Isaacman was first nominated for the role year ago, but President Trump withdrew his nomination months later. Then Trump renominated Isaacman last month.

The U.S. Senate voted today (Dec. 17) 67-30 to confirm billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman as the new NASA administrator, ending more than a year of uncertainty as the space agency has followed marching orders from temporary chiefs

The U.S. Senate confirmed Jared Isaacman as NASA’s new chief on Wednesday. He was initially nominated by President Donald Trump for the post, had his nomination pulled, but then saw the nomination reinstated.

A U.S. Space Force and NASA experiment is set to launch later this week to test a new small-satellite architecture designed for operations in very low Earth orbit. Four flat, disk-shaped satellites known as DiskSats are scheduled to launch no earlier than 12:00 a.

This could be the end of the orbiter that studies the Red Planet’s atmosphere and relays communications between NASA and its Mars rovers.

On Dec. 17, 2012, NASA's GRAIL mission crashed into the moon. GRAIL stands for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, and the mission consisted of two twin spacecraft named Ebb and Flow that are about the size of a washer and dryer.

Image number 100,000, which was captured on Oct. 7, "shows mesas and dunes within Syrtis Major, a region about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Jezero Crater, which NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring," NASA officials said in a statement on Tuesday.

NASA's Webb space telescope (Hubble's successor) and Mars rover Curiosity have been included in Time magazine's list of the best inventions since 2000.