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NASA is mounting an investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena — a mission some experts and even some of NASA's own leadership warn could put the space agency's good name at risk.

The big picture: NASA has historically focused its life-seeking efforts on searching for signs of microbes on Mars; watery, possibly life-supporting moons in the solar system; and signs of distant, intelligent life.

UFOs are a very different story. NASA and others have said there is no evidence UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin, and the space agency's investigation isn't out to prove they are.

But by launching the investigation, NASA is wading into an area rife with conspiracy and messaging that's difficult to control, which could be a risk for the agency's stellar public reputation.

"There are many, many examples where people lean forward into a field that is not yet accepted. It's controversial or has some reputational risks," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, said at a news conference. 

"In some domains, surely, this will not just be met with utter enthusiasm, but I do believe that it is absolutely necessary."

Catch up quick: NASA's investigation announced last week will focus on collecting data to learn more about UAPs, which they define as "observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena," according to a press release.

Astrophysicist and president of the Simons Foundation David Spergel will lead the team. NASA says the study will have a budget of about $100,000 and will take about nine months to complete.

Unlike some previous UAP investigations that relied on classified data that can't be shared with the public, the NASA project will make its report and data accessible to anyone.

"I think there is new science to be discovered," Zurbuchen said. "There have been many times where something that looked almost magical turned out to be a new scientific effect."

Yes, but: By mentioning its life-seeking scientific enterprises in the same press release and news conference announcing its new UAP initiative, some agency watchers say NASA is muddying the waters.

"If you say this is unrelated to our studies about alien life, however, here are studies of alien life, that's what people are going to take away," Sarah Scoles, author of the book "They Are Already Here" on UFO culture, told Axios.

"I don't see any reason to connect UFOs to astrobiology, other than a sort of 'aliens of the gaps' argument where people assume that if they don't have an explanation, it might be aliens," cosmologist Katie Mack said.

"Whatever comes out of this will remain vague because they're not going to single-handedly — with $100,000 — be able to explain every piece of incongruous data," astrochemist Clara Sousa-Silva told Axios. 

"If it's vague, it's going to attract conclusions that are reputational risks," she said. 

Background: NASA has largely stayed out of discussions of UAPs and UFOs even as the public and Congress have become increasingly interested in the subject. The government released a report last year that examined about 140 UAP incidents over the past 20 years. 

But Zurbuchen said no subject should be off limits for the space agency and science in general. 

The team will be expected to tackle questions around UAPs with open minds and possibly develop a structure for future studies to help pin down what these phenomena might be. 

Between the lines: It's possible NASA's decision to publish its UAP report with full transparency will help combat some claims that the U.S. government is hiding evidence about UAPs from the public. 

However, the initiative could still embolden those who most fervently believe UAPs are extraterrestrial in origin.

"No matter how much data they analyze, someone who is a believer is always going to say, 'But what about the stuff we don't see?'" Scoles said. "Just like everything UFO, the belief in UFOs as alien is always unfalsifiable."

NASA is embarking on a risky mission to investigate UAPs

Some experts and even some of NASA's own leadership warn such an investigation could put the space agency's good name at risk.

Illustration of a UFO lifting the NASA logo upward with a beam of light

NASA

Space

A look at the scientific breakthroughs changing the world, explorations in space and in worlds beyond our own and the threats posed to us by our own planet, both out of our control and of our own making.

Science

Make plans to look up to the sky this week when the second supermoon of 2022 arrives.

The big picture: The moon was bright Monday night ahead of the so-called strawberry moon that starts at 7:52 a.m. ET Tuesday when it appears opposite the sun, according to NASA.

While Tuesday’s full moon reaches peak illumination in the morning, it won’t be visible until later that night when it “drifts above the horizon,” Almanac.com explains.

NASA says the moon will be closest to the earth at 7:24 p.m. ET Tuesday and that the moon will appear full through Wednesday morning.

Times vary by time zones and you can find your local times on the Almanac's Moonrise and Moonset calculator as well as on Timeanddate.com/astronomy. 

Flashback: The name “Strawberry Moon” has been used by Native American Algonquin tribes to mark the June ripening of strawberries ready to be gathered, according to the Almanac.

In Europe, it's also known as the Mead, Honey or Rose Moon and the word honeymoon is said to come from this moon, NASA notes in its June-July moon guide.

Meanwhile, the name of the last full moon of spring is said to have nothing to do with the moon’s hue or appearance.

But NASA says particularly "for Europe's higher latitudes, when the full moon is low, it shines through more atmosphere, making it more likely to have a reddish color (for the same reasons that sunrises and sunsets are red)."

