What’s Happening in Space Policy July 27-August 2, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy July 27-August 2, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: July 27, 2025 5:49 pm ET | Last Updated: July 28, 2025 1:58 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of July 27-August 2, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House is in recess until September 2 except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

The House left for summer recess on Wednesday, a day early, when it became clear the ongoing controversy over the Jeffrey Epstein files would stall floor votes. One casualty of the early dismissal was House Appropriations Committee markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that was scheduled for Thursday. The committee released the report with details of how it wants the Executive Branch to spend the $24.8 billion it recommends for NASA — rejecting the Trump Administration’s proposed 24.3 percent cut — but getting through that critical step of full committee approval now will have to wait until September. Subcommittee markup was quite strained over provisions unrelated to NASA. It passed on party lines. So far the House Appropriations Committee has cleared nine of the 12 FY2026 bills. The House has passed two — Defense, and Military Construction/Veterans Affairs (MilCon/VA).  FY2026 begins on October 1.

The Senate is still in session this week and reportedly plans to take up their first set of appropriations bills, combining three of them —  Milcon/VA, Agriculture, and CJS — into a single package called a “minibus” (a smaller version of an “omnibus” that merges all 12).

The Senate Commerce committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Neil Jacobs to be Administrator of NOAA on Wednesday.

The situation is fluid, though, with many Democrats and some Republicans objecting to how the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is attempting to undo whatever Congress appropriates through rescissions and impoundment.  We’ll see what happens. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved six of the 12 bills and will take up two more this Thursday — Defense and Labor-HHS.

On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Neil Jacobs to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of NOAA, as well as Taylor Jordan to be NOAA’s Assistant Secretary for Environmental Observation and Prediction.

The Trump Administration’s sudden decision on Friday to put two top NOAA officials on administrative leave could complicate that, however. Steve Volz, well known to readers of this website as the long-time head of the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), and Jeff Dillen, NOAA’s deputy general counsel, were put on leave for undisclosed reasons. In addition to heading NESDIS, Volz has been serving as Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Observation and Prediction (the job Jordan is nominated for) since January 20. He’s still listed in that job on NOAA’s website today.

In a statement to the Washington Post, a NOAA spokeswoman said the two were placed on leave for unrelated reasons, but the Post and others point out they were involved in investigating “Sharpiegate” during President Trump’s first term. Jacobs was acting NOAA administrator at the time and the investigation cited him for scientific misconduct. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, issued a statement today saying it “reeks of impropriety.”

The Senate committee also will vote on other nominations and several bills, including committee chairman Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) Space Exploration Research Act (S. 2351). It allows NASA Centers to lease property to state governments, universities or non-profits for development and then lease it back.

Off the Hill, the big event this week is the launch of Crew-11 to the International Space Station, currently planned for Thursday at 12:09 pm ET. If the launch goes on time, they’ll dock early Saturday morning ET.

Crew 11 will launch no earlier than Thursday at 12:09 pm ET. L-R: Oleg Platonov (Roscosmos), Mike Fincke (NASA), Zena Cardman (NASA), Kimiya Yui (JAXA).

The launch is noteworthy for several reasons. To begin with, this is the first time a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will fly for a sixth time. The reusable capsules were certified by NASA for five flights each, but the goal was always to extend that as they gained experience. This capsule, Endeavour, is the oldest, taking Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS on the Demo-2 test flight in 2020. NASA and SpaceX have been going through a painstaking process to make sure every component is flight-ready.

Another special aspect is that this crew will be aboard the ISS in November when it celebrates the 25th anniversary of permanent occupancy. Crews rotating on roughly six-month schedules have been aboard since November 2, 2000 when NASA’s Bill Shepherd and Roscosmos’s Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko floated through the hatch. Other crews were there for brief stays before that, but not a day has gone by since then that human beings haven’t been living in space.

The International Space Station will celebrate 25 years of permanent occupancy while Crew-11 is aboard.

Also of note is that Zena Cardman is the commander. She was supposed to command Crew-9, but was bumped off the flight because of problems with Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test (CFT) that delivered Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS last summer. NASA decided Starliner wasn’t sufficiently safe to return them to Earth and they would remain aboard the ISS and become part of Crew-9. That meant Cardman and Stephanie Wilson had to give up their seats.

Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test vehicle after successfully landing in New Mexico with no one aboard, September 2024. The date for another crewed Starliner flight is uncertain so two astronauts who were assigned to that mission have joined Crew-11 instead: Mike Fincke (NASA) and Kimiya Yui (JAXA).

That was just about a year ago and Cardman now is back in the commander’s seat. At her side is pilot Mike Fincke, a veteran NASA astronaut who has spent the past many years with Butch and Suni working with the Boeing team on Starliner. He’d been assigned to the first operational Starliner mission, Starliner-1, and apparently so was JAXA’s Kimiya Yui. With no date on the horizon for that mission, NASA reassigned both of them to Crew-11.

NASA officials said recently they hope to fly Starliner early next year, but are debating whether to put crew aboard or just cargo as they continue to test Starliner’s propulsion system. They point out SpaceX benefited from launching Dragon as a cargo vehicle for eight years before the first crewed flight. NASA insists they still want Starliner as a second crew transportation system in case SpaceX’s Dragon is grounded for any reason and so far Boeing remains committed to the program.

But it’s a fixed price contract and Boeing has to absorb the cost overruns, which reached $2 billion by the end of 2024. Boeing will release its second quarter 2025 financial results on Tuesday. The telecon is at 10:30 am ET. It’s not clear if they’ll say anything about Starliner especially since the news cycle may be dominated by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ (IAM’s) rejection of Boeing Defense’s contract offer today. We’ll be listening in case it comes up, though.

Lots of other great events as usual, including launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite on Wednesday, a four-day (Monday-Thursday) conference about the Habitable Worlds Observatory astrophysicists hope NASA will build in the 2030s, a Space News webinar on Golden Dome on Thursday, and the Beyond Earth Institute’s intriguingly entitled webinar “Eat, Love, Play in Space: Exploring the Fascinating Realities of Human Life Beyond Earth” on Wednesday.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our  Calendar or changes to these.

Monday, July 28

Monday-Tuesday, July 28-29

Monday-Wednesday, July 28-31

Tuesday, July 29

Wednesday, July 30

Thursday, July 31

Friday, August 1

Saturday, August 2

Last Updated: Jul 28, 2025 1:58 pm ET

User Comments



SpacePolicyOnline.com has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.  We do not post comments that include links to other websites since we have no control over that content nor can we verify the security of such links.

SPACEPOLICYONLINE.COM

About | Contact | Privacy