Astronomy Prints 🌌: Space Minds: The moon, AI and the high-stakes decisions shaping space’s future

Monday, January 12, 2026

Space Minds: The moon, AI and the high-stakes decisions shaping space’s future

01/12/2026

Watch and listen to the Space Minds podcast by SpaceNews

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In this special episode of Space Minds, our show is split into two segments from SpaceNews' annual Icon Awards, held in Washington, DC in December. First, SpaceNews correspondent Debra Werner interviews Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim on stage, then SpaceNews senior staff writer Jeff Foust moderates a panel discussion with several other award recipients, bringing together leaders from policy, science and technology.

The discussion with Jason Kim covers Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 — an award-winning lunar landing that delivered multiple NASA payloads to the moon and marked a major milestone for commercial lunar exploration — and more especially where the company goes from here. Then, in Jeff's panel with Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society, JPL Fellow Steve Chien, Ubotica Technologies co-founder Aubrey Dunne and NASA's Roger Hunter, hear leading experts discuss themes ranging from the new ways that artificial intelligence is being used to create autonomous, swarming spacecraft to how the evolving space policy landscape is shaping the future of exploration.

Watch or listen to the special edition here.

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