Elisha Sauers Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds. Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won National Headliner Awards, including first place for her Sex in Space series. Send space tips and story ideas to [email protected] SpaceX doctor finally gets his shot to be a NASA astronaut While Falcon Heavy may have lost some of its PR luster, it's not lacking in demand (though there's far more demand for its smaller Falcon 9 rocket, a vehicle that can accommodate most satellite missions today). NASA recently announced it had penned a deal with SpaceX to use the powerful rocket to send the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an infrared telescope that will study dark matter and take pictures of faraway exoplanets, into orbit in October 2026. The observatory's total launch cost is $255 million, according to the U.S. space agency. And though the rocket may soon lose its reputation as the most powerful operating, SpaceX could win back the accolade with its development of Starship, a super-heavy-class rocket NASA plans to use to shuttle astronauts from its future lunar-orbiting base to the moon's surface. That's in addition to Musk's plans to use a fleet of Starships to one day build a settlement on the red planet. SpaceX stacked the Starship rocket at its South Texas launchpad in advance of a company update on the project in February 2022. Credit: JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images Standing 400-feet tall, the Starship, an entirely reusable stainless steel contraption, could have about twice as much launch thrust as NASA's moon rocket. Previous Starship prototype test flights exploded until one succeeded with an unscathed landing in May 2021. At a February event in Boca Chica, Texas, where the Starship is based, Musk said the jumbo rocket would fly in orbit before the end of this year. But the billionaire founder has become notorious for making overly ambitious timeline claims. "We are faced with a choice of which future do you want?" he said. "Do you want the future where we become a spacefaring civilization, and are in many worlds, and are out there among the stars, or one where we are forever confined to Earth?" Topics