Space · Thursday, 24 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

NASA's Goddard centre built the new Roman telescope while losing 40% of its people. Workers say it could not build another one today.

Roman launched in August and now has fuel for at least 22 years. Scientific American reports that the NASA centre which built it has shrunk from about 10,000 people to 6,000 and closed the lab that made its fuel system.

10,000 to 6,000

people working at Goddard, before and after the cuts

Managers have since hired back 600 people. [1]

30 to 7

people on the team that built Roman's fuel tanks, valves and thrusters

NASA closed their lab in November 2025. [1]

22 years

of fuel on Roman, more than double the 10 it was built for

Its first course correction used less than a tenth of the fuel set aside for it. [2]

$4.3bn

the cost of the Roman Space Telescope, built mostly at Goddard

It launched on 30 August on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. [1][2]

The lead story — what happened

Scientific American published an investigation on 22 September into NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the centre that designed and built most of the Roman Space Telescope. [1]
Roman is a $4.3bn telescope. It launched on 30 August and is travelling to a spot about 1.6 million km from Earth. [1][2]
Current and former Goddard workers told the magazine that NASA could not build another telescope like Roman today. They say too many people and too much equipment are gone. [1]
Goddard shrank from about 10,000 staff and contractors to 6,000, a drop of 40%, over a period that included the 2025 layoffs and early retirements. Managers have since hired back 600. [1]
In November 2025 NASA shut the Goddard lab that built Roman's fuel tanks, valves and thrusters. The team that did that work fell from 30 people to seven. [1]
A Goddard spokesperson said that kind of hardware is now readily available from private companies, and more efficiently. The spokesperson said building big missions is still a core Goddard skill. [1]
A survey for a group of Goddard retirees found the safety team had lost half its staff by July 2026. NASA says safety has not suffered. [1]
Goddard's director, Jamie Dunn, managed Roman from 2018 and delivered it under budget and early. He told an outside panel in August that people could see an upswing starting. [1]
Roman itself is doing better than planned. NASA said this month it has fuel for at least 22 years of work, against the 10 years it was built for. [2][3]
Its first course correction used less than 10% of the fuel set aside for it. The telescope also came out lighter than budgeted, so its tanks were filled right to the top. [2]
Roman's main camera is switched on and working. First pictures are expected around the end of the year, and science work is due to start in January 2027. [4]
The US Congress has asked the National Academies, the country's senior science advisers, to report by December on whether Goddard can still build missions like Roman. [1]

Goddard staff and contractors before the cuts10,000 people

After the cuts6,000 people

After hiring back 6006,600 people

How many people work at Goddard, the NASA centre that built Roman. The last bar adds the 600 people hired back to the 6,000 who stayed.

Who is involved

Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA's science centre in Maryland, set up in 1959; it built most of Roman and of the James Webb telescope
Jamie Dunn

Goddard's director since May; he managed Roman from 2018 and says the centre is starting to recover
Carl Stahle

a retired Goddard engineer who wrote the retirees' survey; he says the biggest loss was the people
Casey Dreier

space policy chief at the Planetary Society, a members' group that backs space science; he says no business will replace this work
The National Academies panel

outside experts the US Congress asked to judge what Goddard can still build; report due in December

How it unfolded

2018 Jamie Dunn becomes Roman's project manager at Goddard [1]
Nov 2025 NASA shuts Goddard's propulsion lab, which built Roman's fuel system [1]
July 2026 A retirees' survey finds Goddard's safety team has lost half its staff [1]
30 Aug Roman launches on a Falcon Heavy from Florida [2]
22 Sep Scientific American publishes its investigation into Goddard [1]
December The National Academies panel is due to report [1]

Where this points

The next test is the National Academies report due in December, the first outside judgement on whether Goddard can still build a telescope like Roman. [1]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Companies taking over NASA's work Building↑

NASA closed Goddard's lab for rocket parts and said private companies now make them more efficiently. [1] Vast, a company building a private space station, set up a division to build equipment for NASA's planned Moon base. [12] A company rover will hunt for Moon water on a lander NASA pays to carry cargo. [11]

