As many scientists expected, further observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 have reduced the chances of it colliding with Earth to basically zero. The asteroid made headlines a month ago when it appeared it had a small chance of impacting our planet in 2032. However, NASA is not ruling out the possibility it might hit the Moon instead.
NASA announced today that Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche is now Acting Associate Administrator, succeeding Jim Free who retired over the weekend. Cathy Koerner, who has been leading the mission directorate that manages the Artemis program, will retire this Friday. Her Deputy, Lori Glaze, will take over on an acting basis.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of February 23-March 2, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
Posts by Elon Musk on his social media platform X took aim at the International Space Station today, arguing it should be deorbited much sooner than NASA plans. Separately he again insisted that two NASA astronauts who have unexpectedly remained aboard the ISS since last summer, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were left there by the Biden Administration for political reasons. NASA issued two statements this afternoon and while they did not directly reference Musk’s posts, the connection seemed apparent.
NASA said today that probationary employees will not be subject to the mass firings happening elsewhere in the government. Instead, any decisions to dismiss them will be performance-based or voluntary. Probationary employees were a small subset of the 5 percent of the NASA workforce who chose the Deferred Resignation buyout. All who did are individually deciding when to depart, with September 30 as the deadline.
The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee said today it will hold a hearing on NASA’s Artemis program next week. Artemis is designed to return U.S. astronauts to the surface of the Moon for the first time since Apollo, but its future has become the subject of intense speculation since President Trump took office. The program is years late, over budget, and Trump confidant Elon Musk is a critic, although his company, SpaceX, is an Artemis major contractor. The hearing does not include any witnesses from the Trump Administration, however.
NASA so far has been spared the dramatic workforce cutbacks affecting other parts of the government. The agency said today they are validating the “hundreds” of employees who chose deferred resignation and those on probationary status will be gone by the end of the week, but anticipated dismissals of other probationary employees apparently are on hold. At the same time, NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free is one of the top NASA officials who have chosen to retire.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of February 16-22, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House is in recess except for pro forma sessions.
Rep. Brian Babin, chair of the House committee that oversees NASA and the commercial space sector, said this week that maintaining a “vibrant, prosperous commercial space sector” will be a top priority for the committee. That includes asking the Government Accountability Office to review whether the FAA’s Part 450 regulations actually are making licensing more efficient and effective as intended. Another top priority is getting Americans back on the Moon before China gets there.
Congressman Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), the new chair of the House space subcommittee, is fully behind the current plan to return astronauts to the Moon before going to Mars. President Trump’s inaugural declaration about sending people to Mars and his close association with Elon Musk has spurred a lot of chatter that the Administration might eschew the Moon and focus only on Mars, but Congress has long championed a return to the Moon first and that does not appear to be changing.