Mark is based in Houston, where he has written on aerospace for more than 25 years. While at the Houston Chronicle, he was recognized by the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation in 2006 for his professional contributions to the public understanding of America's space program through news reporting. He has written on U. S. space policy as well as NASA's human and space science initiatives.
Mark was recognized by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors and Headliners Foundation as well as the Chronicle in 2004 for news coverage of the shuttle Columbia tragedy and its aftermath.
He is a graduate of the University of Kansas and holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from Kansas State University.
NASA has awarded the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy a sole-source, $215 million contract extension for operational support of the Hubble Space Telescope. Meanwhile, the agency is also working to recover the orbital observatory’s full science operations.
Though NASA has recently delayed its estimated target of returning to the Moon with humans from 2024 to 2025, the agency remains overly optimistic in the milestones and costs it associates with the Artemis initiative, the agency’s inspector general says.
A week after returning to Earth from a 199-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the four U.S., European and Japanese Crew-2 Dragon astronauts expressed confidence in the orbital science lab’s future as it approaches the 23rd anniversary of its first element launch on Nov. 20.