Launch dates slipping High→

SpaceX moved Starship's first try at orbit from 22 to 28 September, and it still needs a US licence. [7][6] The next crew flight to the space station slipped from 12 September to 1 October after a leak in its capsule. [8]

Customers booking rides years ahead Building↑

Exolaunch signed up to fill a SpaceX Starfall flight, which brings experiments home from orbit, planned for 2029 at the earliest. [10] AstroForge, an asteroid-mining company, booked the very first flight of a rocket from Stoke Space, due in early 2027. [13]

The rest of the day

8 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Starship stacked for its first orbital try

SpaceX lifted Ship 41 onto Booster 21 at its Starbase site in Texas overnight on 23 September, putting the whole Starship rocket together for Flight 14. [5] A fuelling test called a wet dress rehearsal was expected on 24 September. [5][6] Starship is SpaceX's giant rocket, and its 13 earlier flights all stopped short of orbit by design. [5] Flight 14 aims to circle the Earth about six times on 28 September. The US Federal Aviation Administration has not yet approved it. [5][6]

26 TbpsOne Starship flight of 26 new Starlink satellites
10 flightsFalcon 9 flights of older satellites for the same capacity
How much internet capacity one Starship flight would add, compared with SpaceX's current rocket.

Why it matters — If it reaches orbit, its 26 new Starlink internet satellites add as much capacity as ten Falcon 9 flights of the older kind. [7] NASA is also counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the Moon. [5]
03
Next space station crew gets a date

NASA announced on 22 September that Crew-13, the next SpaceX flight taking astronauts to the International Space Station, will launch on 1 October from Florida. [8] It had been due on 12 September until NASA said on 29 August that a leak of oxidiser, the chemical the capsule's thrusters burn fuel with, had been found. [8] The crew are NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canada's Josh Kutryk and Russia's Sergey Teteryatnikov. They will stay about seven months. [8]

Why it matters — The four Crew-12 astronauts they replace have been on the station since February and can only leave after a few days of overlap. [8][9] One of them, NASA's Jessica Meir, made four spacewalks on this trip. [9]
04
Exolaunch books a return flight

Exolaunch, a German company that finds room for small satellites on rockets, has signed up to fill a SpaceX Starfall flight planned for 2029 at the earliest. [10] Starfall is a SpaceX service that carries experiments into orbit on a Starship and brings them back to Earth, and one flight holds 1,000 kg. [10] Exolaunch will find customers in drug research and space manufacturing, and help them with the paperwork and hardware. [10] Redwire and Space Cargo Unlimited have already booked Starfall flights for 2028. [10]

Why it matters — It is Exolaunch's first booking on Starship and its first mission that brings anything home. [10] Customers are now committing to flights two to three years away. [10]
05
Vast opens a Moon division

Vast, a company building a private space station called Haven, has set up a division to build equipment for NASA's planned base on the Moon. [12] It plans a power station, an airlock designed to keep Moon dust out, and a habitat of several modules for long stays. [12] It also proposes a group of satellites to pass messages and give positions around the Moon's south pole. [12] Vast says much of what it built for Haven can be scaled up for the Moon. [12]

Why it matters — NASA's Moon base is pulling in companies that had worked only in orbit around the Earth. [12] The announcement names no NASA contract for any of this work. [12]
06
A map to guide a Moon rover to ice

Astrolab, a US company building Moon rovers, will get help from Interstellar Mapping to choose where its FLIP rover looks for water at the Moon's south pole. [11] Interstellar Mapping's chief executive says knowing how warm the ground is underneath shows where ice is most likely to have lasted. [11] FLIP is due to launch in November on Griffin-1, a lander Astrobotic built for a NASA programme that pays companies to carry cargo to the Moon. [11] It also carries NASA instruments, including a camera looking for helium-3. [11]

Why it matters — Ice at the south pole could one day be turned into rocket fuel for trips further out. [11] FLIP's search is part of NASA's plan to build a base on the Moon. [11]
07
A spacecraft that will take no orders

