How Space Legislation Fared in the 118th Congress and a Look Ahead

Although it does not officially end until tomorrow, January 3, 2025, at noon, the 118th Congress is essentially over.  Here is a look at how space-related legislation fared in the 118th and a look ahead to the 119th.

Just as the Senate was getting ready to go home for the holidays on December 19, the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee introduced a NASA authorization bill (S. 5600). That was far too late for any action this year and indicative of the state of space legislation over the past two years.

The sum total of space legislation that cleared the 118th Congress is two National Defense Authorization Acts, the very narrowly-focused Launch Communications Act, and the FY2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act and assorted Continuing Resolutions to keep the government operating. The FY2025 appropriations bill, which also should have passed, remains in limbo.

That’s not what the space leadership in the House and Senate had in mind two years ago.

The bipartisan leadership of both Senate Commerce and the House Science, Space, and Technology (SS&T) Committee said from the beginning that passing a new NASA authorization bill was a priority. The House passed its version in September and at one point there were rumors they would try to get a compromise version added to the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), but that didn’t come to pass. Instead it took until the final moments for the Senate to even introduce their version.

A commercial space bill also was high on their list that, among other things, would settle the “mission authorization” debate and decide which agency or agencies would have regulatory oversight for novel space activities — those that are not already regulated by the FAA in the Department of Transportation (DOT), NOAA in the Department of Commerce (DOC), or the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The House SS&T committee held a hearing on commercial space in July 2023 and introduced a Republican-sponsored bill in early November. Less than an hour before the bill was scheduled to be marked up on November 15, the Biden White House released their version. The two measures could not have been more different. Republicans wanted the DOC in charge. The White House plan was to split it between DOC and DOT depending on exactly what the activity entailed. Committee Democrats were in a tough spot. Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R-OK) delayed a final vote for two weeks so everyone could review the White House proposal. When they came back, the vote was party-line. It was never brought to the floor for a vote.

The Senate Commerce Committee didn’t even get that far, though during a hearing in December 2023, Democrats and Republicans alike expressed reservations about the White House’s idea. There was no further action.

On top of the annual hearings on NASA’s FY2024 and FY2025 budget requests, Senate Commerce had a hearing on commercial human spaceflight in October 2023 in addition to the December 2023 hearing on mission authorization. House SS&T had hearings on commercial space innovation in September 2024, NASA’s science programs in March 2024, the “ISS and Beyond” in February 2024, and Artemis in January 2024.

Lucas also had a NOAA authorization bill high on his list to make NOAA an independent agency. He introduced a bill, H.R. 3980, but there was no action on it.

One narrowly focused bill, the Launch Communications Act (S. 1648) sponsored by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Space and Science Subcommittee, made it through as a stand-alone measure. In the House it went through the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee, which oversees the FCC.  It requires the FCC to facilitate access to spectrum needed by commercial space launch service providers to communicate with their rockets.

House E&C tried to pass a different bill that, among other things, would have given the FCC more authority over space safety and orbital debris regulations. House SS&T leaders strongly objected on a bipartisan basis, arguing it would harm the commercial space sector and infringe on the committee’s jurisdiction. The bill, H.R. 1338, failed.

The leadership of Senate Commerce and House SS&T will look familiar in the next Congress. Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) will move up from chairing House SS&T’s space subcommittee to the full committee. Rep. Zoe Lofren (D-CA) will continue as the top Democrat (“Ranking Member”).  On Senate Commerce, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) will switch places, with Cruz in the chair and Cantwell as Ranking Member.

The only major space-related legislation that became law during the 118th Congress was on the national security side. The FY2024 and FY2025 NDAAs maintained the record of passing an NDAA every year since the first in 1961 despite whatever political turmoil was taking place.

The most controversial issues were not about national security space policy per se, but the location of U.S. Space  Command’s headquarters in the FY2024 bill, and whether to transfer space functions of the Air National Guard to the U.S. Space Force in the FY2025 bill.

The FY2025 bill also extends the “learning period” that prohibits new FAA commercial human spaceflight regulations, and authority to provide third-party indemnification for commercial space launches and reentries, for three years each to January 1, 2028 and September 30, 2028 respectively.  Those provisions wouldn’t ordinarily be in an NDAA, but it became clear that other legislation wouldn’t make it through and this was the best solution since the deadlines were near.

Apart from appropriations bills, that’s it for enacted space legislation.  Many pundits assert this was the least productive Congress in decades. The Federal Register lists 157 Public Laws so far in the 118th Congress (a few more are pending the President’s signature), but a great many of them are simply to name post offices, award congressional medals of honor, or similar measures.

