What’s Happening in Space Policy February 23-March 2, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy February 23-March 2, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: February 23, 2025 5:48 pm ET | Last Updated: February 23, 2025 6:22 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of February 23-March 2, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Capitol Hill remains focused on three topics: confirming presidential nominations (Senate); coming up with a Budget Resolution that will lead to a reconciliation bill to advance President Trump’s agenda (the Senate passed the first bill of their two-bill strategy last week, but Trump is backing the House’s approach to “one big beautiful bill” that may or may not be voted on this week); and both chambers are talking about, but not yet acting upon, finalizing FY2025 appropriations (the Continuing Resolution expires on March 14).

Re nominations, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday for Michael Kratsios to head the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  He was the U.S. Chief Technology Officer within OSTP in the first Trump presidency. OSTP plays a significant role in coordinating U.S. civil/commercial space policy whether or not there also is a National Space Council (we haven’t heard anything about whether Trump will use the Space Council mechanism this time), so it’s an important position for the space community.

We haven’t heard a date for Jared Isaacman’s nomination hearing to be NASA Administrator, but he’s been in town to meet with appropriate people.


Isaacman has to persuade some Republican Senators he’s the right guy for the job because he donated to Democratic as well as Republican politicians and supported DEI initiatives in both words and actions (as shown by his choice of crewmates). Also, the Wall Street Journal had an article on Friday asserting he wrote bad checks in the 2008-2010 time period. But Trump has been quite successful in getting his nominees through.  In the meantime, Janet Petro seems to be doing an effective job as acting administrator, including convincing the White House not to fire NASA’s probationary workers.

 Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-FL) will hold a hearing on NASA’s Artemis program on Wednesday.

Over on the House side, the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on NASA’s Artemis program on Wednesday. The subcommittee is chaired by Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), who succeeded Bill Posey representing the district that includes Kennedy Space Center.

No NASA or other Trump Administration witnesses are on the panel, though. Instead, two veterans of efforts over the past two decades to get Americans back on the Moon will be there: Scott Pace and Dan Dumbacher. Both played critical roles at NASA in the Constellation program during the second George W. Bush Administration. Dumbacher stayed at NASA and led the early years of the congressionally-directed SLS/Orion program during the first part of the Obama Administration before leaving for academia (Purdue), later AIAA, and now back at Purdue.  Pace left the government for academia (GW Space Policy Institute), returned to serve as Executive Secretary of the National Space Council during Trump’s first term where Artemis originated, and then returned to GW.  Should be fascinating to hear from them about the evolution of Artemis and where they think the program should be heading now, even if we don’t know what the Trump Administration is planning.

A NASA representative will be at a CSIS seminar about Artemis tomorrow (Monday) afternoon, however. Amit Kshatriya, Deputy Associate Administrator for the Moon to Mars program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, will discuss “Charting the Next Year” with John Neal from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Thomas Culligan from Ascent Public Policy & Strategic Communications. CSIS’s Clayton Swope is the moderator. As far as we know, Kshatriya is the first NASA official to speak publicly about the Artemis program since the new Trump Administration took office.  Should be interesting.

We’re including next Sunday, March 2, in this edition of What’s Happening because Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander will arrive on the lunar surface very early Sunday morning at 3:45 am ET before we publish our next edition. NASA and Firefly will livestream the landing beginning at 2:30 am ET.

Blue Ghost Mission 1 fully assembled. Credit: Firefly

It’s a big week for lunar landers. Before Blue Ghost lands, Intuitive Machines is expected to launch its second lunar lander, IM-2. The four-day launch window opens Wednesday evening. The date and time haven’t been officially announced, but the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s website shows 7:02 pm ET as the launch time on Wednesday if it goes that day.  Two IM-2 pre-launch media telecons are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

IM-1 landed a year ago and though it was not trouble-free, NASA and IM count it as a success.  IM-2 is delivering a fascinating set of payloads from NASA and others. They include NASA’s PRIME-1 drill that will dig down 1-meter into the subsurface to collect samples that will be analyzed by a mass spectrometer right there on the Moon.  IM has a great video showing the mission from beginning to end including key payloads like PRIME-1 and IM’s Micro-Rover Hopper (named Grace) that will hop over to a nearby crater and then down into and (hopefully) back out again.  Nokia is providing a 4G/LTE Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS) so the hopper can communicate back to the lander, Athena, which will rely the data to Earth. Lunar Outpost also has a tiny rover, Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), that will communicate via LSCS as it travels on a multi-day journey across the lunar South Pole to map the area.

The Moon’s a busy place. Blue Ghost and Japan’s ispace’s Venture Moon launched on the same rocket on January 15 so once IM-2 launches, there will be three landers enroute to the Moon at the same time.  In order of arrival, Blue Ghost is scheduled to land on March 2, IM’s Athena on March 6, and ispace’s Venture Moon in late May or early June. They’re all taking different routes, which is why the landing dates are so varied. IM-2 is on a fast track, landing only about a week after launch.

One last thing we’ll mention is that there are rumors SpaceX may launch Starship on its next test flight, IFT-8, this week, perhaps Wednesday.  SpaceX hasn’t said anything yet so we’re not including it on our Calendar, but will add it if they do.

And as a reminder, NASA’s two Crew-10 briefings that were scheduled for tomorrow were postponed to March, closer to launch.

Those and other events we know about as of February 23 are shown below. Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Sunday-Tuesday, February 23-25

Monday, February 24

Tuesday, February 25

Wednesday, February 26

Wednesday-Thursday, February 26-27

Thursday, February 27

Friday, February 28

  • Launch of NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH, Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA

Saturday, March 1

Saturday, March 1-Saturday, March 8

Sunday, March 2

Last Updated: Feb 23, 2025 6:22 pm ET

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