内容摘要：In this image provided by Salvamont Maramures, a Romanian mountain rescue service, a rescuer holds Peach the cat as its owner, 28 year-old Vladislav Duda from Ukraine, is secured on a stretcher in the Carpathian Mountains , northern Romania, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024 after they were rescued from a deep mountain ravine in a state of severe hypothermia. (Salvamont Maramures via AP)

In this image provided by Salvamont Maramures, a Romanian mountain rescue service, a rescuer holds Peach the cat as its owner, 28 year-old Vladislav Duda from Ukraine, is secured on a stretcher in the Carpathian Mountains , northern Romania, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024 after they were rescued from a deep mountain ravine in a state of severe hypothermia. (Salvamont Maramures via AP)

“I didn’t say we shouldn’t go to the moon,” he said. “What’s taking so long to get back to the moon and why does it cost so much money? I absolutely want to see us return to the moon.”Moon and Mars expeditions can be developed in parallel. “I don’t think these are either-or,” he added. NASA can afford both under current funding, he said, without elaborating.

Isaacman, 42, has already flown in space twice, buying his own trips with SpaceX, and performed the world’s first private spacewalk last September. An experienced jet pilot, he made his fortune with a payment processing company he started as a high school dropout in his parents’ basement, now called Shift4.He acknowledged in his testimony that he is not “a typical nominee for this position.”“I have been relatively apolitical; I am not a scientist and I never worked at NASA,” he said. “I do not think these are weaknesses.”

The space agency and others were anxious to hear Isaacman’s stand on the moon and Mars for human exploration, given his close association with SpaceX’s Elon Musk.Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the committee’s chairman, urged the need to “stay the course” with NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon.

“An extreme shift in priorities at this stage would almost certainly mean a red moon, ceding ground to China for generations to come,” Cruz said.

NASA has been pitching the moon as the next logical step for astronauts for years. The Artemis program aims to send a crew around the moon next year and land astronauts near the moon’s south pole as early as 2027. Lunar bases are planned this time around, not just quick visits like the ones during NASA’s Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.Pisano is recovering well, the NYU team announced Wednesday. She’s only the second patient ever to receive a pig kidney -- following a landmark transplant

– and the latest in a string of attempts to make animal-to-human transplantation a reality.This week, the 54-year-old grasped a walker and took her first few steps.

“I was at the end of my rope,” Pisano told The Associated Press. “I just took a chance. And you know, worst case scenario, if it didn’t work for me, it might have worked for someone else and it could have helped the next person.”Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone Transplant Institute, recounted cheers in the operating room as the organ immediately started making urine.