AstroForge, a California company that wants to mine metals from asteroids, plans a spacecraft that flies its whole mission without a single command from the ground. [13] Autonomy-1 will be run by Solo, AstroForge's own software for making decisions in flight, and data will only flow down to Earth. [13] It is booked on the first flight of Stoke Space's Nova rocket in early 2027. [13] Solo first flies later this year in shadow mode, making decisions that are not carried out. [13]

Why it matters — A company planning a fleet of asteroid probes cannot pay a team to steer each one by hand. [13] AstroForge lost its last deep-space probe, Odin, in 2025 after it could not keep contact with it. [13]
08
A planet that orbits the wrong way

Astronomers at the University of Geneva found that GJ 3090 b, a planet about 73 light years away, circles its star in the opposite direction to the star's spin. [14] Planets form in a spinning disc of gas and dust, so they normally travel the same way their star turns. [14] This planet's orbit is tilted 136 degrees from its star's equator. Earth's is tilted 7 degrees. [14] The study came out on 21 September in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. [14]
0 degrees90 degrees180 degrees
1. 1Earth's tilt against the Sun's equator7 degrees
2. 2Where an orbit starts going backwards90 degrees
3. 3GJ 3090 b's tilt against its star's equator136 degrees
How far each orbit is tipped from its star's middle. Past 90 degrees, the planet travels against the star's spin.
Why it matters — Only five planetary systems have been seen tilted more than 70 degrees, and the other four have a heavy neighbour that could have pushed them over. [14] This one has none, so the team suggests its star once pulled in a second disc turning the other way. [14]
09
Pikachu joins Europe's space week

The European Space Agency has teamed up with The Pokemon Company for World Space Week, which runs from 4 to 10 October. [15] A Pikachu toy spent 67 days on the International Space Station this year, from 11 April to 17 June, while ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot was aboard. [15] Exhibitions about Europe's space work, with Pokemon characters, opened at ESA's Paris headquarters on 19 September. They then move to other ESA sites and museums until April 2027. [15]

Why it matters — ESA's director general, Josef Aschbacher, says the aim is to reach people outside the usual places where space is shown. [15] A Pokemon GO event at science museums starts on 4 October. [15]

02 Lesson why it matters

When a team is broken up, its skills leave with the people

Building a telescope takes skills people learn by doing the work, so when the team is cut, the skill goes with them and takes years to grow back.

The twist

Closing a lab takes one decision. The people who knew how to use it took years to train, and opening the doors again later does not bring them back.

The picture

30 peopleGoddard's team for Roman's fuel tanks and thrusters, before the lab closed

7 peopleThe same team after the lab closed in November 2025

The team that built Roman's fuel system, before and after its lab was shut.

How it works

A team builds one hard machine after another
Each build teaches tricks that live in people, not in manuals
The work stops, or the team is cut
People leave, and their tricks leave with them
The rooms and tools remain, but nobody left knows every step
Starting again means years of hiring and training first

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

Vast opens a Moon division

Vast's team is still building its Haven station, so it can carry what it learned there straight into Moon habitats and airlocks.
Exolaunch books a return flight

Exolaunch kept filling SpaceX rideshare flights for years, and says the customers it met doing that work will help it fill a Starfall flight.

Where you've seen this

Family recipes

A dish nobody wrote down is lost when the cook who made it every week is gone.

Shipyards

A yard that goes years between big ships has to relearn the hardest welds, so the next ship runs late.

School orchestras

Drop the music programme for a few years and there are no older players left to teach the new ones.

The catch

Some skills can be bought back from companies that kept doing the work, which is NASA's case for closing the lab. The loss is hardest where nobody else does the job at all.

