NASA has initiated Reductions-in-Force or RIFs at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. in compliance with a Trump Administration Executive Order. Two offices and part of another were closed and their employees notified they are being RIFed.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of March 9-16, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
DOD’s X-37B spaceplane is back on Earth after 434 days in space. The Boeing-built vehicle landed at 2:22 am ET this morning at Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA, a departure from recent landings at Kennedy Space Center, FL. The duration is far short of the 908 day record set by the previous mission, but one of this flight’s hallmarks was conducting aerobraking maneuvers.
Intuitive Machines finally identified exactly where the IM-2 lander set down on the Moon yesterday. Although it is not far from its intended landing site, Athena is in a crater where sunlight could not reach the solar cells to recharge the batteries and the mission was over in about 13 hours. Separately, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission-1, which landed on Sunday, is working well. Both are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.
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.
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.
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. …
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.”
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.
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.