NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Releases 2025 Annual Report 

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), which advises NASA and Congress on safety, has released its 2025 annual report on NASA’s performance and challenges.  

While the panel acknowledged NASA’s safety achievements, it warned that the agency’s biggest challenges stem from interconnected factors – workforce, acquisition, technical authority, budgets, and the growing complexity of human spaceflight – requiring sustained attention as missions become more ambitious.

“Independent assessments like this will make NASA better,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “The panel’s report underscores areas where we must raise the bar, from how we structure oversight and manage integrated risk to how we declare and learn from anomalies. We are wholly committed to transparency. That’s how we protect crews, earn trust, and keep the Artemis lunar campaign and our transition to a commercial presence in low Earth orbit on a safe, sustainable path.” 

This year’s report focused on the following topics: 

• strategic vision and governance 
• Moon to Mars program 
• future U.S. presence in low Earth orbit 
• health and medical risks in human spaceflight 
• NASA’s X-59 Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator 

The panel noted progress on Artemis II readiness and improved oversight through the Moon to Mars Program Office, as well as safe International Space Station operations, advances in astronaut health research, and the first flight of the X-59 Low-Boom Demonstrator. At the same time, it flagged significant challenges, including Artemis III’s high-risk posture, lessons from Boeing’s Starliner test, space station deorbit planning, and systemic concerns. 

To respond to these new challenges, the panel recommends NASA: 

• Realign its governance of acquisition strategies for human spaceflight-related capabilities agencywide. 
• Re-examine the mission objectives and system architecture for Artemis III and subsequent missions to establish a more balanced approach to risk.  
• Require timely declaration of mishap or high-visibility close call. 

“We were already on the path to implementing change and this report only adds more urgency,” added Isaacman. “That means recalibrating our acquisition strategy — including a build versus buy versus service procurement approach — restoring core competencies through initiatives like converting contractors to civil servant roles and increasing our launch cadence. We’re also aligning our long-term vision for the agency and industry to guide priorities. This includes clarifying our plans for the Artemis architecture moving forward and accelerating proposals for human landing systems to preserve schedule margin. We’ve already shown what transparency and now accountability looks like — through the Boeing Starliner Program Investigation Team report, we owned our mistakes, classified the mission as a Type A mishap, and launched corrective actions to ensure they never happen again. These steps, along with addressing health and medical risk documentation and overhauling and accelerating programs like X-59, reflect our commitment to live up to the expectations of the world’s most accomplished space agency.”  

On Feb. 19, Isaacman held a news conference to present the agency’s findings from the Starliner Crewed Flight Test. Earlier this month, he outlined a new workforce plan to strengthen NASA’s core competencies in technical, engineering, and operational excellence. The agency also is working with both its human landing system industry providers to streamline and accelerate America’s return to the surface of the Moon by 2028. 

“The panel commends NASA for its impressive efforts in 2025 to strategically enhance the agency’s risk management posture despite turbulence in the agency’s organizational environment,” said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan J. Helms, chair of ASAP. “We very sincerely thank NASA’s leaders and workforce for their passionate dedication to space exploration and their unwavering commitment to the safe pursuit of the nation’s lofty aims to the great benefit of the future of humanity.”  

The annual report is based on the panel’s 2025 fact-finding and quarterly public meetings; direct observations of NASA operations and decision-making; discussions with NASA management, employees, and contractors; and the panel members’ experiences.  

Congress established the panel in 1968 to provide advice and make recommendations to the NASA administrator on safety matters after the 1967 Apollo 1 fire claimed the lives of three American astronauts. 

To learn more about the ASAP, and view annual reports, visit: 

https://www.nasa.gov/asap

-end-

Bethany Stevens / Elizabeth Shaw
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bethany.c.stevens@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.shaw@nasa.gov

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Jessica Taveau

Making an Entrance

NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway smiles up at the camera as he enters the International Space Station Feb. 14, 2026, after docking to the orbiting laboratory aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Since Hathaway and fellow Crew-12 members Jessica Meir of NASA, Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency), and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos began their mission on the space station, they have conducted science investigations including scanning their veins to monitor the risk of blood clots and testing balance and orientation in space using virtual reality goggles. The crew will continue to run various experiments and technology demonstrations to benefit life on Earth and in orbit, furthering our journey back to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond.

Keep up with space station activities by visiting the blog.

