What’s Happening in Space Policy April 27-May 3, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of April 27-May 3, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Congress is back from spring break.

The week’s Big Event is the Senate Commerce Committee’s vote on Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA Administrator on Wednesday. He had some interesting responses to the committee’s post-hearing Questions for the Record (QFRs) from both Republicans and Democrats, including that he canceled his contracts with SpaceX for those other two commercial spaceflights. There was one more on Crew Dragon and the first crewed orbital flight of Starship. The money was refunded.

He continued to push back on inferences that his relationships with Elon Musk and SpaceX pose conflict of interest concerns and still declined to say if Musk was present when he was interviewed by President Trump. SpaceX is NASA’s second largest contractor. But there were lots of other Q&As on other topics that make for interesting reading.

The committee’s Executive Session will consider other nominations as well and 17 bills, including Sen. Cruz’s S. 1081, The Comprehensive NASA Reporting Act.  Any nominations and bills that get approved still have to go to the full Senate for a vote, so this is just one more step in a process.

Questions about potential conflicts of interest with Musk and SpaceX have also come up with regard to the nomination of Troy Meink to be Secretary of the Air Force, which would put him in charge of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force. SpaceX has billions of dollars in contracts with the Space Force. Meink has a long career in national security space and is now Principal Deputy Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Allegations have surfaced that he steered an NRO contract to SpaceX.  Politico reports that in SASC’s post-hearing QFRs, Meink was asked if Musk was in the room when Trump interviewed him. Unlike Isaacman, Meink said yes. It’s not on SASC’s website as of today, but Politico said SASC might vote on Meink’s nomination this week. We’ll keep an eye out for an announcement.

SASC will, however, consider the nomination of Matthew Lohmeier to be Under Secretary of the Air Force on Thursday. In May 2021, then Lt. Col. Lohmeier was commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base. As part of promoting a self-published book on the topic, he publicly criticized diversity and inclusion in the military as well as what he claimed are Marxist ideologies. He was relieved of command for violating a prohibition on partisan political activity by then-Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting who headed Space Operations Command at the time. Whiting was later promoted to General and is now commander of U.S. Space Command. Lohmeier’s views are in sync with the Trump Administration’s on DEI and apparently were a key factor in his nomination. In a post on social media announcing the nomination, President Trump said Lohmeier would work with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to end the devastating ‘woke’ policies that have destroyed our Military,” citing his experience as a fighter pilot, squadron commander and Air Force Academy graduate as qualifications to be AF Under Secretary. If Meink and Lohmeier are confirmed, it would be the first time the Department of the Air Force is led by individuals with space backgrounds.

Over in the House, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will mark up six bills, three of which are space-related. All three passed the House last year, but there was no further action. Bills that don’t pass in one Congress must be reintroduced in the next.

• H.R. 2984 (Babin), the Astro Act, would allow NASA to use government vehicles to transport astronauts as they readapt to gravity after they return from space missions and can’t drive themselves.
• H.R. 2600 (Hurd), the ASCEND Act, directs NASA to establish a commercial satellite data acquisition program. It passed twice, actually, as a stand-alone bill and as part of the 2024 NASA Authorization Act.
• H.R. 2313, the Celestial Time Standardization Act (McClellan), also was part of the NASA Authorization Act. It directs NASA to develop a celestial time standard for the Moon and cislunar space. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recommended establishing a lunar time standard last year.

Separately, the House will take up H.R. 2458 (Pallone), the Secure Space Act tomorrow (Monday). The bipartisan bill from the Energy & Commerce Committee would prohibit the FCC from granting satellite or earth-station licenses to “covered entities” in the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, primarily Chinese companies. It was approved by the E&C committee in the last Congress, but wasn’t voted on by the full House.

Outside D.C. there’s another big event — Don Pettit’s post-mission briefing tomorrow. Pettit just returned from 220 days on the International Space Station, celebrating his 70th birthday as he touched down in Kazakhstan on April 20 local time (April 19 EDT). He’s not the oldest person to fly in space, but he is the oldest to stay there for such a long time. Cameras at the landing site cut away from him after he was extracted from the Soyuz MS-26 capsule raising concerns about his health, but Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield posted a photo on X of a smiling, if weak, Pettit giving a thumbs up there at the landing site. The next day NASA posted a photo of Pettit as he stepped off the plane upon his return to Houston and he looked even better. He is a talented space photographer and sent back amazing images of Earth and the cosmos. Perhaps he’ll share some of his favorites tomorrow.

