What’s Happening in Space Policy January 12-18, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of January 12-18, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

It’s a busy week on Capitol Hill as hearings get underway on expected nominees for important posts in the next Trump Administration. Three especially interesting launches also are on tap, though launch dates are nothing if not fluid.

Starting in Congress, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday on Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense — Pete Hegseth. On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will have a hearing on Sean Duffy’s expected nomination as Secretary of Transportation. The Department of Transportation includes the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

Trump cannot formally nominate anyone until he is sworn in on January 20, but Senate rules allow them to consider expected nominations before that to ensure top positions are filled expeditiously. Many hearings are scheduled this week for expected nominees, but these are the two with the most direct effect on space activities. Hegseth and Duffy were hosts on Fox News and Fox Business, respectively, until Trump named them as his picks for these positions. An Army National Guard veteran, Hegseth is controversial both for his views about the military, especially his opposition to women in combat roles, and his personal conduct. An attorney, Duffy represented Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives from 2011-2019. He later joined Fox Business and so far does not appear to have raised any major concerns.

As for the three especially interesting launches, the dates for two of the three have changed just in the hours we’ve been writing this edition of What’s Happening, so stay tuned to our Calendar in case there are more changes ahead.

Currently, the first will be the long-awaited launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn on its first flight. The rocket is on the pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL, but weather is not cooperating. Like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Glenn has a reusable first stage that will land on a barge — named Jacklyn after Jeff Bezos’s mother — at sea, so the weather has to be OK both at the launch site and the landing site. High sea states scrubbed the launch planned for early this morning, so they will try early tomorrow morning, Monday, January 13. The three hour window opens at 1:00 am ET. Weather permitting, people along the East Coast may be able to see it. [UPDATE, January 13, 3:10 am ET: the launch was scrubbed due to a technical issue. See our Calendar entry for more information.]

Next, if all goes according to plan, will be a Falcon 9 launch early Wednesday morning of not one but two lunar landers. Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 and ispace’s SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon are sharing the ride, but otherwise are unrelated.

Firefly’s mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and its first attempt at a lunar landing. NASA will have a briefing on Monday about the NASA payloads. On Tuesday, NASA, Firefly and SpaceX will hold a “lunar delivery readiness” briefing. NASA and SpaceX will livestream the launch beginning at 12:30 am ET Wednesday for the launch at 1:11 am ET.

Japanese lunar lander company ispace is making its second attempt to land on the Moon. The first, HAKUTO-R M1, was going very well until the final moments in April 2023 when it crashed onto the lunar surface due to a software error.  ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said a pre-launch briefing on Wednesday (EST) that failure is a way to learn and move forward and with this mission they hope to “convey to everyone across Japan the importance of perseverance and embracing challenges.” The mission includes the RESILIENCE lander and the TENACIOUS mini-rover, developed by ispace’s European subsidiary, ispace-Europe.  TENACIOUS will collect lunar samples under a mission authorization license from Luxembourg and ownership of the samples (not the samples themselves) will be transferred to NASA under a 2020 contract. ispace will provide its own livestream of the launch in both English and Japanese starting at 12:20 am ET (2:20 pm in Japan).

Third on the list as of this moment is SpaceX’s Starship Integrated Flight Test-7 (IFT-7), which just slipped from Monday to Wednesday, January 15.  SpaceX has made a lot of technical changes since IFT-6 in November 2024 as we described last week and they will deploy payloads — 10 Starlink simulators — for the first time on this test flight, though they will be on the same suborbital trajectory as the rocket and also will land in the Indian Ocean.

Lots of other interesting meetings and conferences are happening this week including the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in New Orleans and the American Astronomical Society Winter Meeting in National Harbor, MD.