What they’re saying: "With the naked eye, you can see the vast highlands and lowlands of the moon, which can appear to be certain shapes and generate stories about those shapes, depending on the culture you follow," Space.com says of full moons.

"Binoculars or a telescope will show you craters, mountains and other huge features on the moon's surface," Space.com adds.

What’s next: July will also have a supermoon with the “Super Buck Moon” on July 13, according to Timeanddate.com.

According to the site, it’s called a buck moon to “signify the new antlers that emerge on a deer buck’s forehead around this time.”

It is also called Thunder Moon, Hay Moon and Wyrt Moon.

Strawberry moon to light up the sky Tuesday

June’s strawberry moon will appear opposite the sun and reach its peak illumination at 7:52 a.m. ET Tuesday.

Strawberry Moon from 2021 over lower Manhattan in New York City

Last year, the so-called strawberry moon was seen on June 25. This year, look for it June 14. Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Moon

SpaceX can proceed with planned orbital launches of its Starship vehicle from Texas provided Elon Musk's company makes dozens of environmental adjustments, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday.

Driving the news: An FAA environmental review found there would be "no significant impact" on the Gulf Coast region from SpaceX launches from its site in Boca Chica.

A screenshot of SpaceX's tweet reacting to the FAA decision

Yes, but: The FAA said SpaceX must take more than 75 actions to mitigate environmental impacts.

The big picture: The requirements include ensuring a nearby highway and Boca Chica Beach are closed during launches. "Closures will not be allowed on 18 identified holidays" and will be limited to five weekends a year, according to an emailed FAA statement.

SpaceX must work with a "qualified biologist" on lighting inspections to minimize the impact on sea turtles, perform quarterly cleanups of the local beach, and contribute to education and preservation efforts in the region.

The company must also make contributions of $5,000 per year each to groups that protect ocelots and endangered birds of prey, among other measures.

What they're saying: "The environmental review must be completed along with public safety, national security, and other analyses before a decision on whether to grant a launch license can be made," the FAA said.

"The license application is still pending."

The bottom line, via Axios' Miriam Kramer: SpaceX now has a path to gaining full approval to launch its Mars rocket from its preferred launch site.

Go deeper... Elon Musk: There's a 70% chance that I personally go to Mars

SpaceX closer to Mars rocket launch after FAA environmental review

Elon Musk's firm now has a path to gaining full approval to launch from its preferred Texas launch site.

SpaceX's first orbital Starship SN20 is stacked atop its massive Super Heavy Booster 4 at the company's Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on February 10.

SpaceX's first orbital Starship SN20 is stacked atop its massive Super Heavy Booster 4 at the company's Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas in February. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

SpaceX

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Scientists have created models that mimic the lives and structures of huge groupings of galaxies seen in the early universe, 11 billion years ago, a new study reports.

Why it matters: By having simulations that show the machinations of these galaxy clusters on a large scale, scientists will be able to test fundamental aspects of our understanding of the nature and physics of the universe.

What they found: The new study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, simulated protoclusters of galaxies — the predecessors to current galaxy clusters — to see if they could reproduce what's currently observed.

“We wanted to try developing a full simulation of the real distant universe to see how structures started out and how they ended,” Metin Ata of the Kavli Institute and an author of the study said in a statement.

The team of researchers essentially took images of distant galaxies and used the simulation to speed up their evolution to see how galaxy clusters would form. 

This marks the first time a simulation has successfully re-created these detailed, galaxy cluster life cycles, according to the study.

The big picture: These types of simulations can also be used to put the standard model of cosmology to the test, according to the researchers behind the study.

"By predicting the final mass and final distribution of structures in a given space, researchers could unveil previously undetected discrepancies in our current understanding of the universe," a press release says.

The simulations even show the Hyperion proto-supercluster — the largest known and with 5,000 times the mass of our galaxy — will collapse, stretching into a 300 million light-year-long thread of galaxies and matter one day.

New simulations reveal evolution of galaxy clusters

These are the first simulations of this kind.

Screenshots of the simulation showing matter distribution in the universe

A simulation of the universe. Image: Ata et al/Kavli

Astronomy

Axios Science

X-ray astronomy is helping to reveal new details about the nature of the universe.

Why it matters: For thousands of years, humanity's understanding of the universe has been dominated by what can be seen. Now, by measuring the invisible X-rays, infrared signals and gravitational waves emitted across the universe, scientists are getting a clearer understanding of the events that shape the cosmos.  

