What’s Happening in Space Policy December 14-31, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy December 14-31, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: December 14, 2025 5:59 pm ET | Last Updated: December 14, 2025 10:34 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the rest of 2025, December 14-31, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

This is a really busy week as everyone tries to finish what they can before another year begins, but then it’s deafeningly quiet until the New Year, so we’re wrapping the rest of 2025 into this edition of What’s Happening.

The race to get things done includes Congress, of course. This is the last week in session for both the House and Senate.

First off, the Senate appears likely to confirm Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator this week. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) took the initial procedural step on Thursday.

NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman could be confirmed by the Senate this week.

Isaacman may not have universal support as evidenced by the Senate Commerce Committee vote last Monday where 10 of the 13 Democrats voted no, but he’s expected to be confirmed. Assuming he is, the final step will be swearing in, which can happen very quickly.

We know better than to try forecasting anything Congress might do, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that NASA might finally have a Senate-confirmed Administrator by the end of the week, 11 months after Bill Nelson’s departure. As good a job as Janet Petro did and Sean Duffy is doing as Acting Administrators, nothing compares with having a presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed person at the top of an agency in order to get things done in Washington.

Having an enacted appropriations bill is good, too, but it’s clear no additional bills will get through Congress this year (only three of the 12 have, none space-related). The expiring health care subsidies that led to the longest government shutdown in history is still the main topic of conversation on Capitol Hill. The Senate defeated both Republican and Democratic bills on the subject last week, but there still are some hoping for a last minute deal of some sort. The health care subsidies expire on January 1, whereas the Continuing Resolution is good until January 30, so the health care debate seems to have priority. Final appropriations for Defense, NASA, NOAA and many other agencies continue on hold essentially at their current spending levels. NASA’s been told to use the levels in the House Appropriations Committee’s version of the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill for now, which is a lot better than what the White House proposed.  But it’s not over till it’s over.

In addition to clearing nominations like Isaacman’s, the Senate wants to pass the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week. It was moving along smartly last week, passing the House (as S. 1071) by a vote of 312-112. But some influential people — National Transportation Safety  Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy, Duffy (who is Secretary of Transportation as well as Acting NASA Administrator), and Senate Commerce Committee Chair and Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) — suddenly became aware of a section of the bill (section 373) that would undo rules implemented after the horrific collision between a military helicopter and a commercial airliner at Reagan National Airport in January. Homendy issued a blistering rebuke (which is rare for an NTSB chair) over the provision and how no one consulted the NTSB about it. Duffy praised Homendy and vowed the FAA will not allow fixed wing aircraft and helicopters to cross in that airspace, period. Cruz and Cantwell also apparently were blindsided. They had just gotten legislation, the ROTOR Act, through the Senate Commerce Committee to bolster the new rules.

All of that is outside the remit of this website except to the extent it affects passage of the NDAA with its many provisions about national security space. Cruz and Cantwell have filed an amendment to the NDAA to replace section 373 with their ROTOR Act. If the Senate amends the House-passed bill, it will have to go back to the House. Both chambers must agree on identical text. The NDAA is considered “must pass” legislation, and it has passed every year without fail since the first in 1961, so that puts pressure on both chambers to find a solution before week’s end.

One other event on Capitol Hill we’ll note is a House SS&T Investigations and Oversight subcommittee hearing on Thursday on implementation of research security aspects of the CHIPS and Science Act and National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 (NSPM-33) from the first Trump Administration. The CHIPS and Science Act passed Congress in July 2022 and focused on semi-conductor manufacturing and scientific research to help the U.S. compete with China, but it also incorporated the most recent NASA Authorization Act. The focus of the hearing is research security and Daniel Evans, NASA’s SMD Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for Research, will represent the agency. Also testifying are Rebecca Keiser, Acting Chief of Staff at NSF, Patricia Valdez, Chief Extramural Research Integrity Officer at NIH, and Jay Tilden, Director of the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at DOE.

Thursday’s a busy day.  The launch window for Blue Origin’s next New Shepard flight, NS-37, opens at 9:30 am ET. The hearing is at 10:00 am ET, as is a CSIS webinar recapping what happened in space in 2025 and a look ahead to 2026. In the evening, NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG) will have a Town Hall meeting at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in New Orleans that will be livestreamed (7:00 pm ET). AGU is meeting all week.

The NS-37 flight is sparking a lot of interest because the six passengers include ESA aerospace and mechatronics engineer Michi Benthaus who is confined to a wheelchair due to a mountain biking accident in 2018. She’ll become the first person to fly in space who requires a wheelchair on Earth. Accompanying her is a very familiar name to readers of this website — Hans Koenigsmann, one of the earliest SpaceX employees who rose to become Vice President for Build and Reliability before retiring in 2021.

New Shepard-37 (NS-37) crew. Credit: Blue Origin

Eric Berger of Ars Technica interviewed Koenigsmann in October about how it all came about. Blue Origin will webcast the launch beginning 40 minutes before liftoff.

Also on the human spaceflight front, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will answer questions about his 8-month tour aboard the International Space Station on Friday. He and his Russian colleagues Sergey Ryzhikov and Aleksey Zubritsky returned to Earth on December 9. The news conference will livestream on NASA’s YouTube channel. Kim posted a delightful photo yesterday of himself and a new addition to his household who arrived while he was in space.

Many other great events as usual, too many to highlight here. But we are intrigued by the first virtual Reuters event we’ve heard about that focuses on space.  On Tuesday, Reuters will hold a webinar on “The Collision Course: Is Space Traffic Management Dead, and Will Europe Kill the Commercial Dream?”  That’s a lot to cover, but they’ve got an impressive panel: Josef Koller, Amazon Kuiper; Audrey Schaffer, Slingshot Aerospace; Chris Kunstadler, Triton Space LLC; with Mike French, Space Policy Group, as moderator. All have extensive experience in government and private sector roles.

At the moment, we have nothing on our Calendar after Friday until the New Year begins, though that could always change. We’ll be keeping an eye out for new events and please do keep checking back on SpacePolicyOnline.com for articles we post.

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-Friday, December 15-19

Tuesday, December 16

Tuesday-Thursday, December 16-18

Wednesday, December 17

Thursday, December 18

Friday, December 19

Last Updated: Dec 14, 2025 10:34 pm ET

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