An international astronaut will join U.S. astronauts on the moon by decade's end under an agreement announced Wednesday by NASA and the White House.

The news came as Vice President Kamala Harris convened a meeting in Washington of the National Space Council, the third such gathering under the Biden administration.

As part of a plan to prepare for the quantity and range of data that will be coming in from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, currently scheduled to launch by May 2027, NASA has granted funding to five project infrastructure teams (PITs), which will write software, run simulations, and plot out optimal uses of the telescope's data stream.

Although SpaceX's massive Starship and Super Heavy is still exploding mid-air during test flights, the fixes made to the launch pad have both company founder Elon Musk and NASA happy and could bode well for a pad planned for Florida's Space Coast.

"Just inspected the Starship launch pad and it is in great condition!" Musk posted on X after the most recent orbital launch attempt of the company's next-generation rocket on Nov. 18. "No refurbishment needed to the water-cooled steel plate for next launch. Congrats to @Spacex team & contractors for engineering & building such a robust system so rapidly!"

The first launch of the combined two-stage rocket back on April 20 obliterated the launch pad at SpaceX's test site Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, under the power of the first stage Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines that were capable of producing nearly 17 million pounds of thrust on liftoff.

The destruction raised concerns not only for when SpaceX might be able to try another test launch from Texas but also for the construction of a similar pad at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A.