Speaking of the space station, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers will do a spacewalk on Thursday. The main task is to reposition an antenna used for communicating between the space station and arriving vehicles, but while they’re out there will also perform the preliminary steps for later installation of another ISS Roll Out Solar Array or iROSA. Six iROSA’s have been installed so far to boost energy production because the older solar arrays are degraded by exposure to the micrometeorite environment. Two more are planned. The 6.5 hour spacewalk, McClain’s third and Ayers’ first, begins at 8:00 am ET. NASA’s ISS Operations Integration Manager Bill Spetch and spacewalk flight director Diana Trujillo provided a great preview last week.

China’s Shenzhou-19 crew is set to return to Earth on Tuesday after 6 months on the Tiangong-3 space station. Their replacements on Shenzhou-20 arrived a few days ago. China announced April 29 as the landing date, but not the time. Other sources say it will be at 06:04 UTC, which is 02:04 EDT.  China’s CGTN usually provides live landing coverage.

Another event we’ll highlight is NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group or MEPAG.  They’ve been given permission to proceed after all of the agency’s “AGs” — community based analysis and assessment groups — were paused to ensure they comply with Trump’s Executive Order banning DEI throughout the government. The Wednesday-Thursday meeting is in Boulder, CO and online. With all the uncertainty about the future of the Mars Sample Return mission specifically and NASA’s science program broadly, it’s not clear what the NASA officials will be able to share, but the discussion by MEPAG members should be interesting. President Trump’s praise for the Hubble Space Telescope and promise that America will lead the way in space discovery and exploration last week could be a glimmer of hope, but his budget request to Congress, whenever it’s submitted, will tell the tale of what he has in mind for NASA. The proposal (“passback“) from his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) calls for a nearly 50% cut to NASA science, but NASA can negotiate with OMB about it and even appeal directly to the President, though the latter is rare. Ultimately it’ll be up to  Congress to decide.

NOAA’s Science Advisory Board also is meeting this week (Tuesday). NOAA has suffered deep cuts already and it’s future is more uncetain than NASA’s.  Should be another very interesting conversation.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Monday, April 28

• FCC Open Commission Meeting, 45 L Street, N.E., Washington, DC, 10:30 am -12:30 pm ET (livestreamed)
• Post-Mission News Conference with NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, JSC, 2:00 pm ET (watch on YouTube)
• Second ULA Attempt for First Launch of Operational Amazon Project Kuiper Satellites, CCSFS, 7:00-9:00 pm ET

Monday-Wednesday, April 28-30

• Military Space Situational Awareness Conference, London

Tuesday, April 29

• Return of China’s Shenzhou-19 Crew, Inner Mongolia, 2:04 am EDT?
• NOAA Science Advisory Board, virtual, 10:00 am-5:00 pm ET
• House SS&T Markup of Three Space-Related Bills, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• Schriever Spacepower Series with Space Systems Command’s Cordell A. DeLaPena, virtual, 1:00 pm ET

Wednesday, April 30

• Senate Commerce Committee Vote on Jared Isaacman’s Nomination to be NASA Administrator, 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• AIAA Awards Gala, Grand Hyatt Washington, 1000 H  St., NW, Washington, DC, 5:30-10:00 pm ET
• ISU-DC Space Cafe with BEI’s Courtney Stadd, 1020 N. Highland St., Arlington, VA, 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Thursday, April 30-May 1

• NASA Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), Boulder, CO/virtual

Thursday, May 1

• U.S. Spacewalk (McClain/Ayers) at ISS, 8:00 am ET (NASA coverage begins 6:30 am ET)
• SASC Hearing on Matthew Lohmeier’s Nomination to be Under Secretary of the Air Force, SD-G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 9:30 am ET (webcast)

This article has been updated.