Engineers who work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been brought on as senior advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources tell WIRED.

On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. “The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk replied . “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”

By the time these posts were made, though, according to sources who were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation, SpaceX engineers were already being onboarded at the agency under Schedule A, a special authority that allows government managers to “hire persons with disabilities without requiring them to compete for the job,” according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

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In a remarkable statement Thursday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the International Space Station should be deorbited "as soon as possible."

This comment from Musk will surely set off a landmine in the global space community, with broad implications. And it appears to be no idle comment from Musk who, at times, indulges in deliberately provocative posts on the social media network X that he owns.

However, that does not seem to be the case here.

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A little over a month after SpaceX's large Starship launch ended in an explosion over several Caribbean islands, the company is preparing its next rocket for a test flight.

According to a notice posted by the Federal Aviation Administration, the eighth test flight of the Starship vehicle could take place as early as February 26 from the Starbase launch site in South Texas. The launch window extends from 5:30 pm local time (23:30 UTC) to 7:09 pm (01:09 UTC).

Company sources confirmed that this launch date is plausible, but it's also possible that the launch could slip a day or two to Thursday or Friday of next week.

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An asteroid discovered late last year is continuing to stir public interest as its odds of striking planet Earth less than eight years from now continue to increase.

Two weeks ago, when Ars first wrote about the asteroid, designated 2024 YR4, NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimated a 1.9 percent chance of an impact with Earth in 2032. NASA's most recent estimate has the likelihood of a strike increasing to 3.2 percent . Now that's not particularly high, but it's also not zero.

Naturally the prospect of a large ball of rock tens of meters across striking the planet is a little worrisome. This is large enough to cause localized devastation near its impact site, likely on the order of the Tunguska event of 1908, which leveled some 500 square miles (1,287 square kilometers) of forest in remote Siberia.

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Spread across NASA's headquarters and 10 field centers, which dot the United States from sea to sea, the space agency has had a workforce of nearly 18,000 civil servants .

However, by the end of today, that number will have shrunk by about 10 percent since the beginning of the second Trump administration four weeks ago. And the world's preeminent space agency may still face significant additional cuts.

According to sources, about 750 employees at NASA accepted the "fork in the road" offer to take deferred resignation from the space agency later this year. This sounds like a lot of people, but generally about 1,000 people leave the agency every year, so effectively, many of these people might just be getting paid to leave jobs they were already planning to exit from.

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If humanity is ever to spread out into the Solar System, we're going to need to find a way to put fuel into rockets somewhere other than the cozy confines of a launchpad on Earth. One option for that is in low-Earth orbit, which has the advantage of being located very close to said launch pads. But it has the considerable disadvantage of requiring a lot of energy to escape Earth's gravity—it takes a lot of fuel to put substantially less fuel into orbit.

One alternative is to produce fuel on the Moon. We know there is hydrogen and oxygen present, and the Moon's gravity is far easier to overcome, meaning more of what we produce there can be used to send things deeper into the Solar System. But there is a tradeoff: any fuel production infrastructure will likely need to be built on Earth and sent to the Moon.

How much infrastructure is that going to involve? A study released today by PNAS evaluates the energy costs of producing oxygen on the Moon, and finds that they're substantial: about 24 kWh per kilogram. This doesn't sound bad until you start considering how many kilograms we're going to eventually need.

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The likely next leader of NASA, private astronaut and pilot Jared Isaacman, has kept a low profile since the announcement last year that he was President Donald Trump's choice to lead the space agency.

This is understandable, as Isaacman must still be confirmed by the US Senate. No date has yet been put forward for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Typically, during this interim period, nominees meet with Senators behind closed doors before their hearings and limit public comments that could put them in the hot seat during the confirmation process.

This has meant that we've heard little from the person who is in line to lead NASA over the next four years as the space agency confronts a number of issues. These include reconfiguring the Artemis Program, a potential pivot toward Mars, an aging International Space Station, Mars Sample Return, a limited pipeline of science missions, and the likelihood of budget cuts. On top of all of this there is the uncertainty and unease federal workers face as the Trump Administration scrutinizes their activities for efficiency and, in some cases, loyalty.

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Welcome to Edition 7.31 of the Rocket Report! The unfortunate news this week concerns layoffs. Blue Origin announced a 10 percent cut in its workforce as the company aims to get closer to breaking even. More broadly in the space industry, there is unease about what the Trump administration's cuts to NASA and other federal agencies might mean.

We don't have all the answers, but it does seem that NASA is likely to be subject to less deep cuts than some other parts of the government. We should find out sometime in March when the Trump White House submits its initial budget request. Congress, of course, will have the final say.

As always, we welcome reader submissions , and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

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A little less than a month after the successful debut of its New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin's workforce will be trimmed by 10 percent.

The cuts were announced during an all-hands meeting on Thursday morning led by the rocket company's chief executive, Dave Limp. During the gathering, Limp cited "business strategy" as the rationale for making the cuts to a workforce of more than 10,000 people.

Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, and he continues to provide an estimated $2 billion in funding annually to support its operations.

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