Image credit: NASA/Chris Williams

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Monika Luabeya

Listen to This Month’s ‘Planetary Parade’ With NASA’s Chandra

6 Min Read

Listen to This Month’s ‘Planetary Parade’ With NASA’s Chandra

In late February, people in the Northern Hemisphere can look up for a special sight : Six planets will all be visible from clear and dark night skies. New sonifications from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory released [day of week] will help commemorate this latest “planetary parade.”

Because the planets in our solar system travel around the Sun in the same plane (known as the ecliptic), they will sometimes appear bunched together in the sky when their orbits find them on the same side of the Sun at the same time. When this happens, it looks like the planets have roughly formed a line from our vantage point on Earth.

In Chandra’s sonifications, which translate astronomical data into sound, three of the planets that will be on display – Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus – can be seen and heard in ways that they cannot from Earth.

While Chandra is best known for its X-ray insight into black holes and other extreme objects, the telescope has also played an important role in the exploration of our solar system. The Sun gives off X-rays that travel out into the solar system and can be reflected by planets, moons, and other bodies. This gives astronomers a unique window into certain physics that cannot be discovered through other kinds of telescopes.

The sonification of Jupiter combines X-ray data from Chandra with an infrared image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Woodwind sounds reveal Chandra’s X-ray data, including emission from the planet’s auroras. More instruments join in to represent the planet’s complex cloud layers. Next, through the combination of an optical image from NASA’s Cassini mission and X-rays from Chandra, listeners can experience Saturn like never before. A siren-like sound follows the arc of the rings, and different tones of synthesizers play as the scan passes the planet itself. Finally, listeners can hear the ice giant Uranus through the data collected by Chandra and the W.M. Keck Observatory. The data in this sonification reflects the amount of light detected from the planet and the orientation of its ring.

The process of creating a sonification preserves the integrity of the data, which arrives on Earth as a series of ones and zeroes (binary code), and shifts it into a form that can be processed through hearing. Sonifications expand options for people to explore what telescopes discover in space, an example of NASA’s ongoing commitment to share its data as widely as possible.

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

For more on the Chandra sonification program, visit:

https://chandra.si.edu/sound

To learn more about Chandra, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:

https://www.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

Visual Description

This release features three sonifications, each focusing on a different planet in our solar system. The sonifications are presented as soundtracks to short videos. Each video features a composite image and an activation line. As the activation line sweeps across the image, it encounters visual elements. These elements are translated into sound, or sonified, according to parameters established by Chandra’s sonification team.

The first sonification focuses on the planet Jupiter. At the center of the associated composite image is the gas giant itself; a seemingly perfect sphere with an atmosphere of latitudinal bands. The bands are different shades of grey, brown, and black, each with its own texture and width. Flanking Jupiter are neon pink and white clouds, representing X-rays from energetic particles in a ring around the planet. In the video, the activation line moves from our left to right. It first encounters a pink cloud, triggering whooshing woodwinds. When the activation line encounters Jupiter, dramatic low notes are triggered. Listen for the dip as the line passes over the Great Red Spot in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. The activation line continues toward our right, passing more pink X-ray clouds. The largest cloud, the last one encountered, has a bright white core, which translates to loud gusty woodwinds.

The second sonification focuses on the ringed planet, Saturn. In the composite image, the large gas giant fills the frame, its spherical outer layer a pale sandy grey. In this image, the wide bands of rings surrounding the planet are in shades of pale grey and sandy yellow. Here, Saturn is tilted away from us, making the round rings appear oval in shape. Dotting the planet are small pockets of neon blue. These represent reflected X-ray light observed by Chandra. In this video, the activation line moves from our right to left. When the line passes over the rings, a whooshing sounds spreads, conveying the widening middle of the oval shapes. Pockets of neon blue X-ray light trigger synthesizer sounds, with the pitch mapped to each pocket’s vertical position in the image. When the line sweeps across Saturn’s large round body, a low rumbling synth tone is triggered. The volume is linked to brightness, such that the low tone fades when the line reaches the shady side of the planet, on our left.

The third sonification features the planet Uranus. In the composite image, the icy giant is a greenish-blue cyan color, with a blush of neon pink X-rays hovering over its core. Uranus has a collection of very narrow rings, much finer than the wide disk-like rings surrounding Saturn. In this image, the fine rings are near vertical and slightly tilted, creating an oval shape with rounded points at our lower left and upper right. In this sonification, the activation line moves from our left to right. Brightness is mapped to volume and height is mapped to pitch, such that brighter objects at the top of the image sound louder and higher. Here, the curved oval shape of the rings is conveyed as a swooping cello note, with the pitch sliding up as the activation line passes the oval tilted toward our upper right.

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

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