Action was stymied not only because of polarization between Republicans and Democrats, but in-fighting among House Republicans. It took more than three days at the opening of the 118th Congress, from January 3 at noon to January 7 at 12:40 am ET, for them to choose Kevin McCarthy as their Speaker. Then they ousted him that October, paralyzing the House for three weeks until they chose Mike Johnson as his successor.

The fractious debate over a new Continuing Resolution just before Christmas demonstrates the internal disputes that continue. We won’t rehash that here — see our articles on December 17, 18, 19, and 21 — but all 34 no votes were from Republicans.

The good news is that a new CR (H.R. 10545) did pass and a shutdown was avoided.  Departments and agencies funded by the 12 appropriations bills, including NASA and DOD, are stuck at their FY2024 levels at least until March 14, but that’s better than a shutdown. NASA and the Space Force did get the disaster relief funding they wanted to help recover from natural disasters including Typhoon Mawar on Guam in 2023 and Florida Hurricanes Helene and Milton this year. NASA got $740 million and Space Force $127.9 million ($90 million in O&M, $37.9 million in procurement). The bill also contains an “anomaly” — exception — for NOAA, allowing them to apportion funding provided in the bill for operations necessary to maintain the acquisition schedule for geostationary satellites up to $625 million.

Republicans will soon control all three levers of power in Washington — the House and the Senate tomorrow and the White House on January 20 — but fierce funding fights are expected to continue.

The Republican-Democratic split in the House will be even closer than it is now. Democrats gained two seats in the November elections, so the split will be 220-215.

Tomorrow Johnson will try to keep his position as Speaker and with one Republican vacancy (Matt Gaetz resigned in November), the margin will be even closer. One Republican, Thomas Massie (R-KY), already has vowed not to vote for him. Only one other “no” vote is needed to defeat him.  What will happen is very much up in the air even though President-elect Donald Trump has thrown his support behind Johnson. Congress needs to certify the Electoral College results that formalize Trump’s victory on January 6 so the clock is ticking.

Whoever is Speaker, the early days will see an even closer margin because Trump has tapped Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Mike Waltz (R-FL) as U.N. Ambassador and National Security Adviser respectively. Until those and Gaetz’s vacancies are filled, there will be 117 Republicans and 115 Democrats, making attempts to pass any legislation relying only on Republican votes next to impossible.

Even after the three seats are filled, likely with other Republicans, it seems that bipartisanship will be needed to get anything done. A first test will be that new March 14 deadline for when the CR expires, but other critical measures are also in the offing.

Trump did not get his wish to have the CR suspend the debt limit so it would happen on President Biden’s watch, not his, so Congress will have to deal with that sometime in the summer. Republicans are planning at least one and perhaps two “reconciliation” bills that are easier to pass in the Senate because they require a simple majority instead of 60 votes, but they have to pass the House, too, and even with a 220-215 split, that’s no easy task.

Space continues to be an area of bipartisanship, but government funding is at the heart of NASA, NOAA and DOD activities, and with some Republicans focused entirely on reducing the debt, all of those programs are vulnerable. The FY2024 appropriations bill, for example, cut NASA two percent below its FY2023 level because of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The pending FY2025 request would merely bring it back to what it had in FY2023.

Expectations are high that Elon Musk’s close friendship with Trump and Trump’s intent to nominate Jared Isaacman, a close friend of Musk’s, as NASA Administrator, will usher in dramatic changes in civil and commercial space programs and policy.

Time will tell. It’s not clear everyone wants dramatic change, especially at NASA. While the Artemis program is proceeding more slowly than anticipated, it survived the last presidential transition and with all the billions spent on the effort to return Americans to the lunar surface already, the momentum from a congressional perspective may be to just get it done.

Talk about abandoning the Moon as a goal and going all in on Mars because Musk and Trump are Mars enthusiasts could meet the same congressional resistance as President Barack Obama did in 2010 when he suggested the same thing.  It was Trump who restored the Moon as a pathway to Mars in his 2017 Space Policy Directive-1. Obama did generate support for Mars as a long-term goal and Congress made it clear in the 2022 NASA authorization bill they want Mars to be the focus, but not bypassing the Moon.

Presidents can do some things with Executive Orders, but anything that requires money must go through Congress, which has the power of the purse under the Constitution. Government money is at the heart of most U.S. space activities, even “commercial” activities, many of which rely on the government as a customer and/or partner.

If Congress is gridlocked, it hurts both sectors, not to mention universities and others involved in space research and exploration.

In the end, members of the House and Senate are elected by and answerable to their constituents. It’s a complex political environment and trying to guess what will happen is a fool’s errand.