With X-ray astronomy, "we can observe most of the universe over most of cosmic time," says Grant Tremblay, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics who works on X-ray astronomy.

What's happening: Several X-ray missions — large and small — are active today, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton. Both launched in 1999. 

Since then, China's HXMT mission, NASA's NuSTAR and Swift missions and a handful of others have launched and remain active today. 

The newest addition is IXPE — a small NASA mission launched in December 2021. It has three identical X-ray telescopes, each with a detector to measure the polarization of X-rays emitted from neutron stars, supermassive black holes and other sources.

A new study of Chandra data accepted to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society found the physics of two massive colliding galaxy clusters is similar to what can be seen in our own smaller solar system.

Background: When stars are born, they emit X-rays that can move through dust and gas carrying information about the young stars and their development. 

And when stars die and explode into supernovas or collapse into black holes or leave a neutron star corpse in their wake, they can release X-rays that tell scientists about their structure and evolution. 

When stars interact, they form winds and jets that can change the shapes of galaxies and spark star formation. In the process, they produce X-rays that offer clues about those events. 

X-rays also create a "fossil record" of the activity of clusters of bright active galaxies, which often produce radio jets, says Belinda Wilkes, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and former director of the Chandra X-ray Center. That data is then used to test models of the origin and development of the universe. 

"We think X-rays thread through ... all of the universe and all kinds of sources," Wilkes says.

How it works: Unlike optical telescopes that focus incoming photons that bounce nearly head-on off mirrors, X-ray telescopes focus the high-energy X-ray photons to a detector at an angle similar to "skipping stones off the surface of a pond," says Tremblay. 

The result is a single observation will result in just a few X-ray photons landing on a detector, whereas optical telescopes can sometimes receive trillions.

The big picture: X-ray astronomy has existed for more than two decades but the science is now "coming of age," Wilkes writes in a review this week in Nature. 

The power of X-ray astronomy is being unlocked by combining it with other data collected in different wavelengths of light and even gravitational wave signals. 

That suite of information can give a fuller view of the universe that's more accurate than any one source of data could provide.

Yes, but: Large X-ray observatories take years, if not decades, to develop and build, and right now, the future of X-ray astronomy at NASA and ESA is uncertain.

Chandra is aging, and a proposed plan for NASA to build a new X-ray observatory is still years away. 

The future of the European Space Agency's Athena mission — a large X-ray observatory — hangs in the balance and could see its projected budget significantly cut.

Meanwhile, China is expected to launch its own X-ray observatory next year.

What to watch: The first results from the IXPE mission will be presented next week at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting.

The telescopes' first targets included a magnetar, or neutron star with a strong magnetic field, a supernova remnant, an X-ray source beyond the Milky Way and the Crab Nebula. Astronomers first measured the nebula's X-ray polarization in the 1970s. 

"It was a relief to measure that and see we got the same result as 50 years ago," says Brian Ramsey, the principal investigator for IXPE. 

X-ray astronomy is opening a new window on the universe

With X-ray astronomy, "we can observe most of the universe over most of cosmic time."

Illustration of an x-ray of a glowing star.

NASA is setting up a team to look into reports of unidentified aerial phenomena.

Why it matters: There have been about 400 UAP sighting reports, and today, there's congressional and public interest in nailing down exactly what they could be. 

A government report last year detailed some of the UAP sightings, concluding that some could be a threat to national security but that there was no evidence that they were caused by aliens.

What's happening: The independent team will be asked to gather as much scientific data as they can to try to learn as much as they can about these events. 

By collecting that data, NASA hopes the team will be able to place "constraints" on what these UAPs could be. 

“Given the paucity of observations, our first task is simply to gather the most robust set of data that we can,” astrophysicist David Spergel, the head of the team, said in a statement. 

“We will be identifying what data — from civilians, government, non-profits, companies — exists, what else we should try to collect, and how to best analyze it.”

The data the team collects will be publicly available. 

Between the lines: NASA isn't doing this because officials believe these UAPs are alien in origin. 

"Unidentified phenomena in the atmosphere are of interest for both national security and air safety," the statement reads. "Establishing which events are natural provides a key first step to identifying or mitigating such phenomena, which aligns with one of NASA’s goals to ensure the safety of aircraft."

NASA is going to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena

There's congressional and public interest in nailing down exactly what they could be.

illustration of an alien in a beam of light

NASA has inked a deal with two private companies to build spacesuits the space agency can use on the Moon and in orbit. 

