What’s Happening in Space Policy December 28, 2025-January 10, 2026

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the next two weeks, December 28, 2025-January 10, 2026, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions until January 5, 2026 (Senate) and January 6, 2026 (House) when the second session of the 119th Congress begins.

During the Weeks

The space policy scene remains quiet this week, though one never knows what surprises may pop up, like last week’s big news about Tory Bruno moving from ULA to Blue Origin. We’ll be keeping an eye open, but expect we all get to continue having a bit of a break as the New Year rolls in.

Congress returns and begins the second session of the 119th Congress next week. The Senate is back on Monday the 5th, and the House on the 6th.  We’ll have a 2025 wrap-up and 2026 look ahead later in the week, but the bottom line is they have a lot of work to do. In the immediate future, finishing the FY2026 appropriations bills before the Continuing Resolution (CR) expires on January 30 is a priority. Only three of the 12 bills have been enacted. Defense and the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that includes NASA and NOAA are not among them.

The appropriations outlook in the Senate, at least, was looking pretty good early in the week of December 15. Bipartisan agreement was reached on proceeding with a “minibus” of five bills including Defense and CJS as soon as the Senate returned from the holiday break. Senate appropriators have prided themselves on their ability to write bipartisan bills, unlike the House where partisanship has become the norm.

But then on December 17 OMB Director Russell Vought announced the Administration is breaking up the country’s preeminent atmospheric research institution, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, because in his view it “is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country. A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather…

— Russ Vought (@russvought) December 17, 2025

The action infuriated some Senate Democrats who withdrew their support for the appropriations package. Vought said earlier in the year that “the appropriations process has to be less bipartisan” and his action may have that result.

Subsequently, the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), announced agreement on funding allocations for the remaining bills that they said would keep total FY2026 appropriations below the level projected in the CR.

That’s the backdrop against which Congress reconvenes next week. Talk of another government shutdown at the end of January is ramping up, but it’s not clear whether either party would benefit from another ordeal like that especially in an election year. As we often say, the clock is ticking. The House is scheduled to be in session for only 12 days in January, and not during that last week. The Senate will be in session the last week, but off the week before for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

 

Elsewhere, the first week of 2026 has some interesting events starting with the American Astronomical Society’s winter meeting in Phoenix from January 4-8. As always it’s chock full of fascinating sessions and lectures. One that caught our eye is Monday’s Fred Kavli Plenary Lecture with the University of Arizona’s Daniella DellaGuistina discussing the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission and how it “changed our understanding of asteroids.” But that’s just one of dozens including sessions on NASA’s soon-to-be-launched Roman Space Telescope and the planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, and the cleverly entitled “The Future of Astrophysics: UV Got a Friend in Me.”

NASA’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meets Tuesday-Thursday (January 6-8) at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD, and this one has a virtual option.  The meeting was postponed from October due to the shutdown. Four NASA HQ officials are on the program Tuesday morning. Whether they’ll be there in person and available to answer questions or just virtually as became the practice last year is unclear, though each has only 15 minutes allocated: Louise Procktor, Director of SMD’s Planetary Science Division; Lori Glaze, Acting Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development (in charge of the Moon-to-Mars program); Niki Werkheiser, STMD’s Director of Technology Maturation; and Joel Kearns, SMD Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration with an update on the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP). Lots of other great sessions including updates on Artemis and an overview of Firefly’s very successful Blue Ghost Mission 1 that landed on the Moon in March 2025.

The speakers aren’t listed as of today (December 28), but on Thursday, January 8, the Atlantic Council has what sounds like an interesting event on “Cosmic Coordination: Space Diplomacy in an Era of Strategic Competition.” We’ll keep an eye out for further information.

Lastly there are two ESA events of interest. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot is getting ready to launch to the ISS as early as February as part of Crew-12. She’ll hold a press conference on Monday, January 5, at ESA’s astronaut training center in Cologne, Germany, that will be livestreamed on ESA TV. Three days later, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher will give the traditional annual ESA DG press briefing at ESA’s Paris HQ. That also will be livestreamed on ESA TV though it’s a bit early in the U.S. (4:00 am ET). ESA is pretty good about quickly posting replays on their website and social media.

Those are the events we know about as of Sunday morning, December 28, 2025.  Check back throughout the weeks for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these and…

Thursday, January 1

• New Year’s Day (Federal holiday)

Sunday-Thursday, January 4-8

• American Astronomical Society Winter Meeting, Phoenix, AZ

Monday, January 5

• Press Conference with ESA Astronaut Sophie Adenot, ESA Astronaut Training Center, Cologne, Germany, 14:00-15:00 CET (8:00-9:00 am EST), watch on ESA TV

Tuesday-Thursday, January 6-8

• NASA Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD/online

Thursday, January 8

• ESA DG Annual Press Briefing, ESA HQ, Paris, FR, 10:00 CET (4:00 am EST), watch on ESA TV
• Space Diplomacy in an Era of Strategic Competition (Atlantic Council), 1400 L St., NW, Washington, DC/online, 3:00 pm ET