Reasons to be thankful for NASA this Thanksgiving

Through the year we in the media and the public regularly take shots at NASA and criticize them on a number of issues. While that’s our job to keep the agency accountable, sometimes it can sound like continued negativism.

So like what many of you here in the US will be doing tonight around the dinner table, here are three reasons I’m thankful for NASA this year.

Read my 2020 version of this article here.

Funding a second HLS lander

While the agency wanted to fund two commercial lunar landers from the beginning, congress didn’t give enough money to get what NASA wanted. So when SpaceX was selected to build the lander for Artemis the agency would only have one lander for its missions.

Thankfully NASA has found a way since then to get funding for a second lunar lander in the form of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander. Blue Origin’s Artemis mission will begin with Artemis 5 later this decade.

Having two options is extremely important to NASA’s goal in making the lunar ecosystem sustainable. While this is a big bet by the agency, it has succeeded partially in LEO where a commercial sector is starting to emerge.

Especially when talking about the Moon, having a backup plan incase one lander is delayed is a great idea. So here’s to NASA that is choosing to handle two landers commercially rather than giving into congress’ pressure of developing and owning their own.

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Continued easy access to Hubble and Webb photos

Over the decades, NASA has made images from its Hubble Space Telescope easily available to the public. That has continued with the agency’s latest telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope.

Regularly, NASA and its partner in both of these projects, ESA, have shared images and data from the telescopes through social media and the agency’s website. This ease of access doesn’t just make the media job easier to see what’s new but also to educators, fans, and anyone interested in learning about the programs, to see some of the best photos in the universe.

In a world where controlling the flow of information as much as possible is all over the place, I’m thankful that NASA has continued to provide streams of photos and data from not just its observatories but many other missions like rovers, Ingenuity, and other probes, all for free.

Faith in new launch vehicles

We all know the story about how without NASA, SpaceX would have most likely not survived or become as big as it is today. The funding it provided to develop the Falcon 9 rocket has turned into a thriving commercial launcher and the most launched rocket this year.

NASA has continued to provide early launch contracts to new, and sometimes less than perfect, launch providers. Almost every SmallSat launcher has received a contract through NASA’s Venture Class contract. This includes Astra, Rocket Lab, Firefly, and so many more.

Recently NASA has shared that Blue Origin will fly a mission to Mars, called ESCAPADE, on the first New Glenn rocket next year. There’s only certain times that rockets can launch and make it to Mars, called launch windows. These Venture Class contracts take into the account the higher risk of launching on newer rockets. However, without them, finding early government funding would be difficult.

I’m thankful that NASA hasn’t given up on the little guys, and has continued to develop a thriving space launch sector here on Earth.