variations on email greetings:
standard: I hope this email finds you well.
happy: I hope this email finds you swell.
desperate: I hope this email finds you.
nemesis: I hope this email finds you in hell.
yoda: find you well, this email.
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.
next week I'll be in Chicago for the High Performance Software Foundation meeting.
I really haven't visited Chicago much since I graduated from UC in 2000.
The new ADS captchas are annoying. Change a search and it asks if you are human. More worrisome, it seems I'm only 50% human based on the tests...
remember to turn your clocks back 23 hours today.
Applications are open for our visiting grad student pre-doctoral program at the CCA @flatironinstitute.org !
More info here:
www.simonsfoundation.org/2023-flatiro...
NEW: The bad news about international-student enrollments at American colleges just got worse. An exclusive @chronicle.com analysis of just-released State Department data shows new visa issuances in the summer of 2025 dropped by more than a third. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
We've had quantum mechanics for so long, it's only natural that they branch out to the other trades. It's those quantum drywall hangers you need to watch though ...
is it me? or has the internet been getting flakier lately? sites seem down more often. Somehow I blame AI...
I once wrote a paper for a class on Big Band Nucleosynthesis...
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)
Directorates to follow
1/10
And exo-space-stations I presume ?
#thatsnomoon
Cue thousands of "please unsubscribe me from this list" cc-d to "all" replies
Apparently. No idea why. This seems to have come from the state level, not our school.
Participants in the AAS Publishing peer review workshop at the 246th AAS Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, pose together holding certificates of completion.
Build Your Peer Review Skills at #AAS248
If you’d like to feel more confident the next time you’re asked by an editor to peer review a paper, consider applying to attend the upcoming AAS Peer Review Training Workshop in Pasadena on 14 June 2026. aas.org/posts/news/2... 🔭
@publishing.aas.org
but wait... there's more...
your appointment is for 2 years as "Lecturer" and then you are invited to join the tenure track faculty. So this is a really nice position.
ah! indeed, that would do it.
computational science postdoc fellowship here at Stony Brook, through the SUNY Promoting Recruitment, Opportunity, Diversity, Inclusion and Growth Plus (PRODiG Plus)
apply.interfolio.com/179315
yep. But soon we'll have AI writing the tests... and then it's turtles all the way down...
you get a shredder?
I have a growing compost pile in the corner of my office cause no one can tell me how to dispose of old student materials...
(it's be the next person's problem after I retire ;)
But the other part is that writing code is the fun part. Why let the machines have the fun?
The one thing I have tried AI on is to show it some code and ask it where I could try to optimize better. With mixed results, but it can give me ideas that I can then explore myself. (Of course, I used a profiler first to find the hotspots).
I also always like to write everything myself, cause that's how I learn. That's why I've written so many different hydro codes from scratch, just to teach myself.
The main reason for us is that the students want to learn how the methods work, which you don't get if you allow AI to do it for you. Debugging something that doesn't converge teaches you a lot.
asked my research group if anyone wanted to share at group meeting what AI coding agents could do with our codes. Most don't want to use them. So we will stick with handwritten, free-range artisanal code.
Most of us agree that AI should not be used for art.
Why are some okay with code?
Snow Day, part II
Broke two shear bolts in my snow blower. Guy across the street broke a belt. This snow was heavy...
Luckily I had spares...
We're hiring a tenure-track computational / physical scientist. It will be joint with the home department and the Institute for Advance Computational Science. Job ad here:
apply.interfolio.com/181179
Still no word on school closing for tomorrow ...
I remember that one, and the one in 96.
