Plus: A rise in projected cost for Golden Dome
| By Dan Robitzski
Earlier this month, NASA disqualified a proposed astrophysics mission called the Advanced X-Ray Imaging Satellite, or AXIS for short. And based on the principal investigator's telling, the axed science mission is among the first major casualties of NASA's first year of the second Trump administration.
Let's back up. AXIS is one of two proposed astrophysics missions that NASA selected as finalists for the Astrophysics Probe Explorer program — the first in a new series of astrophysics missions that would be offered a higher cost cap than other Explorer missions. NASA gave AXIS and the other finalist, PRIMA, $5 million contracts to refine their proposals over the course of a one-year contract study, at which point one would be selected for a planned 2032 launch. The AXIS team sent in their study, one that ultimately showed that the program would no longer fit into NASA's cost and scheduling requirements, and the agency responded by declaring the mission "not eligible for selection."
According to AXIS principal investigator Christopher Reynolds, a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, the program was one of the losers in NASA's particularly turbulent year. In emails to the AXIS team that were seen by SpaceNews' Jeff Foust, Reynolds said that a perfect storm of the government shutdown, NASA's budget chaos and the massive reduction in the federal space workforce all dealt blows to the mission's chance of success.
"I am, quite frankly, livid that AXIS ultimately fell victim to the programmatic chaos of 2025. The astronomical community deserves better," he wrote in one email.
So going forward? PRIMA is a candidate for the probe mission, but the AXIS submission shows how the political decisions that hit NASA rippled out to disrupt years of work — and years of potential scientific research — even after funding to the agency was restored and despite Administrator Jared Isaacman's goal to restore its workforce.
As Foust described it, "The dismissal of AXIS has concerned many in the X-ray astrophysics community, who worry about the field's future. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, itself threatened with budget cuts and termination in recent budget proposals, is more than 25 years old. There are few options for large missions like it in the foreseeable future beyond NASA's collaboration with the European Space Agency on its NewAthena X-ray observatory, slated for launch in the late 2030s."
| | | | | | | SIGNIFICANT DIGIT
| 10,020 | | The number of Starlink satellites currently in orbit — a record for SpaceX confirmed by space tracker Jonathan McDowell. | | | | | | | GOLDEN DOME'S ESTIMATE RISES
| | The Pentagon recently bumped up its cost estimate for Golden Dome from $175 billion to $185 billion, Golden Dome chief Gen. Michael Guetlein announced March 17. The increase comes from the Pentagon having been asked to procure additional capabilities, and Guetlein said that the $10 billion will be used to "accelerate procurement of satellites and build out a space-based data network," according to SpaceNews' Sandra Erwin.
The $175 billion estimate was originally floated by the Trump administration in the early days of the program, though independent budget projections and cost analyses shot into the trillions of dollars. Guetlein pushed back on those numbers, saying that they were based on inaccurate assumptions and estimates of what the Golden Dome's architecture would look like. Though, as Erwin reported, "the program remains in early stages, with broad funding and policy direction in place but limited public detail on its final design."
| | | | | | | | | China resumed orbital launch activity March 12 with a pair of missions lifting off from Hainan and Xichang spaceports, launching satellite internet and technology test satellites.
| | | | NASA is pushing ahead with an Artemis 2 launch as soon as April 1 after completing repairs to a helium line that required rolling the rocket back from the pad.
| | | | | Orbital data center startup Starcloud is seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for a constellation of as many as 88,000 satellites.
| | | | The U.S. Space Force has formally terminated an estimated $1.7 billion contract with defense technology firm AeroVironment to build a new generation of antennas used to command and control military satellites.
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