Though the U.S. authorities is shut down, NASA’s astronauts in area are nonetheless anticipated to indicate up for work each day.
Because the shutdown continues into its second month, many federal workers are furloughed. Some, nevertheless, hold working (principally with out pay in the intervening time), as a result of they’re thought of essential to the continued operation of the nation’s capabilities, just like the supply of the mail.
Like all federal businesses, NASA has needed to severely reduce on its day-to-day actions, as greater than 15,000 NASA civil servants have been furloughed since Oct. 1. Solely important personnel deemed “needed to guard life and property” are granted “excepted” standing, in accordance with NASA’s shutdown steerage. This consists of astronauts in area and the technicians in mission management on the bottom who assist them.
For essentially the most half, life aboard the ISS has continued as standard. The Expedition 73 crew presently occupying the area station have spent the previous month conducting microgravity analysis and different experiments on their rotation and performing scheduled upkeep.
Of the seven astronauts presently residing on the ISS, three are from the Russian area 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 area. They only don’t get paid for it. Like each different federal workers pressured to work through the shutdown, they may later obtain backpay compensation for the time they’re presently placing in.
This previous week, for instance, Japan’s new HTV-X1 cargo spacecraft launched and rendezvoused with the ISS. All three NASA astronauts had been readily available for that seize and had 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 beautiful views of Earth which have included the HTV-X arrival, comet Lemon above the skinny line of Earth’s environment, and auroras from area.
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 labeled work on the company’s Artemis moon program as essential and subsequently 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 might put a pressure on company assets as an increasing number of workers are pressured to work with out pay. Delays might push the mission’s hopeful February goal date additional into the launch window, which extends via April.
And any delay to Artemis 2 might be unhealthy information for the timeline of Artemis 3, which shall be NASA’s first mission to land astronauts on the lunar floor because the finish of the Apollo program within the 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 pressured the significance of successful this new “moon race.”
