Kelly Lepo

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.

If you ever want to read a paper for free and can't find it otherwise, email the lead author and politely ask for a copy. You will not be bothering the person. You will in fact make their whole entire day. I have had scientists get so excited I asked they sent me everything they ever published.

Two images of a planetary nebula in space. The image to the left, labelled “Euclid & Hubble”, shows the whole nebula and its surroundings. A star in the very centre is surrounded by white bubbles and loops of gas, all shining with a powerful blue light. Farther away a broken ring of red and blue gas clouds surrounds the nebula. The background shows many stars and distant galaxies. A white box indicates the centre of the nebula and this region is the image to the right, labelled “Hubble”. It shows the multi-layered bubbles, pointed jets and circular shells of gas that make up the nebula, as well as the central star, in greater detail.

Wowowow - our @science.esa.int Hubble's picture of the month for March is the Cat's Eye Nebula, from combined images of #Hubble and #Euclid. Euclid's wide field and low surface brightness sensitivity brings out an external shell. Incredible image. esahubble.org/images/potm2... 🔭

Total Lunar Eclipse on March 2–3, 2026 – Where and When to See Total lunar eclipse on March 2–3, 2026: Where and when is the Blood Moon visible and what will it look like? Visibility map, animation, and local times.

🌕➡️🔴 Lunar eclipse alert!

Depending on where you are (mostly: Central/Eastern Asia, Oceania, most of North/Central America), you may be able to see a TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE ("blood moon") overnight!

You can find information about timing and viewing locations here: www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/luna...

Join us next Thursday, March 12th, at Guilford Hall Brewery for an exciting evening of space knowledge!
Doors open at 7:00 pm, talks start at 7:30 pm. The event is FREE and open to the public!

Follow-up comment on how bad it is on the ground at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. 🔭

That's such good news. Congratulations!

Webb Mission Operations Center: 😏

The star has spikes because of the shape of Hubble's primary mirror and the shape of the support struts that hold up it's secondary mirror. More on that in this thread.

This is a bit of a late reply, but I haven't been checking in on the bot in a few days.

The bright thing to the left is a foreground star in the Milky Way. That's generally how bright stars appear in Hubble images. Pulling it up in a catalog, the star is about 2,500 light years away.

One of the last things I worked on at STScI is finally out.

Learn what JWST has taught us about how stars form, and get excited about what we will learn in the future. We're just getting started!

Narrated by yours truly. 🔭🧪

Good piece from @astrolaura.com about grifting that is "buying" stars or star names.

Don't do it.

Go chat with your friendly astronomer pals - they have many names for the stars they study, and if you ask about a certain star they study, maybe you can come up with a name they'll use!

Save $40!

Why do we do astrophysics? At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implic...

"Every person is a human being, whose personal development is more important than our short-term scientific accomplishments" - and more bangers in this from David Hogg (spoiler: it's about AI!) arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181 🔭

While not a real-time image feed from the telescopes (the images are from existing surveys), you can see what Hubble or Webb are observing right now. Pretty neat! 🔭🧪

A wide field of view showing deep space dotted with many small galaxies and a few foreground stars that display diffraction spikes. One galaxy is highlighted with a magnified image in a pull-out box in the lower right corner. The galaxy is labeled MoM-z14 and appears as a blurry yellow blob with a small red area at its top.

#NASAWebb has set a new cosmic distance record: MoM-z14, the furthest galaxy ever confirmed (for now). In this image we see the galaxy as it appeared only 280 million years after the universe began in the big bang: https://news.stsci.edu/49Uanyg

Exactly. I'm originally from Erie, PA and they are absolutely equipped to handle lake effect snow. Syracuse has worse lake effect, so they will be fine.

It's hard to shake that mentality now that I live in Maryland, where everything shuts down if there is an inch of snow on the ground.

Heated Rivalry - Astronomy on Tap Baltimore YouTube video by Kelly Lepo

My latest video for @aot-baltimore.bsky.social: Heated Rivalry Astronomy on Tap

In a world where there are no out gay observatories, NASA Astrophysics and NASA Earth Science begin a romance. Can they keep their love a secret?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLa8...

Artemis II’s Possible Impact on JWST Science Operations

Some info on how #Artemis II might impact #JWST operations, from our @jwstobserver.bsky.social site. 🔭https://www.stsci.edu/contents/news/jwst/2026/artemis-ii's-possible-impact-on-jwst-science-operations.html

This is more of a management position than an outreach one. The office of public outreach is in a challenging budget situation and just laid off a bunch of staff (including me). They interface with NASA, who also lost a bunch of staff.

So whoever takes this on will have their work cut out for them.

I was on my way to the airport going home after a study abroad in Madrid. I had $12 in my bank account, no money for a taxi, one trip left on my 10 trip metro pass.

A stranger saw how exhausted I was and helped me with my bags through two metro line transfers even though it was out of his way.

True.

And also your average kid knows more science than your average adult (because adults have mostly forgotten what they learned in science class).

Working in astronomy outreach, you quickly learn that the average person knows way less than you think.

It's fine! You can live your whole life without knowing if the Sun is a star. I know because it is my job, most people don't have to.

But asking questions is the first step to learning more.

The comic is a drawing of a star, with the diffraction spikes that usually happen when taking pictures with telescopes. An exoplanet orbits that star, and its trajectory crosses one of the spikes. At the intersection point, the onomatopoeia "SLICE" is written, and the trajectory splits in two. Not far after, two half-planets continue their course. Caption below panel: Bad news for exoplanets: it turns out those diffraction spikes are real.

xkcd.com/2762/

Few individuals have had such a colossal & deleterious impact on the cultural psyche as the recently-departed Erich von Däniken. While he was not alone in fusing aliens into our conception of the distant human past, he was perhaps the most successful & the most harmful in doing so.

I am once AGAIN asking that everyone use ALT text in their images. I see a lot of good stuff I'd like to repost but I won't if it's not accessible. So please take a moment and do so when you put up a pic. Thank you.

I know, right? I think the Universe owes me a Milky Way supernova in my lifetime.

Sometimes you stumble over to a packed breakout session at your big annual academic conference and learn that some billionaires have decided to build not one, but FOUR, complementary new telescope facilities, and build them fast

Well OK then! Happy new year! From their pockets to our skies! 🔭

I fact checked the social media for this release. Normally I just have to review the astronomy. For this one, I also had to learn about platypus biology.

Thanks! Here's hoping that 2026 will be much better than 2025.

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