The president withdrew Jared Isaacman’s nomination to lead the space agency in June, but senators of both parties appeared willing to give him a second shot at confirmation.Jared Isaacman, the billionaire entrepreneur and NASA administrator nominee, appearing before the Senate on Wednesday.

The ability of Russia to launch astronauts to the International Space Station remains in limbo after an incident last week at the Baikonur base in Kazakhstan.A Soyuz spacecraft launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 27. The rocket itself headed to space without problem, but the rocket’s exhaust knocked a service platform out of its protective shelter.

The Perseverance rover picked up audio evidence of electric discharges in the red planet’s atmosphere.A towering dust devil casting a shadow over the Martian surface, captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2012.

During the weekend, the orbits of Earth and Saturn will combine to create an interplanetary optical illusion for anyone with a good telescope and clear skies.Saturn’s rings, observed by the Cassini spacecraft. They will be all but invisible when viewed from Earth on Sunday.

New research suggests that Theia, the object whose collision with Earth is theorized to have caused the formation of the moon, came from closer to the sun.Artist’s impression of the collision between the early Earth and Theia, with the sun in the far distance, roughly 100 million years after the formation of the solar system.