Why it matters: The suits will be key to the space agency's plans to send people to the Moon with its Artemis program. Passing off their development to private companies will help to further commercialize yet another aspect of human spaceflight. 

What's happening: NASA announced last week that Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace have been awarded contracts to create next-generation spacesuits to help replace the agency's aging ones.

The total value of the award is $3.5 billion, but NASA declined to break that figure down by company.

Both companies are also using their own funds to develop their spacesuits, and Collins and Axiom will own the spacesuits for their own uses and customers other than NASA.

The suits will also be designed to fit a wide range of bodies from a 5th percentile woman to a 95th percentile man. (NASA has faced criticism recently for its current suits that are more limited in size.)

The spacesuits are expected to be ready for the first crewed Artemis landing on the Moon, currently scheduled for 2025. 

Between the lines: This kind of partnership is designed to be mutually beneficial for NASA and the companies it's partnering with.

Axiom has long been focused on building a commercial space station, and CEO Michael Suffredini said because of that, the company has a need for a spacesuit.

"We have a number of customers that already would like to do a spacewalk, and we had planned to build a suit as part of our program," Suffredini said during a press conference last week.

The intrigue: A report last year called out NASA's own years-long development of new spacesuits as a major limiting factor in sending people back to the Moon's surface by 2024 —which was the expected landing date at the time. 

In November, the agency switched its target landing to 2025, and now the spacesuits are in the hands of these private companies. 

NASA awards spacesuit contracts to two private companies

Artist's illustration of astronauts on the Moon

Artist's illustration of two astronauts on the Moon. Photo: NASA

Unanswered questions are mounting about Uranus and Neptune.

Why it matters: The two cold, distant worlds could hold the key to figuring out why Earth ended up being so hospitable to human life — and understanding similar worlds beyond our solar system.

"The more we learn, the more we realize how little we actually did know about these two amazing planets," Kathleen Mandt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab, told me. 

Uranus and Neptune are the two major planets in the solar system that haven't been visited by dedicated missions, leaving major holes in how scientists understand the solar system. 

For years, planetary scientists have called on NASA and other funding agencies to make these worlds a priority for future missions, and now these planets could be explored in the not-too-distant future. 

What's happening: A study published last month used data from the Hubble Telescope and other observatories to try to answer the question of why these icy giants appear to be different colors.

The researchers found Uranus has a thicker methane haze layer in the middle of its atmosphere than Neptune has, giving it a distinctive greenish hue.

“There’s still an awful lot of uncertainty,” Oxford University's Patrick Irwin, an author of the new study, told the New York Times. “We don’t really know what the particles are made of. The only way to really know what’s going on is to drop a probe into these deep atmospheres.”

The big question: How — and where — did both of these planets form? An answer could help scientists understand the origins of Earth's life-sustaining water.

It's still not clear where Uranus and Neptune formed in the disk of gas and dust surrounding the Sun during the early moments of the solar system.

If Uranus and Neptune migrated through the early solar system along with Jupiter and Saturn, which underwent their own complicated dance, the worlds could have flung comets and water-laden asteroids toward Earth, delivering water to our planet. 

"We don't understand the interior structure of these planets," Mandt said. "We don't know how they formed with so much less hydrogen and so much more of the heavier elements than Jupiter and Saturn." 

The intrigue: Unlocking the mysteries of the ice giants will also allow scientists to learn more about worlds far beyond our own solar system. 

Many exoplanets found by planet-searching missions appear to have a similar mass and radius to Uranus and Neptune.

But because scientists know very little about the structures of the two ice giants, it's difficult to understand — or even guess at — the nature of those far more distant worlds.

"There are 1,500 planets that we're trying to categorize without knowing how our own two work," NASA planetary scientist Amy Simon told me.

What to watch: So far, the only mission to visit Neptune and Uranus from close range was a quick flyby of the worlds made by Voyager 2 in the 1980s, but that could change in the relatively near future.

A major report from the scientific community laying out the priorities for planetary research in the coming decade put a Uranus mission at the top of the list for NASA.

Yes, but: A dedicated mission to Neptune may need to wait a little longer. 

It's not that Uranus is more interesting than Neptune, experts say. Prioritizing Uranus is actually a more practical choice — the planet is much closer, and it's easier to get a spacecraft out there using current technology.

"Just getting out to either one is difficult, but Neptune is really, really hard," Simon said.

The mysteries at the edge of the solar system keep growing

The more scientists learn, the more they want to understand.

Uranus in crescent next to Neptune shining in blue

Uranus, left, and Neptune. Photos: NASA/JPL

Planets

A NASA probe tasked with studying Mars from orbit is back to performing its science after a major problem kept it sidelined for months.

