What’s Happening in Space Policy January 19-25, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy January 19-25, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 19, 2025 12:44 pm ET | Last Updated: January 19, 2025 12:52 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of January 19-25, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

The week starts off with a federal holiday tomorrow (Monday) that not only is the annual commemoration of the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but the quadrennial presidential inauguration.

Official portrait of Donald J. Trump from his first term as President (2017-2021). He’ll be sworn in for a second term on Monday.

Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States at the U.S. Capitol at 12:00 pm ET, returning to the White House for a second term four years after his first (2017-2021).  JD Vance also will be sworn in as Vice President. Because of the bitter cold weather, the ceremony will take place inside the Rotunda of the Capitol. The parade will be held inside the Capital One Arena in downtown D.C. Ronald Reagan also had an inaugural ceremony in the Rotunda because of the cold for his second term on January 21, 1985, after being sworn in the day before during a private ceremony at the White House (January 20 was on a Sunday that year so they waited until Monday for the public event).

It is far too early to know what Trump will propose for civil, military and commercial space during this term although there certainly is a lot of speculation. We’ve written a bit about it along with Trump’s choice of Troy Meink for Secretary of the Air Force, and Jared Isaacman for NASA Administrator (including reaction from some Republicans), but much depends on how much money the government is willing to invest. Trump’s first budget request, whenever it’s submitted, will be a clue as to what he wants, but ultimately it’s up to Congress to appropriate the money and there’s a lot of disagreement even among Republicans on how to simultaneously reduce the national debt and pay for the programs they consider priorities.  It’ll be a long slog.

Two key officials who will be involved in advancing Trump’s commercial space agenda will be the Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Commerce who oversee the departments with regulatory oversight over most commercial space activities. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on Sean Duffy’s expected nomination to be SecTrans last week and will vote on it this Wednesday. Trump can’t officially nominate anyone until he’s sworn in. He’s chosen Howard Lutnick to be SecCommerce, but no hearing is scheduled on that yet.

Apart from that it’s a comparatively quiet week in space policy, a welcome respite from last week that featured the launch of two landers (one American, one Japanese) to the Moon, the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, and the seventh Starship Integrated Flight Test (IFT-7) in just a couple of days. New Glenn reached orbit but Blue Origin was not able to land the first stage on a barge in the Atlantic as planned, and Starship’s mission ended in an explosion over the Caribbean near the Turks and Caicos Islands (they did catch the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower, though). The FAA is requiring both companies to conduct mishap investigations before they can proceed with their next launches of those vehicles.

The lunar landers are doing well, though. The companies that own them, Firefly (U.S.) and ispace (Japan), are posting updates on their websites and X: @Firefly_Space and @ispace_inc.  Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 will land on March 2.  ispace’s Venture Moon mission with the RESILIENCE lander and TENACIOUS micro-rover is on a very different trajectory and won’t arrive until the end of May or early June.

Thursday is NASA’s Day of Remembrance, the annual commemoration of astronauts who perished “in the pursuit of space exploration and discovery for the benefit of humanity.” It’s held on the fourth Thursday of January, which is earlier than usual this year. Ordinarily it’s closer to the three days that are the focus of the event: January 27, January 28, and February 1.

  • On January 27, 1967, NASA astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, the crew of the first Apollo mission, died when a fire erupted inside their Apollo capsule during a pre-launch test.
  • On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff because an O-ring in one of the Solid Rocket Boosters failed, killing five NASA astronauts (Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnik, and Ron McNair), a payload specialist from Hughes Aircraft (Greg Jarvis) and a New Hampshire schoolteacher flying as a Teacher in Space (Christa McAuliffe).
  • On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry after a 16-day mission when superheated gases (plasma) entered a hole in the wing that had been created during liftoff by foam falling from the External Tank.  The wing deformed and aerodynamic forces tore the shuttle apart. All seven crew members perished: NASA astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Laurel Clark, and Kalpana Chawla, and Israeli Air Force pilot Ilan Ramon.
Apollo 1 crew, from left: Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee. Photo credit: NASA
Space Shuttle Challenger crew: from left – front row Mike Smith, Dick Scobee, Ron McNair; back row, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, Judy Resnik. Photo credit: NASA
Space Shuttle Columbia crew: from left – David Brown (NASA), Rick Husband (NASA), Laurel Clark (NASA), Kalpana Chawla (NASA), Michael Anderson (NASA), William McCool (NASA), Ilan Ramon (Israeli Air Force). Photo credit: NASA.

With the change in administrations tomorrow, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, both appointed by President Biden, will depart and NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, the highest ranking civil servant, will become Acting Administrator. Free will preside over the traditional wreath laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday. Several NASA centers will hold events, but the only one that’s usually livestreamed is the Astronaut Memorial Foundation’s at the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Complex. KSC airs it on their Facebook page.

At the same time as those events are taking place, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will be conducting a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. That starts at 8:15 am ET and is expected to last about 6.5 hours. Williams and Nick Hague successfully completed a spacewalk on Thursday, the first since two spacewalks were scrubbed last summer.

This Thursday, Williams will be out again with her Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test partner Butch Wilmore. The two became members of Crew-9 last fall along with Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov after NASA decided Starliner’s propulsion system might not be safe enough to bring them back to Earth. Crew-9 was supposed to return to Earth next month, but it’s been extended, this time because of SpaceX.  Their replacements, Crew-10, will use a brand new SpaceX Crew Dragon and it’s not ready yet.

Other events this week include the Space Foundation’s “Innovate Space: Finance Forum” in Coral Gables, FL Wednesday-Thursday; a Washington Space Business Roundtable webinar on “What’s in Store for Space in 2025” with four top space reporters (Mikayla Easley from DefenseScoop, Jeff Foust from Space News, Theresa Hitchens from Breaking Defense and Joey Roulette from Reuters) on Wednesday; and a Secure World Foundation/Meridian International Center seminar on Friday on “Celestial Navigation: Space Essentials for New Actors” with participants from SWF, Meridian, True Anomaly, the Embassy of New Zealand, Umbra Space, and the U.S. State Department’s Office of Space Affairs.

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, January 20

Wednesday, January 22

Wednesday-Thursday, January 22-23

Thursday, January 23

Friday, January 24

Last Updated: Jan 19, 2025 12:52 pm ET

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