Lurking in the text contained within the One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed by the US Senate yesterday, is an $85 million allocation for shifting a “space vehicle” to a new location, widely interpreted as a move of the retired Space Shuttle Discovery orbiter from Virginia to Houston. The One Big Beautiful Bill is the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation proposal. It has been criticized by some – most vocally by Elon Musk, who fell out with Trump after claiming i...

The team behind NASA’s 19-year-old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been busy teaching an old spacecraft new tricks, persuading the vehicle to perform a 120-degree roll to peer more clearly into the red planet. The mission team imaginatively calls the maneuvers “very large rolls,” and they involve nearly flipping the spacecraft so that the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) can have a deeper view of Mars than ever before. SHARAD can peer more than a half mile below the planet’s...