The two NASA astronauts who are spending much longer aboard the International Space Station than planned are having their mission extended yet again. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test in June and now are part of Crew-9. They were supposed to come home in February after their replacements arrive on Crew-10, but Crew-10’s launch was just postponed because SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon spacecraft is not ready yet.

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NASA released its new Low Earth Orbit Microgravity Strategy today with goals and objectives for the post-International Space Station era. NASA has long held that the United States must have a continuous presence in LEO, but one area of debate centered on whether that means a “continuous heartbeat” with human beings always present or a “continuous capability” where crews might be aboard a space station or not.  In the end, continuous heartbeat won.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the remainder of this year, December 15-31, 2024, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week and plan to adjourn thereafter.

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NASA has a new 20-year plan for robotic exploration of Mars that calls for major paradigm shifts in how the agency approaches exploration of the Red Planet. The future should focus on smaller missions, more commercial and international engagement, and defining science goals for an era of human presence on Mars. The plan does not address the Mars Sample Return program, which is organizationally separate from the rest of the agency’s robotic science Mars efforts.

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The FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act cleared the House today. Congress has passed an NDAA every year since the first in 1961 regardless of rancorous divisions and appears on track to keep that record intact this year. The Senate is expected to take up the bill next week. [UPDATE: The Senate passed the bill on December 18.]

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Panama and Austria signed the Artemis Accords today. That brings to 50 the number of countries that have signed the U.S.-led non-binding principles for responsible behavior on the Moon in just over four years.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of December 8-14, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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ESA’s Vega-C rocket returned to flight today almost two years after a failure that contributed to Europe’s loss of space launch autonomy. Coupled with delays in development of the large Ariane 6, Europe has had to buy launches from the U.S. company SpaceX, but the successful first launch of Ariane 6 this summer and Vega-C’s flight today puts Europe back in the space launch business.

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NASA’s program to return American astronauts to the Moon is encountering more delays. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced today that the second flight, Artemis II, is now planned for April 2026 instead of September 2025, and Artemis III for mid-2027 instead of September 2026. Nelson nonetheless is optimistic the incoming Trump Administration will continue Artemis now that it is on a firm path forward to get Americans back on the Moon before China gets there.

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President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Jared Isaacman as his nominee to be the next NASA Administrator. Isaacman is a tech industry billionaire who has flown two spaceflights on Elon Musk’s Crew Dragon spacecraft already, with another pending plus the first crewed flight to Earth orbit on Starship. Isaacman’s most recent Crew Dragon flight, Polaris Dawn, included the first commercial spacewalks.

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