Why it matters: The MAVEN spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since 2014, and in that time, revealed the key role powerful solar winds played in turning Mars from a wet, relatively warm world into the cold, dry one it is today.

The spacecraft has also been a relay station for communications between NASA's spacecraft on the surface of the planet and Earth.

What's happening: In February, MAVEN started having problems with navigational instruments called Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) designed to help make sure the spacecraft is pointed in the right direction.

MAVEN cycled its computer to try to re-boot itself and bring the IMUs back into service. When that didn't work, the spacecraft had to switch to its backup computer, which allowed mission managers to get better readings from IMU-2.

Controllers on the ground then got to work implementing a navigational system to allow MAVEN to figure out how to keep itself pointed in the right direction. 

The team was originally going to move to that system later this year anyway, but had to speed up the development in order to keep the spacecraft functioning. 

The intrigue: “The team really stepped up to an existential threat,” Rich Burns, the MAVEN project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement.

According to a report from Space.com, the team came perilously close to losing MAVEN. 

While they were attempting to get MAVEN functioning again, the spacecraft was drifting, losing its focus on the Sun, which could have ended the mission had they not gotten an IMU back online just in time, Meghan Bartels reported.

But even once they got the spacecraft into a safe configuration, that wasn't the end of the drama. MAVEN wasn't able to act as a communications relay from Mars to Earth during its downtime, decreasing the amount of science coming from the Red Planet as a whole, Bartels added.

What's next: MAVEN is now back to full science operations and embarking on a freshly extended mission that will see it continuing to study how the Sun's activity affects the Martian atmosphere. 

NASA orbiter around Mars faced "existential threat"

Artist's representation of MAVEN orbiting Mars. Photo: NASA

Mars

Near Space Labs has launched its newest fleet of robots designed to dangle from weather balloons in the stratosphere and snap high-resolution images of Earth's surface.

Why it matters: These detailed photos can be used to aid in disaster relief, monitor roadways, keep an eye on industrial operations, and watch over wildfires, deforestation and other environmental crises.

Details: The newly updated imaging robots — called Swifty 3 — are able to take photos at 7- to 10-centimeter resolution, higher than many commercial satellites. The Swiftys can fit in the trunk of a car, making it relatively easy to deploy them to a launch site, according to the company.

"With high resolution, you're able to map debris on the ground easily and help with recovery," Near Space Labs CEO and co-founder Rema Matevosyan told Axios.

The company is able to update imagery using its Swiftys five times a day over any given area, according to Matevosyan.

Swiftys are also able to bring other instruments to the stratosphere like thermal or hyperspectral sensors, depending on customer interest, she added.

Jacksboro High School after tornado in March 2022. Photo: Near Space Labs

The big picture: The resolution of Near Space Labs' photos beats those of better-known commercial satellite companies and they're available to the public.

Most commercial images released to the public are about 30 centimeters in resolution and are strictly regulated by the government when it comes to how sharp their public photos can be.

Because its imagers fly in the stratosphere, Near Space Labs is regulated by the FAA, rather than federal spy agencies.

Exclusive: Near Space Labs launches new generation of imaging tools

The imaging robots take photos in 10 centimeter resolution.

Neighborhood surrounding a lake. Photo: Near Space Labs

Satellites

Billionaire entrepreneurs are fundamentally changing the public's relationship with space.

Why it matters: Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are thrusting the industry into a new era of marketing for mass appeal, angling to make citizens into customers and changing the rhetoric around space in the process.

"I think this is a big moment because the public face of the space industry is no longer NASA and science and peaceful activities. It's now billionaires and companies trying to make money," the Secure World Foundation's Brian Weeden told me.

NASA is also supporting the efforts of private companies, looking to become more of a buyer of services in orbit while using its resources to push deeper into space with missions to the Moon and Mars.

Between the lines: The space industry is finding itself at the center of a cultural clash as billionaires make themselves front and center in spaceflight today.

A shift in rhetoric and perception around space — away from government-led exploration and toward a business realm — "comes at a time when there's a significant amount of backlash and criticism about hyper-capitalism and billionaires and inequality," Weeden said.

Criticism of billionaires could also bleed into American support for space exploration in the future, Weeden cautioned.

Driving the news: On Sunday, Virgin Galactic launched Branson to the edge of space aboard its space plane during a star-studded event that barely nodded to the risks of suborbital flight.

Billionaires are the new face of the final frontier

Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and their ilk are changing the rhetoric around space and the public's relationship to it.

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