Woman" won't have quite as many rallying to its aid. But it has found itself at least one notable champion: the Iceland Space Agency. Daniel Leeb, the Executive Mission Director at the Iceland Space Agency, responded to the NASA Watch on LinkedIn, lambasting the censorship and vowing to platform the comics. "The Iceland Space Agency will host and post First Woman issue one and two on our website come Monday morning," Leeb wrote, per NASA Watch. "We will also start an initiative to have this translated into Icelandic... and to continue the story." "I hope for my daughters and all the daughters on Earth, that we can all begin to use our voices to push back and say clearly Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is not the boogyman some would have you believe," Leeb added. "In fact it is a foundational strength in geopolitics, economics, and in society as a whole." More on NASA: Trump's Anti-DEI Agenda Could Put Astronauts in Real Danger
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NASA Employees Reportedly Started Booing When Elon Musk Was Mentioned at an All-Hands Meeting
Elon Musk has been something of a thorn in NASA's side since long before he became an unelected government official — but it sounds like anger is now bubbling over at the space agency. According to former NASA astrobiologist Keith Cowing, who for years since his service at the agency has documented its internal politics and drama online, a "round of boos was heard" upon mention of Musk's name during an all-hands meeting at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland yesterday. Those jeers, Cowing wrote on his NASA Watch blog, were in response to mention of Musk's newly reiterated directive demanding all government employees explain what they did the week prior in bullet points to justify their jobs — or risk being fired. Over the weekend, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent a second threatening email to federal employees, instructing on Musk's behalf that they explain what they did at work last week to keep their jobs. While that first missive was amended to say that the demand was "strictly voluntary," this new one has no such language. "The NASA administrator will not be providing any further guidance to NASA employees regarding the latest [five] bullet email that everyone got over the weekend," Cowing wrote, "so NASA employees are pretty much left to make a personal choice." During the meeting, the NASA staffers were also warned that the youthful hatchet men from Musk's Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have badges to enter the facility at any time they choose, without needing to inform anyone of their entrance. That's not all the bad blood Musk has kicked up at NASA lately. The billionaire also enraged a cadre of former astronauts last month by issuing repeated digs, including the erroneous claim that Boeing Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had been left stranded on the International Space Station for "political reasons." "When you finally get the nerve to climb into a rocket ship, come talk to [us]" former NASA astronaut and senator Mark Kelly tweeted in response to the world's richest man amid insults about his colleague, former ISS commander Andreas Mogensen, and his twin brother and fellow astronaut Scott Kelly. And even actions at NASA that aren't directly tied to Musk, like reports of leadership at the space agency ordering employees to throw out their LGBTQ pride swag, feel tightly bound up in his ideological mission to crush "wokeness" out of the federal government. All told, it's an extraordinary villain arc. Just a few years ago, Musk's work at SpaceX was a shining example of NASA working with the private sector to push the frontiers of America's space capability. Now, it seems that a mention of his name at a NASA meeting is enough to draw heckling. More on Musk cuts: Even NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Is Getting Its Budget Slashed
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NASA denies setting 'new bans' for employees amid reports of removing LGBTQI+ symbols from offices
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA has come under scrutiny over the last few weeks due to its compliance with executive orders penned by U.S. President Donald Trump. These are orders that directly impact all federal organizations and have, for instance, compelled the space agency to end initiatives focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives as well as scrub its websites of information relating to the topic. Recently in the saga, reports presented by NASA watchdog website NASA Watch suggested that agency employees are being asked to remove any symbols that may represent LGBTQI+ Pride from their workspaces. In response to our coverage of this report, a NASA spokesperson emailed a statement on Feb. 11 saying the following: "There are no new bans on any personal affects in employees' workspaces. As always, the items must adhere to legal, safety, and NASA rules and guidelines. Some managers have been reminding employees to be mindful of what personal affects they have in their workspaces, but there are no penalties or warnings about being placed on administrative leave for displaying personal items." This same statement was also reportedly emailed to NASA Watch on Feb. 11, four days after the website's original post about the subject. The unnamed sources at NASA Headquarters who provided NASA Watch with claims of LGBTQI+ representation being removed from agency offices have not commented on NASA's response. Prior to the agency's statement, ranking U.S. House Space and Aeronautics Committee members Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Valerie Foushee (D-NC), had spoken out in a joint message about the concept of NASA management limiting what Pride-related gear employees keep in their workspaces. "This is a ridiculous overstep and direct assault on NASA HQ employees' free speech and humanity,' they said, "this government-sanctioned censorship is the latest assault on the rights of federal employees and should not stand." Yet this is only one example of how President Trump's Executive orders have swept public criticism over NASA. For instance, an internal memo sent out in late January — that was based on written instructions from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — was signed by acting NASA administrator Janet Petro and met with negativity from the scientific community. Besides outlining efforts to remove DEIA language from agency websites, claiming that "these programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination," this memo provided employees with a warning. Failure to come forward in a timely manner with evidence of possible efforts to subvert orders regarding DEIA initiative purging, it said, may result in "adverse consequences." — Trump orders interim NASA chief to end DEI initiatives — Scientists alarmed as Rubin Observatory changes biography of astronomer Vera Rubin amid Trump's push to end DEI efforts — Who is Janet Petro, Trump's pick for acting NASA administrator? Workers at NASA were also allegedly told to "drop everything" and remove mentions of terms like "Indigenous People," "Environmental Justice," and "anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.)," according to an internal directive obtained by independent, journalist-funded news website 404 media. But NASA is not the only federally-funded scientific organization adhering to White House requests of nixing DEIA language; the Rubin Observatory, for instance, has adjusted many sections of its website, most notably the biography of Vera Rubin, for whom the observatory was named. She was a pivotal force in the discovery of dark matter, and is widely esteemed for breaking barriers for women in the field.
