NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy recently revealed that NASA is reconsidering its commitment to continuous human presence in low Earth orbit (LEO) after the International Space Station (ISS), potentially opting for intermittently crew-tended missions. This marks a significant departure from the 2020 National Space Policy, which emphasized maintaining an uninterrupted human presence in orbit.

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Manwei Chan spent a year at Amundsen-Scott South Pole station as a researcher for the BICEP cosmology telescope collaboration and also deployed on the Nathaniel B Palmer Antarctic Research Vessel, crossing the Southern Ocean and Drake Passage while conducting...