From Stadium Flyovers to the Spaceport: NASA's "Inspiration Tour" Road Trip to MAX POWER

NASA is back in a big way this year, and just in case anyone missed out on the sustained hype energy filling the agency these days since its successful trip around the Moon in April, the agency has been traveling to American football stadiums and universities across the country to show them in person. They call it the “Inspiration Tour,” and both NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson have been right in the middle of the excitement.

The tour pairs public spectacle (stadium flyovers, Experience Zones with Moon rocks and an inflatable SLS rocket) with less-publicized stakeholder stops at labs, universities, spaceports and suppliers, all in the run-up to America's 250th anniversary. "We are using every minute we have on the road to get where things are happening, thank the NASA team, encourage our suppliers, spend time with the men and women who serve in uniform, and visit universities and young people who will shape what comes next," Isaacman explained.

The tour kicked off in early September at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California before hitting the gridiron. NASA jets roared over the Steelers, Browns and Jets home games, then over Alabama's homecoming matchup against Texas A&M in Tuscaloosa. "This is the first season NASA is taking part in flyovers at NFL games… to inspire the next generation to look up and imagine the possibilities," Isaacman said in a NASA-NFL press release. Artemis II astronauts also turned up at Ravens and Eagles games. The flyovers apparently doubled as a good-luck charm; after Alabama's win, the administrator noted on X that “home teams are now 4-0 this season when NASA shows up. We can do things.”

On the college circuit, Isaacman met students and researchers at the University of Arizona, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Kentucky's Morehead State University, with a side trip to Alaska's Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak. NASA also set up shop at two air shows, Southern California's Pacific Airshow and Wings Over Houston, where the administrator hopped in his MiG-29 and gave spectators a little taste of the Cold War, Ghost Squadron style.

Along the way, Isaacman has turned his jet’s back seat into a kind of diplomatic tool. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins rode as his "copilot" in an F-5 over Bryant-Denny Stadium, hours after the two signed a memorandum of understanding giving USDA greater access to NASA data for field modeling and acreage estimates. In Houston, Rep. Brian Babin, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which oversees NASA, "caught a ride" with the administrator at the Wings Over Houston Airshow. Lawmakers have also lined up along the tour route on the ground: Rep. Nick Begich in Alaska, Sen. John Hoeven in North Dakota, Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, Sen. Katie Britt in Tuscaloosa and Rep. Hal Rogers at Morehead State, where Rogers, who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, presented $7.5 million in federal funding for the university's space science program.

All the in-person events have given the agency a great opportunity to shake hands with the public they serve, but the hope is that some of the hands they shake and minds they reach will belong to the next generation of space explorers. "Some of the young people we met yesterday will help build, fly, and lead the missions that come next. That's what the Inspiration Tour is all about," Anderson said in an X post recapping one of the football events. Notably, NASA internship information was available in the Experience Zones.

"We might have just met a few members of the first class of the United States Space Academy," Isaacman wrote after meeting with airmen and Civil Air Patrol cadets at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. After the Pacific Airshow in early October, he added, "Somewhere on that beach is a future pilot, engineer or astronaut. That's why we fly." Even NASA's push to bring nuclear power to deep space made an appearance on the tour. The agency displayed a model of SkyFall, its next generation of Mars helicopters, at the Pacific Airshow. SkyFall is set to reach the Red Planet aboard Space Reactor-1 Freedom, NASA's first fission-powered interplanetary spacecraft. That same weekend, Isaacman took the controls of a SkyFall rotorcraft himself during a Jet Propulsion Laboratory demonstration at nearby Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos.

One of the areas that seems to hold a special place for Isaacman is, as he often cites, NASA's "first 'A'" of aeronautics, and that part of NASA's tech portfolio has also made its way into the agency's Inspiration Tour. "For too long, we got comfortable with minimal progress in aviation. That's changing," Isaacman wrote on X in August. "We are rebuilding a grand fleet of NASA X-planes. We're getting new gear again." He's repeated the pitch all fall, telling an aviation crowd at NBAA-BACE in October that NASA "is rebuilding its X-plane portfolio, and soon we'll be flying faster and higher, just as we did in decades past." At NASA Armstrong on Oct. 29, where he named longtime test pilot Troy Asher the center's permanent director, he promised to keep "restoring flight-test capabilities."

The Inspiration Tour's showpiece is the X-59, NASA's quiet supersonic demonstrator, which was highlighted in the agency's exhibit at the Pacific Airshow. The long-nosed plane was recently seen Oct. 28 by aviation community plane spotters outside of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, and speculation about its final destination was quickly resolved. "X-59 making her way to @NASAKennedy," Isaacman replied on X to a photographer who caught it. In a recent interview with NASASpaceflight, he also announced that NASA would unveil a new X-plane at the end of the week in one of the agency's largest events of the year.

The whole tour culminates in its final stop at NASA's MAX POWER event on Florida's Space Coast, Nov. 7-8, a brand-new public exposition of American air and space innovation. Along with the X-59 on display, Isaacman is scheduled to fly both the F-5 and the MiG-29 in the air show alongside the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Visitors can also meet the Artemis III crew, hear from NASA experts on topics from X-planes to the SR-1 Freedom nuclear spacecraft, and tour Kennedy Space Center behind the gates. It's a fitting finale for a tour that's spent months bringing NASA to the people. This time, the people are coming to NASA.