Democratic victories in yesterday’s midterm elections are being touted not as a “Blue wave,” but a “Blue tsunami” as votes are counted throughout the country. The final tally is not in as of Wednesday morning at 8:00 am ET, but the Associated Press is projecting Democrats will have at least 54 seats in the Senate and 228 in the House, putting them in charge when the 120th Congress begins on January 3. Republicans remain in control of both chambers until then and will have to decide which legislative priorities to try and pass during these next two months.

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Democratic victories in yesterday’s midterm elections are being touted not as a “Blue wave,” but a “Blue tsunami” as votes are counted throughout the country. The final tally is not in as of Wednesday morning at 8:00 am ET, but the Associated Press is projecting Democrats will have at least 54 seats in the Senate and 228 in the House, putting them in charge when the 120th Congress begins on January 3. Republicans remain in control of both chambers until then and will have to decide which legislative priorities to try and pass during these next two months.

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China is sharing more information about how it plans to land taikonauts on the Moon by 2030. Development of the Long March-10 rocket, Mengzhou crew spacecraft, and Lanyue lunar lander have been underway for some time, but how they expect to execute the landing is just being shared now.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of November 1-8, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess, except for pro forma sessions, until after the midterm elections.

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Government spending on civil space activities is more than just NASA. A new Aerospace Corporation report details the $42.6 billion allocated for civil space in FY2026 and compares it to FY2025 and the still-pending request for FY2027. NASA is the largest share, but only 55 percent of the total. Overall, the report characterizes the civil space budget as going through tumultuous times with the White House and Congress out of sync and the FY2027 outcome uncertain.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of October 25-November 1, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess, except for pro forma sessions, until after the midterm elections.

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NASA officials projected confidence today in their plans to launch the Artemis III earth-orbital test flight in mid-2027 and land American astronauts on the Moon in 2028.  Whether SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK2 gets there first is up in the air, but NASA expects both will deliver crews to the surface by the end of that year. The South Pole is still the destination, but they acknowledged more data is needed from robotic landers before making a final decision.

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NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel will soon open a formal recommendation that NASA re-examine plans for the Artemis IV mission.  Currently that will be a landing at the Moon’s South Pole, the first time American astronauts set foot on the Moon since 1972. ASAP has a number of concerns especially about the Human Landing Systems being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. ASAP also pointed out challenges in NASA’s future low Earth orbit plans both for operations of the International Space Station and commercial replacements for it as SpaceX phases out Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft.

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A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identifies four locations on the Moon separate from the South Pole where human exploration could yield valuable scientific findings. The NASA-requested study picked one site on the farside, two on the nearside, and one on the western edge that straddles both. NASA is intent on establishing a Moon Base at the South Pole and landing astronauts there starting in 2028, but these are options for the future or if those plans change.

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency successfully launch the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission this afternoon EDT. MMX will not land on Mars, but instead explore its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, returning samples of Phobos to Earth in 2031. Japan and the U.S. have returned samples of asteroids, but this will be the first from a moon other than our own and could solve the mystery of whether Phobos is an asteroid captured by Mars’s gravity or a piece of Mars ejected by a collision.

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