Issue of April 3, 2026
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller
[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Christina Koch's Path to the Moon
2. AAS Policy Update (26 March 2026)
3. The Observatory Pinafore and the changing place of women in Harvard astronomy
4. Slasher sequel: Trump again proposes major cuts to U.S. science spending
5. Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals
6. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
7. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
Yesterday, history was made. For the first time since 1972, a rocket launched to the Moon—the first time for many of us to witness such an event. Christina Koch (pronounced cook), the only woman in the four-person crew, is also making history as the first woman to travel so far into space.
Read more at: https://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2026/04/christina-kochs-path-to-moon.html
Thank you to the 300 advocates who took part in our action alerts urging your House members to sign onto Dear Colleague letters in support of robust funding for NASA Science, NSF, and the DOE Office of Science. As first reported by The Planetary Society, our combined efforts resulted in 103 House members calling for $9 billion for NASA Science in FY2027.
Read more at: https://aas.org/posts/news/2026/03/policy-update-26-march-2026
The AIP's history team digs a little deeper into The Observatory Pinafore, a satire written at the observatory in the late 1870s and performed twice, in 1929 and 1930. Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta HMS Pinafore, its humor revolved around the observatory’s stratified culture, and it provides a window into how the work of the observatory—and women’s place there—changed over the half-century between its composition and performance.
Read more at: https://www.aip.org/history/observatory-pinafore
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That appears to be the thinking behind the 2027 budget request to Congress that President Donald Trump unveiled today. For the second straight year, the White House is asking Congress to make deep cuts to federal research spending, including a 55% cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF), a 23% cut to NASA, a 15% cut to the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, and a 12% cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The plan also calls for eliminating a host of programs that focus on climate change and the environment, and limiting agency spending on publishing scientific papers and subscribing to journals.
Read more at: https://www.science.org/content/article/slasher-sequel-trump-again-proposes-major-cuts-u-s-science-spending
Pushed down to a certain scale, the laws of physics seem to fall apart. Astrid Eichhorn, a leader in an area of study called asymptotic safety, thinks we just need to push a little further.
Read more at: https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-some-see-strings-she-sees-a-space-time-made-of-fractals-20260311/
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