Kimberly Cartier

In April, a crew of four astronauts flew around the Moon and back, describing what they saw to avid earthbound listeners in terms both poetic and scientific. A dedicated voice sitting at the newly minted Science desk in NASA Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control Center acknowledged the astronauts’ reports and shared in their Moon joy. The voice, that of Kelsey Young, soon became familiar to the millions of people who tuned in to watch the 10-day Artemis II live stream.

Today, NASA announced an agencywide realignment that includes combining related mission directorates to sharpen the agency’s focus on human spaceflight. “This initiative reflects NASA’s extreme focus on executing the mission in direct support of the National Space Policy,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a press release about the realignment.

Wind-driven waves on Earth move sediments and shape shorelines. They transport energy between the atmosphere and planetary surface and also mix bodies of liquid, affecting both chemistry and biology. On other worlds with surface liquids, either now or in the past, wind waves would likely perform the same function and so would play a key role in climate and astrobiological potential.