“Trump confidant Elon Musk wants NASA to drop its ambitious plans to return to the moon and instead head straight to Mars. Congress is ready to put up a fight,” Politico reports.

“Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who control NASA’s purse strings, want Americans to return to the lunar surface in 2027 — and they’re not willing to abandon that mission despite Musk’s obsession with skipping the moon for Mars.”

“The division sets up a potential showdown with Republican policymakers and the influential Trump ally over one of the most consequential space policy decisions this century.”

“SpaceX has launched Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, on its fifth test flight,” CNN reports.

“For the first time, the company attempted and succeeded in bringing back and safely land the rocket’s booster, called Super Heavy, which is taller than a 20-story building.”

“Two astronauts parked at the International Space Station since early June will return with SpaceX instead of on the Boeing vehicle that brought them there,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the decision at a briefing on Saturday, which means astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams will remain in orbit until early next year, when a SpaceX craft is scheduled to return with them on board.”

“The decision is a setback for Boeing, which has spent years developing the Starliner vehicle that transported the astronauts to the space station on June 6. During its flight to the station, several thrusters temporarily failed and engineers identified additional helium leaks within its propulsion system.”

“The two astronauts whose weeklong mission aboard the International Space Station is now stretching into its second month could be left in orbit until next winter,” Axios reports.

“NASA astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams have been in limbo after docking with the ISS on June 6 as part of the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight.”

“Technical issues prevented them from returning home as scheduled aboard Starliner.”

The two astronauts aboard the first human flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft remain stuck indefinitely at the International Space Station while engineers try to figure out technical problems, the Washington Post reports.

The spacecraft and its crew were scheduled to return after eight days, on June 18. But yesterday NASA announced an indefinite postponement until sometime in July.

Donald Trump falsely claimed that magnets don’t work if they get wet, Newsweek reports.

Said Trump: “Think of it, magnets. Now all I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets.”

A new Pew Research poll finds 57% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society.

This share is down 8 percentage points since November 2021 and down 16 points since before the start of the coronavirus outbreak.

“A brown-and-white capsule that spent the last seven years swooping through the solar system — and sojourning at an asteroid — has finally come home,” the New York Times reports.

“And it has brought a cosmic souvenir: a cache of space rock that scientists are hungry to get their hands on.”

Politico: “The Republican party’s reputation as anti-science has hurt it badly in places where health care is a leading employer.”

India staked new claim as a national superpower in space, landing its Chandrayaan-3 mission safely on the moon’s unexplored south pole on Wednesday, CNBC reports.

“A Russian robotic spacecraft that was headed to the lunar surface has crashed into the moon, Russia’s space agency said on Sunday, citing the results of a preliminary investigation a day after it lost contact with the vehicle,” the New York Times reports.

“Chinese researchers say they have developed the first mind-reading machine capable of turning human thought into spoken Mandarin,” the South China Morning Post reports.

“A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin,” The Debrief reports.

“SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded above the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, minutes after lifting off from a launchpad in South Texas. The spacecraft failed to reach orbit, but it was not a fatal failure,” the New York Times reports.

“Before the launch, Elon Musk, the company’s founder, had tamped down expectations, saying it might take several tries before Starship succeeds at this test flight, which was to reach speeds fast enough to enter orbit before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.”

“The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth,” Politico reports.

New York Times: “The first scientific results are coming in, and the $10 billion instrument is working even better than astronomers had dared to hope.”