What’s Happening in Space Policy May 24-30, 2026

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 24-30, 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

The week began this morning (Sunday) with the launch of a new crew, Shenzhou-23, to China’s Tiangong space station.  The crew includes the first taikonaut from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Li Jiaying, or Lai Ka-ying in Cantonese. She’s a payload specialist and is joined by Commander Zhu Yangzhu and pilot Zhang Zhiyuan. Zhu is making his second spaceflight, Zhang and Li are rookies. One of three will remain on Tiangong for a year, but the decision on who will be made later based on how the mission unfolds according to China’s Xinhua news agency.

They’ll dock later today EDT and join the Shenzhou-21 crew currently aboard. A crew rotation will take place over the coming days similar to those that have taken place on the International Space Station for the past 25 years. China began crew rotations at the end of 2022. The Shenzhou-21 crew arrived in November and just as their Shenzhou-20 colleagues were about to depart, a crack was observed in Shenzhou-20’s “viewport window” apparently from space debris. That crew had to return in Shenzhou-21’s spacecraft, leaving them aboard without a way to depart until the empty Shenzhou-22 arrived. That’s the spacecraft they’ll take home in the next few days. Additional protection was added to Shenzhou-23’s window.

Meanwhile, in the United States this is a holiday weekend for Memorial Day. Government offices will be closed tomorrow (Monday).

Tomorrow is a notable day nonetheless — the 65th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s speech to a joint session of Congress announcing the goal of landing a man on the Moon “before this decade is out.”

JFK’s speech kicked off the Apollo program, but it was not warmly embraced initially. That’s why he made the better-remembered speech at Rice University a year-and-a-half later with his famous quote: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but  because they are hard.” John Logsdon’s seminal book John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon tells the story of those critical years.

NASA is trying to build support right now not just to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo, but establish a Moon Base there for sustained operations. The successful Artemis II flight around the Moon last month certainly generated excitement, but there’s a long way to go. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is making changes to the Artemis program and at the agency overall. A reorganization of NASA headquarters announced on Friday merged the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) and the Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD) “into a streamlined organization, built to deliver on the next era of human spaceflight.” Lori Glaze, who was Acting Associate Administrator for ESDMD, is now Associate Administrator for the combined organization — the Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate (HSMD).  Isaacman, Glaze, and Carlos Garcia-Galán, program executive for HSMD’s Moon Base program, will give an update on Moon Base strategy and missions on Tuesday afternoon. It’ll be livestreamed on NASA+ and the agency’s YouTube channel.

Another Moon-related event this week is the Beyond Earth Institute’s webinar on Wednesday on “Securing a Cislunar Future: Markets, Minerals, and Momentum.” Speakers include Andy Aldrin from Embry-Riddle University (and son of Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin), Hoyt Davidson from Near Earth LLC, Chris Salvino from Lunar Helium-3 Mining, and Jack Gregg, Adjunct Professor and Author, moderated by BEI’s Courtney Smith.

On the national security space front, CSIS will hold a webinar on “Warfighting and War Winning in Space” on Tuesday, and GSOA will have one on “Cybersecurity in Space” on Thursday.

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, May 24

• Launch and Docking of Shenzhou-23 to the Tiangong Space Station: Launch, 11:08 am EDT (11:08 pm Beijing Time), Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center; docking about three hours later

Monday, May 25

• Memorial Day (Federal holiday)
• 65th Anniversary of JFK’s Speech to Congress Initiating the Apollo Program

Tuesday, May 26

• Warfighting and War Winning in Space (CSIS), virtual, 1:00-1:45 pm ET
• NASA Update on Moon Base Strategy and Missions, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 2:00 pm ET (livestreamed)

Tuesday-Thursday, May 26-28

• Smallsat Europe 2026, Amsterdam

Tuesday-Friday, May 26-29

• State of the Space Industrial Base (New Space Nexus), Albuquerque, NM

Wednesday, May 27

• Russian Spacewalk at the ISS, 10:15 am ET (NASA coverage begins 9:45 am ET)
• Securing a Cislunar Future: Markets, Minerals, and Momentum (BEI), virtual, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Thursday, May 28

• Cybersecurity in Space (GSOA), virtual, 10:00 am ET
• ISU-DC Space Café with Loft Orbital’s Justin Tilman, 1020 N Highland St., Arlington, VA, 6:00-8:00 pm ET