France’s Minister for Higher Education and Research heralded Europe’s space launch autonomy following the first commercial launch of the new Ariane 6 rocket today. Philippe Baptiste, who until recently headed France’s space agency CNES, minced no words in pointing to the changing relationship between the United States and Europe and Elon Musk’s influence on U.S. space activities as a further impetus for Europe’s need to be able to launch its own satellites, not rely on others.

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SpaceX succeeded in catching a Super Heavy booster this evening, but the Starship second stage was lost minutes later. It was the second Starship explosion in a row, again over the Caribbean.

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Intuitive Machines got its second lander, IM-2, onto the lunar surface today, but like IM-1 last year it apparently is not in the correct orientation. IM-1 broke a leg and landed on its side, but company officials are not sure what happened this time. In fact, they don’t know if the Athena lander is upright, upside down, on its side, or somewhere in-between. They are communicating with Athena through a telemetry channel and can command some of the payloads, but it may take a couple of days to figure out the answers. …

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In his first address to a joint session of Congress of his second term in office, President Trump reiterated his support for sending humans to Mars. As in his inaugural address there were no specifics about how or when. He also again called for creating a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, the new name for what he earlier called the “Iron Dome for America.”

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The three NASA astronauts on the Crew-9 mission aboard the International Space Station are staying focused on their work, not the earthly politics recently inserted into debate about their return home. Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams and Nick Hague along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are just waiting for their replacements to arrive next week so they can come back to Earth and rejoin their families and friends after a successful ISS expedition.

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SpaceX will try again tomorrow, March 5, to launch Starship’s Integrated Flight Test-8 (IFT-8) from Starbase at Boca Chica, TX. They scrubbed the first attempt last night due to technical issues with both the booster and the ship. Meanwhile, the company said they hope to begin launching Starship from Florida later this year.

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The Japanese commercial lunar lander company ispace announced today that its SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon lander and rover will reach lunar orbit on May 6 and land one month later on June 6 JST (June 5 EDT)).  Venture Moon launched on January 15 on the same Falcon 9 rocket as Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which landed yesterday, but is taking a longer route. This is ispace’s second attempt at a lunar landing after a failure in 2023.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of March 2-9, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed on the Moon early this morning.  The third of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS missions, the commercial lunar lander delivered 10 NASA payloads to Mare Crisium.  Another CLPS mission, Intuitive Machines’ IM-2, will land just four days from now as NASA uses these small robotic landers to gather data in support of the Artemis program to return humans to the lunar surface and to begin an era of commercial exploration and utilization of the Moon.

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NOAA is the latest federal agency hit hard by layoffs ordered by the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) spearheaded by Elon Musk. The office that issues licenses to companies operating commercial remote sensing satellites, part of the Office of Space Commerce, no longer has any senior personnel to do that job, for example.  Court challenges are underway against other DOGE firings. The situation at NOAA and elsewhere in the federal government is one of disarray.

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