Though the U.S. authorities is shut down, NASA’s astronauts in house are nonetheless anticipated to indicate up for work day-after-day.
Because the shutdown continues into its second month, many federal staff are furloughed. Some, nonetheless, maintain working (largely with out pay in the meanwhile), as a result of they’re thought of crucial to the continued operation of the nation’s features, just like the supply of the mail.
Like all federal businesses, NASA has needed to severely in the reduction of on its day-to-day actions, as greater than 15,000 NASA civil servants have been furloughed since Oct. 1. Solely important personnel deemed “mandatory to guard life and property” are granted “excepted” standing, in accordance with NASA’s shutdown steering. This contains astronauts in house and the technicians in mission management on the bottom who assist them.
For essentially the most half, life aboard the ISS has continued as normal. The Expedition 73 crew at present occupying the house station have spent the previous month conducting microgravity analysis and different experiments on their rotation and performing scheduled upkeep.
Of the seven astronauts at present dwelling on the ISS, three are from the Russian house company Roscosmos — Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov — and one other is Japan’s Kimiya Yui, from Japan.
The remaining three are NASA’s Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke. Like their worldwide counterparts, they’ve continued pulling their fair proportion of the chores in house. They simply don’t get paid for it. Like each different federal staff compelled to work in the course of the shutdown, they may later obtain backpay compensation for the time they’re at present placing in.
This previous week, for instance, Japan’s new HTV-X1 cargo spacecraft launched and rendezvoused with the ISS. All three NASA astronauts have been readily available for that seize and have been scheduled to assist unload its cargo on Friday (Oct. 31).
One factor NASA’s astronauts aren’t doing is updating their social media feeds or different strains of public communication. Yui, although, has been filling that hole. During the last month, he has posted gorgeous views of Earth which have included the HTV-X arrival, comet Lemon above the skinny line of Earth’s ambiance, and auroras from house.
今日は、少し違ったレンズでレモンさんを撮影してみました。ISSは地上から約400km上空ですので、地上がまだ夜でも、ISSでは既に陽が昇ってきます。彗星が太陽に近づく事で、ISSからの撮影機会がとても短くなってきました。HTV-X君のお迎えに集中する様にレモンさんが気を遣ってくれているのかも笑。 pic.twitter.com/4Ng456jOpZOctober 26, 2025
おはようございます！今日は、皆さんに特別見て頂きたい景色があり、仕事を早めに進めて、時間を作りつつ撮影しました。「きぼう」の窓から撮影した写真としては、歴代でも5本の指に入る絶景ではないでしょうか？自画自賛です笑(今日は、ISSが普段とは違う姿勢になったので窓の景色も変化しました) pic.twitter.com/a07yWavRbiOctober 14, 2025
NASA has additionally categorized work on the company’s Artemis moon program as crucial and due to this fact continues work to launch the four-astronaut Artemis 2 mission across the moon as early as February 2026.
Whereas work on Artemis has progressed, the continued shutdown could put a pressure on company assets as increasingly staff are compelled to work with out pay. Delays might push the mission’s hopeful February goal date additional into the launch window, which extends by April.
And any delay to Artemis 2 may very well be unhealthy information for the timeline of Artemis 3, which can be NASA’s first mission to land astronauts on the lunar floor because the finish of the Apollo program within the Nineteen Seventies. China, too, has aspirations of touchdown astronauts (or, as China calls them, “taikonauts”) on the moon, and NASA and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly confused the significance of profitable this new “moon race.”
