For the second year in a row, official celebrations have been cancelled in Bethlehem, the city where Christian tradition says Jesus was born. Famine has spread in Sudan where people are experiencing one of the world's worst starvation crises in modern times. And, a look at the year's biggest stories from space. Join the new NPR Plus Bundle to support our work and get perks like sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes across more than 25 NPR podcasts. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Andrew Sussman, Miguel Macias, Gisele Grayson, Lisa Thomson and Ally Schweitzer.It was produced by Ziad Buchh , Nia Dumas, Claire Murashima and Ana Perez. We get engineering support from Nisha Heinis. And our technical director is Andie Huether.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
What is the significance of Christmas in Bethlehem this year?
So SpaceX. So SpaceX has this capsule that regularly takes astronauts to and from the space station. And this was a big year for SpaceX. Not only did it sort of like take over Boeing's return flight, but it finally got its mega rocket into space. This is SpaceX's Starship. It's the biggest rocket ever built. So that was a big deal. SpaceX also did the first ever private spacewalk.
So basically there was this orbiting capsule and two crew members opened the hatch and kind of stuck their heads outside. I mean, until then, like only national space programs had ever tried these so-called extravehicular activities. So that was a really big deal.
And I understand that one of those spacewalkers might become the new head of NASA. What can you tell us about that?
So that's Jared Isaacman. He's this wealthy entrepreneur. He's a private astronaut. And he's Donald Trump's pick to lead the space agency. And, you know, Donald Trump has this alliance with Elon Musk of SpaceX who supported his campaign. And Musk and Isaacman have this financial connection through SpaceX. And so... It'll probably be an interesting confirmation process in the Senate.
No one knows what all of this might mean for NASA and this expensive rocket that NASA has got to try to get people back to the moon.
OK, so speaking of NASA, where do things stand with its efforts to return to the moon?
So NASA had been planning to send astronauts to orbit the moon next year. But a couple of weeks ago, officials announced that that trip has been pushed off to 2026 at the earliest. And so that means actually landing on the moon wouldn't happen until like 2027.
At the earliest. Right. OK, so we have been talking about people in space. What about robotic missions? So this year we got the first rock samples returned from the far side of the moon.
I mean, that was a robotic mission from China. And then NASA also now has this probe that's going to Europa. That's this moon of Jupiter. It launched in October. And, you know, Europa seems to have this liquid water ocean underneath a layer of ice. And so that place could have ingredients for life. So it's a cool mission. But Jupiter is so far away, spacecraft won't get there till 2030.
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