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Artemis 2 is set to fly around the moon today. The spacecraft will make its closest approach to the moon, about 6,550 kilometers above the surface, at 7:02 p.m. Eastern tonight, five minutes before reaching its greatest distance from the Earth, at nearly 406,800 kilometers. The flyby will set a record for the furthest distance humans have traveled from Earth, breaking the mark set by Apollo 13 in 1970. The four astronauts on Artemis 2 will spend about seven hours observing the moon during the flyby, taking pictures and notes about the lunar landscape and also observing an eclipse of the sun by the moon. The Orion spacecraft continues to work well, with only minor issues such as problems with the spacecraft's toilet. [SpaceNews]
As Artemis 2 soars towards the moon, NASA's budget is falling back to Earth. The White House released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal Friday that included $18.8 billion for NASA, a 23% cut from what the agency received in 2026. The budget included many of the same major reductions as in its 2026 proposal, including cutting science by 47%, along with steep cuts to International Space Station operations and space technology. The budget does increase funding for exploration programs. Advocacy groups and some members of Congress criticized the budget proposal and urged appropriators to ignore the request when crafting their spending bills. [SpaceNews]
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman defended the budget proposal, saying it supports the agency's top priorities. In appearances on two Sunday news shows, Isaacman said the budget supported exploration programs that would, in turn, provide opportunities for science and technology. "NASA doesn't have a topline problem. We just need to focus on executing and delivering world-changing outcomes," he said of the budget. His comments were the first public statements by NASA about the budget proposal. Unlike many previous budget requests, NASA did not hold a briefing or release a statement about the 2027 budget proposal. [SpaceNews]
In stark contrast to NASA, the White House is proposing to more than double the budget of the U.S. Space Force. The White House Friday outlined a $1.5 trillion national defense budget, a roughly 42% increase that would mark the largest military topline in U.S. history. Within that total, funding for the Space Force would climb to more than $71 billion, up about $40 billion from fiscal 2026 levels. That funding would come through a combination of regular appropriations and a budget reconciliation bill. A significant portion of the increase is tied to missile defense systems based in orbit, including $17 billion for Golden Dome. [SpaceNews]
Military space programs are suffering from supply chain constraints. As the Space Force envisions accelerated satellite production, officials are warning that key parts of the space industrial base may not be mature enough to keep up. The concerns center on highly specialized components, such as optical inter-satellite communication terminals, infrared sensor arrays and radiation-hardened microelectronics. The risks are concentrated among smaller, lower-tier suppliers that can remain mostly invisible until a disruption halts production. Those supply chain challenges have affected programs like the Space Development Agency's constellations of communications and missile-tracking satellites. [SpaceNews]
Italian satellite manufacturer Argotec has opened its first production facility in the United States. The company inaugurated a factory on Florida's Space Coast last week that will be capable of assembling and integrating 10 smallsats simultaneously, with future capacity to produce one spacecraft per month based on its recently announced modular Hawk Plus platform. That includes final processing work for the satellites Argotec is developing for the Italian IRIDE remote sensing constellation, which are built at Argotec's main factory in Turin, Italy. [SpaceNews]
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