Q&A with Heino Falcke, principal investigator of the Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer (members only)

President Donald Trump signed a new NASA authorization bill Tuesday, the first such space policy framework since early in the Obama administration, that largely continues the space agency’s efforts to foster a commercial economy in Earth orbit and explore deep space, with an eventual goal of landing humans on Mars.

Andrew Driesman is project manager for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leading a team of engineers and operators in charge of the first mission to fly through the sun’s atmosphere.

NASA officials expect to officially kick off development in February of a multibillion-dollar observatory recycling a grounded top secret spy satellite telescope capable of studying dark energy and directly resolving planets around other stars.