What’s Happening in Space Policy August 24-30, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy August 24-30, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: August 24, 2025 2:36 pm ET | Last Updated: August 26, 2025 10:44 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of August 24-30, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September 2 except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

Summer certainly is flying by — just one more week until Congress returns.

The space policy community has been busy, busy, busy all summer, though, and this week is no exception. It began at 2:45 am this morning with the launch of SpaceX’s 33rd cargo ship to the ISS.  SpX-33 is delivering supplies, equipment and experiments to the Expedition 73 crew and will dock tomorrow (Monday) morning about 7:30 am ET.

This Cargo Dragon is outfitted with a special propulsion module in its trunk to help reboost the ISS. The ISS’s orbit naturally decays due to atmospheric drag. Russia’s Progress cargo spacecraft and engines on the Zvezda module have been performing the reboost function since the beginning of the ISS program and will continue to do so. But NASA has become interested in what Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus and SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon can do in addition. They are quite limited in comparison, but getting better. The capability of this Cargo Dragon’s “boost trunk” is three times more than Cygnus.

SpaceX also is getting ready for the next Starship test flight, Integrated Flight Test-10 (IFT-10), from Starbase, TX. The one-hour launch window opens at 6:30 pm CENTRAL Time (7:30 pm Eastern). SpaceX’s webcast begins 30 minutes before liftoff. Weather is iffy.  [UPDATE, August 24, 7:15 pm ET — the launch was scrubbed for today. UPDATE 2, August 25, 8:15 am ET: They will try again today, August 25.  Same launch window: 6:30-7:30 Central Time/7:30-8:30 pm Eastern. The scrub was due to a ground-side LOX leak per an Elon Musk post on X.]

On August 21, SpaceX posted a stunning photo of Starbase as it looks today, a remarkable transformation from what it looked like in 2020.

Hopes are high IFT-10 will be successful. The last three failed.  IFT-7 and IFT-8 exploded over the Caribbean. IFT-9 made it further, but a failure on the main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser doomed the mission. A lot is riding on Starship.  SpaceX needs it not only for launching its own Starlink satellites to Earth orbit, but Starship is the Human Landing System for NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface in 2027.  SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has an even earlier goal — sending an uncrewed Starship to Mars at the end of next year. It’ll be another 26 months before the Earth and Mars are correctly aligned again if he misses the November-December 2026 window.

SpaceX recently got permission from the FAA to launch and land both stages — Starship and Super Heavy — up to 25 times a year at Starbase. SpaceX also wants to launch/land up to 44 times a year from Kennedy Space Center. The FAA will have four in-person meetings this week to gather public input on its Draft Environmental Impact Statement.  Two are on Tuesday (1:00-3:00 and 6:00-8:00 pm ET) at the Astronauts Memorial Foundation’s Center for Space Education at Kennedy Space Center.  The other two are on Thursday at the Radisson Resort Conference Center in Cape Canaveral at the same two times. A virtual meeting is on September 3.

Congress is getting ready for its return next Tuesday after the Labor Day holiday. The House Rules Committee set Thursday, August 28, as the deadline for Members to offer amendments to the FY2026 NDAA — the “Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026.” The bill combines the annual NDAA with the bipartisan SPEED Act introduced by HASC Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) to reform “DOD’s broken acquisition system.”  The House plans to take up the bill the second week of September (the Energy-Water appropriations bill is on tap for the first week). The Senate is moving first and took initial procedural steps before they left that will resume on September 2. The NDAA is the one piece of legislation that has passed every year since the first in 1961.

Other than the Energy-Water bill, we haven’t seen any schedules for appropriations action yet. The House Appropriations Committee postponed full committee markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill at the last minute when the House adjourned early in July. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved their CJS bill, but it hasn’t reached the floor yet. The Defense Approrpiations bill passed the House in July and cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee just before recess.  Both sides of Capitol Hill have a lot of work to do before FY2026 begins on October 1.

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.

Sunday, August 24

Monday, August 25

Monday-Wednesday, August 25-27

Tuesday, August 26

Wednesday, August 27

Wednesday-Friday, August 27-29

Thursday, August 28

 

Note: This article has been updated.

Note:  We deleted this paragraph from the top of the page after the advertised “technical update” didn’t happen and the launch was scrubbed since it was no longer relevant.

NOTE:  AS WE WENT TO PRESS THIS AFTERNOON (SUNDAY), SPACEX POSTED THAT THERE WILL BE A STARSHIP “TECHNICAL UPDATE” AT 5:00 PM TODAY AHEAD OF THE STARSHIP IFT-10 LAUNCH. PRESUMABLY THAT’s CENTRAL TIME (STARBASE’S LOCATION) SO 6:00 PM EASTERN. [Update: the event did not take place as scheduled. Whether it will be rescheduled is unknown. In addition, the launch was scrubbed.]

Last Updated: Aug 26, 2025 10:44 pm ET

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