We’ll quickly highlight just two others. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall will discuss his new report on the “Department of the Air Force in 2050” with CSIS’s Kari Bingen during a webinar tomorrow (Monday) morning.  The report “lays out a vision of what the Department of the Air Force should look like in 2050 and the air and space capabilities the nation will need.”  On Tuesday, Dean Cheng will talk about his book “China and the New Moon Race” in a conversation with Scott Pace at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. That meeting is in-person and will be webcast.

We’ll also mention that on Thursday NASA will attempt its first ISS spacewalk since two were successively scrubbed last summer. The first, on June 13, was canceled because astronaut Matt Dominick experienced “spacesuit discomfort.” Then on June 24, an umbilical connecting astronaut Tracy Dyson’s spacesuit to the ISS began spewing water just as they were about to exit the airlock. Because they were already in the airlock with the hatch open, NASA actually counts this as a 31-minute spacewalk even though they were never outside. Dyson and Dominick have since returned to Earth. This spacewalk will be conducted by Nick Hague and Suni Williams, now both members of Crew-9 although Williams arrived aboard the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test in June 2024. Her mission, together with Butch Wilmore, was extended after NASA’s concerns about Starliner’s propulsion system led them to return it to Earth empty. Both became members of Crew-9 and Williams is now ISS commander. Crew-9’s return to Earth was recently extended from February to the end of March or early April because their replacements, Crew-10, will use a brand new SpaceX Crew Dragon and the spacecraft isn’t ready yet.

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, January 12

• NASA Exoplanets Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG), National Harbor, MD/virtual, continued from January 11 (in conjunction with the AAS Winter Meeting, part of the meeting is joint with other PAGs)
• NASA Physics of the Cosmos Program Analysis Group (PhysPAG), National Harbor, MD (in conjunction with the AAS Winter Meeting), 9:00 am-6:00 pm ET (part of the meeting is joint with other PAGs)
• NASA Cosmic Origins Program Analysis Group (COPAG), National Harbor, MD (in conjunction with the AAS Winter Meeting), 9:00 am-4:00 pm ET (part of the meeting is joint with other PAGs)

Sunday-Thursday, January 12-16

• American Astronomical Society (AAS) Winter Meeting, National Harbor, MD
• American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA

Monday, January 13

• Launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn-1, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL, three-hour launch window opens 1:00 am ET  SCRUBBED
• SecAF Frank Kendall on the Department of the Air Force 2050 (CSIS), virtual, 9:30-10:15 am ET
• NASA Media Telecon on Upcoming Firefly Blue Ghost-1 Launch, virtual, 2:30 pm ET
• FAA Virtual Public Meeting on Increasing SpaceX Launch/Landing Cadence at Boca Chica, TX, virtual, 6:30-8:30 pm ET

Tuesday, January 14

• SASC Hearing on Expected Nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 9:30 am ET (webcast)
• NASA/Firefly/SpaceX Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Delivery Readiness Briefing, virtual 1:00 pm ET
• Book Launch: China and the New Moon Race by Dean Cheng, George Washington University Space Policy Institute, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC, 3:00-4:30 pm ET (webcast)

Wednesday, January 15

• Launch of Firefly and ispace Lunar Landers, Kennedy Space Center, FL, 1:11 am ET
  • ispace webcast begins 12:20 am ET (2:20 pm Japan Standard Time)
  • NASA/SpaceX webcast begins 12:30 am ET (NASA+/Spacex.com)
• The EO Challenge: Safeguarding Spectrum for a Sustainable Future (ESPI-EARSC), Brussels, Belgium, 14:30-18:00 CET
• Senate Commerce Committee Hearing on Expected Nomination of Sean Duffy to be Secretary of Transportation, 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET
• Trump 2.0-How Will the Space Sector Change? (Space News), virtual, 1:00 pm ET
• Starship IFT-7, Boca Chica, TX, 5:00 pm ET (livestreamed)

Thursday, January 16

• U.S. Spacewalk (Hague, Williams) at ISS, 7:00 am ET (NASA coverage begins 5:30 am ET)

 

This article has been updated.