Federal workforce reductions led to loss of institutional knowledge, creating a need for agency leaders to pivot on employee development strategies, CHCOs say.
The commander and pilot of NASA's Artemis II mission have gained a new distinction five months after splashing down from the Moon: They're not fully retiring from the space agency.
Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover are the first astronauts to join NASA's emeritus program, enabling them to continue to support the work being done at Johnson Space Center in Houston. They will remain available to train and mentor the current workforce while still being able to pursue employment and opportunities outside of NASA.
"I have asked NASA ... to not use the term 'retire' as much, but technically emeritus is a retirement program," Glover told collectSPACE.com on Wednesday. "It's something we have typically done for scientists when they have groundbreaking research, and they want to go back to academia to teach or to research and publish."
A NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract has been awarded by the agency to Relativity Space Inc., and its Terran R launch service in accordance with the contract’s on-ramp provision. The Terran R launch service will be available to NASA’s launch services to use for future missions.
The NLS II contracts are multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with an ordering period through June 2030 and an overall period of performance through December 2032. The NLS II contracts include an on-ramp provision that provides an opportunity annually for new launch service providers to compete for future missions and allows existing contractors to introduce launch vehicles not currently on their NLS II contracts.
The NLS II contracts support the goals and objectives of the agency’s Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate, Science Mission Directorate, and the Research and Technology Mission Directorate. Under the contract, NASA also can provide launch services to other government agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NASA’s Launch Services Program Office at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida manages the NLS II contracts. For more information about NASA, visit:
"The department really has had to change the way it is thinking and its approach to brain health effects from blast over pressure," said Alyssa Hundrup.
I have a soft spot for old software Easter eggs, especially the ones that make you wonder what developers were doing when nobody was looking. Excel 97 has one of my favorites: a secret 3D flight simulator hidden inside a spreadsheet. And, yes, I went looking for a way to play it.
The disagreement highlights the confusion, both within government and in public, about how one of the Trump administration's highest priorities would work.
The secretive satellite agency’s work with prime contractors to address supply chain issues could inform broader federal efforts to address supplier risks.
NASA’s LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, Learns New Details
This is an animated before-and-after view of the crater formed after a Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon’s surface on Aug. 5, 2026. These images were taken between Aug. 11 and 12 by the Narrow-Angle Camera on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are enlarged three times from the original, with north facing up, and they cover an area about a quarter of a mile wide.
NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines
Between Aug. 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the surface following its January 2025 launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.
To capture imagery of the impact, engineers tilted the spacecraft so its cameras would point toward the crater each time LRO passed about 60 miles above the Moon, traveling 1 mile per second. The orbiter circles the Moon from pole to pole every two hours, while the Moon slowly rotates underneath it. To photograph a specific spot, the spacecraft must wait until that location turns into view, which took six days in this case.
Getting the pointing right was only half the challenge; timing had to be accurate as well. If the camera snapped even 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would drift off-center by 10 miles.
An artist concept video showing NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the Moon.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
Because of the variety of viewing angles, scientists could see the crater under multiple lighting conditions that revealed unique features. In images where the crater rim stood out, scientists measured its 60‑foot width. Scientists also determined the crater is less than 10 feet deep based on the length of its shadow.
To capture these details, LRO used its Narrow-Angle Camera, which can spot features as small as 3 feet wide.
Collected between Aug. 11 and 12 by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, six days after a Falcon 9 upper-stage booster impacted the Moon, these images were taken from different viewing angles, bringing out different features. The darker area that fans around the crater in the upper-left image is rougher than the surroundings, as this surface material has been altered over a long time by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and micrometeorite impacts. The brighter rays and splotch above the crater in the lower-right image is fresher material that was excavated from deeper below the surface. The pictures are arranged in the order they were taken, starting at the top left and moving toward the bottom right, with the lighting angle from the Sun gradually changing from one image to the next. Each image is enlarged two times and shows an area of the Moon about 1,000 feet wide.
NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines
The images above show bright and dark rays stretching out from the crater. The darker streaks are made of surface dust and rocks altered over a long time by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and micrometeorite impacts. This weathered material was excavated by the collision from 1.5 feet into the lunar surface. The brighter streaks near the crater rim are made of fresh material excavated from deeper underground.
