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The newly-announced NASA Artemis Space Launch System Rocket from LEGO does something that no prior LEGO set of the moon-bound vehicle has done before: launch! By turning a crank, the completed model climbs off its platform and heads toward space, separating its three stages along the way. Developed with NASA and ESA, the 632-piece kit will retail for $59.99 when its lands in stores on Jan. 1, 2026.
: The pair of twin rocket boosters that will power the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on NASA's Artemis II mission to the moon can now properly serve as candles for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and founding of the United States. As revealed on Tuesday (Dec. 2), both side-mounted boosters have been adorned with the official "America 250" logo marking the U.S.'s semiquincentennial.
: NASA's Artemis IV crew will land with and deploy a small, four-wheel rover, becoming the first astronauts to work alongside a robot on a celestial body other than Earth. Lunar Oupost's MAPP, or Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, will support University of Colorado Boulder studies into the behavior of moon dust and plasma on the surface. The Artemis IV MAPP will be Colorado-based Lunar Outpost's Lunar Voyage 5 mission.
: The "white room" that the next moon-bound astronauts will use to enter their spacecraft on the launch pad has been painted to display the Artemis program logo. NASA techs, working high above the ground inside Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building, applied the red, blue and silver emblem to one of the environmental enclosure's exterior walls. The logo will be visible to spectators who watch Artemis SLS launches.
: For the third year in a row, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will feature deep space images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope on its Priority Mail postage stamps for 2026. Following the pairs of stamps issued in 2024 and 2025 that used popular JWST images, the new issues focus on the Crab Nebula and interacting galaxies that Webb imaged in infrared. The release dates will be set after the Priority rates are revised.
: On Christmas Eve 1999, seven Santa hats circled the planet. Now more than quarter century later, one of those red and white caps is on display, but only for the holiday season. Loaned by John Grunsfeld, one of the seven NASA astronauts who donned them on the space shuttle, the hat, with its fluffy white rim and pom-pom at its top, is on exhibit at the Cosmosphere space museum in Hutchinson, Kansas until early next year.
: Jared "Rook" Isaacman was sworn in as NASA's head on Thursday (Dec. 18). Responsible for leading the agency as it returns the first astronauts to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972, the billionaire entrepreneur self-financed two history-making spaceflights: Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn. He is NASA's fourth administrator to have flown into space and is the first chief to be born during the space shuttle program.
: NASA's Artemis II crew rehearsed their launch day activities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday (Dec. 20), and in doing so revealed their ride to their rocket — again. More than two years after NASA debuted its choice of all-electric vans as the Artemis transport vehicle, the company behind them went bankrupt. Fortunately, there was an alternative going unused, hence the Astrovan II's reassignment to Artemis II.
