NASA and the United States Space Force are banding together for the future of human spaceflight. 

As the agency moves forward with its Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface by 2024, NASA is also working on its relationship with the newly-minted Space Force, which was formed Dec. 2019. Today (Sept. 22), NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between NASA and the U.S. Space Force. 

This agreement officially joins the two entities in collaboration with regard to “human spaceflight, U.S. space policy, space transportation, standards and best practices for safe operations in space, scientific research and planetary defense,” NASA said in a statement. 

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Blue Origin’s reusable New Shepard spacecraft will take to the skies this week for the first time in nine months. 

New Shepard, which is designed to ferry people and payloads to suborbital space and back, will launch on an uncrewed test flight Thursday (Sept. 24) at 11:00 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) from Blue Origin’s Texas location, company representatives announced today (Sept. 22).

You can watch the flight, which is called NS-13, live here at Space.com, courtesy of Blue Origin, or directly via the company, which is run by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Related: Blue Origin’s amazing NS-11 New Shepard test flight in photos

The suborbital flight will be the seventh for this particular vehicle and the 13th for Blue Origin’s New Shepard program overall...

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a freshman who knocked off a GOP incumbent two years ago, tweeted Tuesday that taking farm spending authority out of the stopgap was a “partisan move that slows down much-needed relief for farmers and agribusinesses.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, said Monday that the farm money has been used as a “slush fund” for favored political interests, including oil refiners.

Other Democrats had also picked up on that talking point after Reuters reported earlier this month that the Trump administration had considered diverting up to $300 million in CCC funds to refiners who were denied waivers from costly renewable fuels quotas. Reuters reported late Monday that the tentative plan had been shelved.

Senate Agricu...

The International Space Station just dodged a fast-moving hunk of orbiting junk.

Controllers maneuvered the station away from a potential collision with a piece of debris today (Sept. 22) at 5:19 p.m. EDT (2119 GMT). They did so by firing the thrusters on a Russian Progress cargo spacecraft that’s docked to the orbiting lab’s Zvezda service module, NASA officials said in an update today.

The three astronauts currently living aboard the station — NASA’s Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner — sheltered in the station’s Russian segment during the maneuver to be closer to their Soyuz spacecraft, the NASA update stated.  

This was done “out of an abundance of caution,” the update said. “At no time was the crew in any danger.”

Related: 7 wild ways to clean up spa...

After its famous flyby of Pluto in July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made history a second time when it buzzed the most distant object ever explored: 2014 MU69.

“We set a record! Never before has a spacecraft explored something so far away,” Alan Stern, the New Horizons principal investigator, said after the flyby. “I mean, think of it. We’re a billion miles further than Pluto, and now we’re going to keep going into the Kuiper Belt.”

Both Pluto and 2014 MU69 lie within the Kuiper Belt, a collection of icy rocks that surrounds the outer reaches of the solar system. These objects are thought to be pristine samples from the early solar system, cast out into the boundary zone through gravitational interactions with the larger objects that would grow into planets...

While the employment rate has improved from the sudden cratering in the spring, Powell noted that the jobs market hasn’t nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels and wouldn’t get there soon without more help from Congress.  

“We still have 11 million people out of the 22 million who were laid off in March and April,” Powell said. “That’s more people than just during the global financial crisis, as I’m sure you know. There’s a lot of work to do there — and you know our policies will support that — but it will go faster for those people if it’s all government working together.”

Powell said that businesses still struggling due to the pandemic need direct fiscal aid — not more lending, which is all the Fed can provide...