This image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows two oval regions where the Falcon 9 upper stage was likely to impact the Moon, based on calculations by engineers with NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. Both ellipses are 2.1 miles long and 0.4 miles wide. Both predictions use the same booster-trajectory calculations, but only the blue ellipse takes into account the lunar terrain. The red and blue dots show predicted impact locations, whereas the cyan dot shows the actual impact site.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Finding the impact site took global coordination among experts and hobbyists. Independent astronomers first identified the rocket’s trajectory using publicly available data. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks natural objects that could pose hazards to Earth for the agency’s Planetary Defense program, used this opportunity to test and validate tools and techniques for predicting impacts.
Based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the center incrementally refined the trajectory until identifying the location of impact, which it provided to the Republic of Korea for their Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) team. The team used the high-resolution LUTI camera on Danuri a few hours later to image the crater, finding the prediction was accurate to about 0.6 miles.
After capturing images of the crater, the Danuri mission sent coordinates to NASA’s LRO team to help refine their follow-up imaging sequence. Comparing their new crater images with the pre-impact images, the LRO team updated the crater center coordinates: 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, 511 meters elevation.
The first thing I do when Microsoft’s 10-K or 10-Q comes out is hit Ctrl-F and go waaaay down to the section called “Revenue, classified by significant product and service offerings.” It’s on Page 85 of the 10-K that came out Wednesday with its quarterly and annual results.
From my perspective, this gives the clearest view of what’s actually happening in Microsoft’s business. It groups things into categories and product names that match a real-world understanding of the company, as opposed to the mumbo jumbo you have to decode otherwise.
Microsoft reports its results in three broad segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, More Personal Computing. Businesses like Azure, Xbox, Windows and LinkedIn all basically disappear inside them, until you dig into the filing.
The table, as it appears in Microsoft’s 10K for FY2026.
Overall, for the fiscal year ended June 30, Microsoft’s revenue increased 18%, or $50.1 billion, to $331.8 billion. Here is what the 10-K table shows about the real drivers of the business.
Two business lines are driving nearly all of Microsoft’s growth.
Of the $50.1 billion in revenue that Microsoft added for the fiscal year, $31 billion came from Server products and cloud services, accounting for 62% of the company’s growth.
This category includes Azure, along with SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, GitHub and Nuance. Microsoft doesn’t detail Azure revenue in its financial statements, but CEO Satya Nadella said on the earnings call that Azure passed $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time this year.
At total revenue of $129.4 billion, this is by far Microsoft’s biggest business, accounting for nearly 40% of its annual revenue.
The second biggest growth came from Microsoft 365 Commercial, which added $14.2 billion in revenue, up 16% to $102 billion. Microsoft 365 Commercial covers the business subscriptions: Office, Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, security and compliance, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Taken together these two business lines produced 90% of Microsoft’s growth for the year.
They’re also where the company is monetizing AI most successfully: Azure, AI infrastructure and GitHub Copilot in server and cloud; and Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft 365 Commercial.
Two of Microsoft’s longtime businesses got smaller.
Windows and Devices revenue fell $230 million, to $17.1 billion. Once the biggest growth engine for the company as a whole, the PC operating system business has been flat for the past four years, using the categories as Microsoft now defines them.
Xbox revenue fell $1.7 billion, to $21.8 billion. That’s the first annual decline since Microsoft completed its $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition. It comes as Microsoft overhauls the business, cuts jobs and takes a write-down on unspecified Xbox assets.
Other notes and observations from the table:
LinkedIn, at $19.8 billion, now generates more revenue than Windows and Devices. It passed Windows in fiscal 2025 and extended the lead this year, growing 11% while Windows declined.
Microsoft 365 Consumer was the fastest-growing category after server products, up 24% to $9.2 billion.
Search advertising grew 9% to $15.2 billion, and is closing in on Windows and Devices.
Dynamics grew 15% to $9 billion. Enterprise and partner services, the consulting business, grew 6% to $8.3 billion.
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