What’s Happening in Space Policy May 3-9, 2026
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 3-9, 2026 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
As of today (Sunday), the week ahead is looking comparatively quiet, a welcome respite. The House and Senate are in recess. There are some very interesting conferences here and abroad, but overall it’s not the level of intensity we’ve seen lately.
We’re going to start by noting that Tuesday is the 65th anniversary of the first American reaching space — Alan Shepard, who crossed the imaginary line that separates air and space three weeks after the USSR’s Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth.
Shepard’s May 5, 1961 Freedom 7 flight was suborbital and only lasted 15 minutes and 28 seconds, but it put the United States on the human spaceflight map — and immortalized his exasperated “let’s light this candle” remark after various problems delayed liftoff for about two hours. He’d already been in the tiny capsule for two hours before that.
All went well, and just three weeks later President John F. Kennedy called on the nation to commit itself to the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. An American hadn’t even orbited Earth yet. It was another nine months before John Glenn achieved that distinction on February 20, 1962. (Jeff Bezos named his rockets after the two men: the suborbital New Shepard and the orbital New Glenn.) We haven’t heard of any events to celebrate Shepard’s anniversary (he passed away in 1998). With the current characterization of Artemis as an Apollo redux, acknowledging these historic milestones seems in order. If we hear of any events, we’ll add them to our Calendar.
A different kind of milestone will happen tomorrow at NASA headquarters when Ireland signs the Artemis Accords. Not only will it be the 65th signatory, but Ireland is the final member of the European Space Agency (ESA) to join. ESA has 23 member countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Italy, Luxembourg and the U.K. were among the inaugural group of eight in October 2020 along with Australia, Canada, Japan, the UAE, and the United States.
The Accords were created in President Trump’s first term to establish 10 core principles for responsible behavior on the Moon. They apply only to governments, not the commercial sector, and only to civil activities, not national security. All countries are welcome whether or not they have a space program or plan to operate on the lunar surface. ESA’s other members have signed at various times over the years, most recently Latvia two weeks ago. Welcome Ireland!
GEOINT 2026 begins today in Aurora, Colorado. Geospatial intelligence’s role in national security, business, environmental monitoring and so many other applications is growing every day and this annual conference brings together the top experts from industry and government to share what’s going on. Among the speakers are National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Chris Scolese; NATO Maj. Gen. Paul Lynch, Deputy Assistant Secretary General, Joint Intelligence and Security Division; DARPA Director Stephen Winchell; National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Director Lt. Gen. Michele Bredenkamp; Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organization Director Kathryn McMullan, and many more. Looks excellent as always.
Among the several overseas conferences are ESRIC’s annual Luxembourg Space Resources Week, Monday-Thursday in Luxembourg; the CNES/ESA 4S Symposium (Small Satellites Systems and Services) Monday-Friday in Sardinia, Italy with the theme “Swarming the Skies, Soaring Beyond: from vLEO to Deep Space”; and the Portuguese Space Agency/ESA Space Economy Summit Tuesday-Wednesday in Lisbon focused on “Sovereignty in Space for Advantage on Earth.”
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-Wednesday, May 3-6
- GEOINT 2026 (USGIF), Aurora, CO
Monday, May 4
- Ireland Joins the Artemis Accords, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 3:00 pm ET
Monday-Thursday, May 4-7
- Luxembourg Space Resources Week, Luxembourg
Monday-Friday, May 4-8
- 4S Symposium 2026, Sardinia, Italy
Tuesday, May 5
- 65th Anniversary of the First American in Space (Alan Shepard)
- 2nd Canadian Space Launch Conference (Nordspace), Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Ottawa, 7:30 am-7:00 pm ET
Tuesday-Wednesday, May 5-6
- Space Economy Summit Europe 2026, Lisbon, Portugal
Wednesday-Thursday, May 6-7
Thursday, May 7
- SpaceTime: FY27 National Security Space Budget Briefing (NSSA), Boeing, 929 Long Branch Dr., Arlington, VA 10:00 am-12:00 pm ET
Friday, May 8
- IISL Spring Space Law Symposium, virtual, 10:30-16:00 CEST (4:30-10:00 am ET)
- Power Breakfast: Guiding the Golden Dome (GovExec), Carahsoft Conference & Collaboration Center, Reston, VA
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