And the whole of it

A manager at Goddard sees a smaller budget, an engineer sees a closed lab, and a student who hopes to build telescopes in 2040 sees nothing yet. Each is inside the same decision, and none of them can see all of it.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

NASA's Goddard centre finished the $4.3bn Roman telescope under budget, while it lost 40% of its people and the lab that built Roman's fuel system. The US Congress has now asked the National Academies to say by December whether Goddard could build a telescope like it again. [1]

Why it works on us — A launch that goes perfectly is seen by everyone on one day, while a lost skill only shows up years later when the next project runs late, so the good news is easy to take as the whole picture.

Who gains

Private companies that make spacecraft fuel parts — NASA closed the Goddard lab that built Roman's tanks, valves and thrusters, and says it will buy that work from industry instead. [1]
Astronomers who will use Roman — A precise launch and a lighter telescope left fuel for at least 22 years of work instead of 10. [2][3]
SpaceX — Exolaunch, Redwire and Space Cargo Unlimited have booked Starfall flights for 2028 and 2029, so customers are signed up years before the flights. [10]
Stoke Space, a company building fully reusable rockets — The very first flight of its Nova rocket now has a customer's spacecraft aboard, AstroForge's Autonomy-1. [13]
Vast — It can reuse designs from its Haven space station to seek work on NASA's Moon base. [12]

Who pays

Goddard's remaining engineers — The team that built Roman's fuel system went from 30 people to seven, and the safety team lost half its staff by July 2026. [1]
Future NASA science missions — The retirees' survey says Goddard has lost the skills to coordinate robot Moon missions, and questions whether it can plan a giant telescope like the Habitable Worlds Observatory. [1]
The four Crew-12 astronauts — They have been on the space station since February, and their ride home waits on a Crew-13 launch that slipped from 12 September to 1 October. [8][9]
AstroForge — It is putting Autonomy-1 on a rocket that has never flown, after losing its Odin probe in 2025. [13]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether Goddard can still build a flagship telescope like Roman.

NASA says building big missions is still a core Goddard skill, while current and former workers and a retirees' survey say key people and equipment are gone. The National Academies panel reports in December. [1]
02

How large the staff loss is, and over exactly what dates.

Scientific American gives the drop from 10,000 to 6,000 for March 2020 to January 2025, yet says the same period included the 2025 layoffs, so the end date cannot be right as printed. It also says 600 people have been hired back since. [1]
03

Whether private companies can make the fuel hardware Goddard's closed lab used to build.

NASA says that work is now readily available from the private sector, but has published no comparison of cost or quality. [1]
04

Whether Starship Flight 14 gets permission to fly on 28 September.

When the rocket was stacked on 23 September, the US Federal Aviation Administration had not yet approved the flight. [5][6] Aviation Week reported on 18 September that approval from the FCC, which licenses radio use, was also still pending. [7]
05

Whether Starship reaches orbit at all.

All 13 earlier flights were built to stop short of orbit, so this is the first real try. [5]
06

When the Crew-12 astronauts land.

They can only leave after Crew-13 arrives, and Crew-13's launch has already slipped once, from 12 September to 1 October. No landing date has been given. [8][9]
07

Whether SpaceX's Starfall flights happen on time.

The earliest booked flights are in 2028 and 2029, two to three years away, and the dates depend on Starship, which has not yet reached orbit. [10][5]
08

Why GJ 3090 b orbits backwards.

No heavy neighbour has been found to explain it, and the team's idea of a second disc turning the other way has not been tested. [14]
09

Whether AstroForge's spacecraft can fly a mission with no commands from the ground.

Its Solo software has not yet flown, and it rides the first ever flight of Stoke Space's Nova rocket in early 2027. [13]

04 Hope carry this

NASA's new Roman Space Telescope has fuel for at least 22 years of work, more than double the 10 years it was built for. Its first course correction used less than a tenth of the fuel set aside for it.

Also true today

Astronaut Jessica Meir helped repair the space station's robot arm on a spacewalk earlier this year. On her last spacewalk, on 1 September, she rode that same arm while her crewmates steered it.
An instrument called NIRPS, at the La Silla Observatory, measured the orbit of a planet only 2.2 times as wide as Earth, 73 light years away. It was precise enough to show the planet circles its star backwards.