Since 2002, the United States National Research Council (NRC) has released a publication that identifies objectives and makes recommendations for science missions for NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other government agencies for the next decade. These reports, appropriately named Planetary Science Decadal Surveys, help inform future NASA missions that address the mysteries that persist in astronomy, astrophysics, earth science, and heliophysics.

On Thursday, April 19th, in a briefing in Washington D.C., the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) shared the main findings of the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023–2032. The event was live-streamed and consisted of NASEM committee members discussing the key science questions, priority missions, and research strategies identified and recommended, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

The crew of the first fully private mission to the International Space Station was set on Sunday to leave the orbiting laboratory and head back to Earth.

The three businessmen and a former NASA astronaut had spent more than two weeks on the station on a history-making mission organized by startup company Axiom Space.

A SpaceX capsule was scheduled to undock from the ISS at 8:55 pm (0055 GMT Monday) for the return trip, before landing in the ocean off the coast of Florida on Monday around 1:00 pm (1700 GMT).

The four men—three who paid tens of millions of dollars each for the rare chance to take part in the mission, and former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who holds dual US-Spanish citizenship—were originally scheduled to spend only eight days on the space station.

But bad weather on Earth forced repeated delays in their return.

Private passengers Larry Connor, an American who heads a real estate company, Canadian businessman Mark Pathy and Israeli former fighter pilot and entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe had blasted off from Florida on April 8, reaching the ISS a day later.