What’s Happening in Space Policy September 21-27, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 21-27, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

This busy week begins today, Sunday, with two NASA/NOAA news conferences in advance of Tuesday’s launch of three space weather satellites. NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow on-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) will launch together on a SpaceX Falcon 9 headed to the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point a million miles from Earth towards the Sun.

The news conferences at 2:30 pm ET and 3:45 pm ET will air on NASA’s website and YouTube channel. They feature speakers including Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Irene Parker, NOAA/NESDIS deputy assistant administrator for systems, the principal investigators for IMAP and Carruthers, David McComas (Princeton) and Lara Waldrop (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), the director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center Clinton Wallace, and more.

Tomorrow (Monday), NASA begins a three-day human spaceflight extravaganza at Johnson Space Center. A new class of astronaut candidates will be introduced Monday at 12:30 pm ET. On Tuesday there are two briefings on the Artemis II mission that will send four astronauts around the Moon next spring and on Wednesday a news conference with those astronauts: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch from NASA and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.

Artemis II is a test flight and will not attempt to orbit the Moon, much less land on it. Instead they will be on a free-return trajectory that will bring them back to Earth even if the propulsion system doesn’t perform as planned. Artemis III is the mission that will land U.S. astronauts on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era. The Trump Administration appears committed to Artemis II and Artemis III even if the plan after that is murky other than wanting to put a nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Administrator talks about going to the Moon to stay, but when an Artemis IV crew might travel there is unclear.

On the national security space front, this week is the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual AFA Air, Space, Cyber convention at National Harbor, MD (Monday-Wednesday). Tomorrow’s opening speaker is Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink.  On Tuesday it’s Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations, followed by a panel with his predecessor, Gen. Jay Raymond (Ret.), the first CSO, plus Raymond’s Vice Chief Gen. David “D.T.” Thompson (Ret.), and Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno (Ret.), the first Space Force Director of Staff.

Lots of other space-related panel discussions throughout the three days including “Pivotal Moments in Air & Space: A Six-Kill Ace and that Time We Shot Down a Satellite” (Monday), “International Partnerships in Space” (Tuesday), “Armed and On Time: The Art of Delivering Space Capabilities at Speed and  Scale (Wednesday), and “Achieving Space Superiority” (Wednesday).

Washington Post reporter Christian Davenport will talk about his new book at two events in D.C. this week: Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) with Todd Harrison, and Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with CSIS’s Kari Bingen and the most recent Executive Secretaries of the White House National Space Council, Scott Pace (Trump-Pence) and Chirag Parikh (Biden-Harris).

It’s just the beginning of a nationwide tour for the book “Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race.”  (Our copy arrived last week. It’s really good!). Davenport also announced on X last week that he is now a contributor to CBS News.

The House and Senate are in recess for the Jewish holidays. They left town with a government shutdown looming on October 1. Both were set to return on September 29, giving them two more days to resolve the impasse and avoid it, but that’s changed.  Here’s a quick summary of where the situation stands today.

On Friday, the House passed a Republican version of a Continuing Resolution (CR) that would keep the government open through November 21. All but one Democrat opposed it, and all but two Republicans supported it.

The Senate then defeated that bill as well as a Democratic alternative (through October 31) that insists on including a provision extending Affordable Health Care premium subsidies that otherwise will expire at the end of the year. Both votes were on largely partisan lines.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) thereupon decided to extend the House recess until October 1, forcing the Senate to agree to the House Republican bill or cause a shutdown since the House now won’t be in town to approve any amendments. Both chambers must agree on identical text.

Unlike the House where bills can pass with a simple majority, legislation like this requires 60 votes to pass in the Senate.  There are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats (including 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats), so there has to be some amount of bipartisanship to get this passed. At the moment, they are at loggerheads. Whether that changes between now and midnight September 30 is anyone’s guess. Both sides are blaming each other.  The Senate and House Minority Leaders, Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) are demanding a meeting with President Trump to reach an agreement that would avoid a shutdown. Trump said he would meet with them, but didn’t expect it to solve the problem.

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.

Sunday, September 21

• NASA/NOAA News Conferences on Upcoming Launch of Three Space Weather Satellites (watch on NASA’s website or YouTube channel)
  • NASA Pre-Launch News Conference: 2:30 pm ET
  • NASA/NOAA Science News Conference: 3:45 pm ET

Monday, September 21

• NASA Introduces New Class of NASA Astronaut Candidates, JSC, 12:30 pm ET, watch on NASA+, Amazon Prime, NASA’s You Tube Channel and X
• Firefly Q2 2025 Financial Results Telecon, virtual, 5:00 pm ET

Monday-Wednesday, September 22-24

• 2025 AFA Air, Space, Cyber Convention, Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, MD
• Exploring a New Home on the Moon (Chinese Society of Astronautics/IAA), Shanghai, China

Tuesday, September 23

• Launch of Three NASA/NOAA Satellites: IMAP, Carruthers, SWFO-L1, KSC, 7:32 am ET (watch on NASA+ and X)
• Artemis II Mission Overiew and S&T Briefings, JSC (watch on NASA’s YouTube Channel and X)
  • Mission Overview, 10:00 am ET
  • Science & Technology, 12:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Thursday, September 23-25

• 42nd International Communications Satellite Systems Conference (ICSSC), Barcelona, Spain

Wednesday, September 24

• Artemis II Crew Briefing, JSC, 10:00 am ET (watch on NASA’s YouTube channel and X)
• Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion Dollar Space Race (AEI), 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC/virtual
• Navigating Uncertainty in Astrobiology: Part 1-Careers in Academia (Planetary Society), virtual, 2:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Friday, September 24-26

• Heliophysics Panel of Cmte on Key Non-Polar Lunar Destinations (Natl Acad), National Academy of Sciences building, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC (some sessions are open, some are closed; open sessions will be livestreamed)

Thursday, September 25

• LSIC Surface Power Workshop: Lunar Power Applications at Various Scales, virtual, 11:00 am-4:15 pm ET

Friday, September 26

• Rocket Dreams: Inside the New Space Race (CSIS), 1616 Rhode Island Ave, NW, Washington, DC/virtual, 12:00-1:30 pm ET