What’s Happening in Space Policy January 26-February 1, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy January 26-February 1, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 26, 2025 4:32 pm ET | Last Updated: January 27, 2025 5:33 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of January 26-February 1, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House is in recess except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

The nation’s capital is abuzz reacting to all of the Executive Orders (EOs) and other directives from the new Trump White House in the past six days, but their impact on space policy is difficult to assess at this point.

Most of the EOs apply to all departments and agencies including the four primarily involved in space policy — DOD, DOC, DOT and NASA — and affect internal operations like eliminating offices and personnel associated with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA). They could have downstream impacts especially in terms of hiring and retention, but nothing that seems to directly alter ongoing programs. Similarly Friday night’s dismissal of many Inspectors General could affect independent oversight of space activities, but the White House hasn’t issued a formal statement identifying who was fired. All the information is from news reports. DOD’s IG was one of them, but no mention has been made of NASA’s.  Long-time NASA IG Paul Martin transferred to another agency last year. His deputy, George Scott, took over on an acting basis, but left at the end of 2024 for a job in the private sector. According to the Council of Inspectors General of Integrity and Efficiency, Robert Steinau is NASA’s Acting IG (he’s listed as “Senior Official” on the NASA OIG website).  We haven’t been able to find out this weekend whether his job was affected. [UPDATE, January 27: NASA confirms that Steinau is the Acting IG.]

It’s simply too early to understand the implications of all these changes. The EOs are posted on the White House website for anyone who wants to peruse them.

[For anyone looking for what used to be on the White House website during the Biden Administration — like the National Space Council — all of that was transferred to bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov.]

We’ll be keeping an eye out for any new EOs and directives that might be issued this week that could impact topics within the purview of this website.

Howard Lutnick (photo credit: Cantor). The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of Commerce on Wednesday.

The only event in Congress this week directly related to space policy is Wednesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on billionaire Howard Lutnick’s nomination to be Secretary of Commerce. Lutnick is Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald “a pioneer of the financial services industry since our foundation” according to its website, and co-chaired Trump’s White House transition team. According to Investopedia, more than 650 Cantor Fitzgerald employees died in the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attack, including Lutnick’s brother, Gary.

Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) praised the nomination saying “Mr. Lutnick will play a key role in unleashing unprecedented innovation and ensuring our nation’s job creators are well equipped to expand opportunities for good-paying jobs.”  We haven’t seen anything about Lutnick’s views on space innovation and the space economy, but perhaps he’ll have something to share at the hearing. The Department of Commerce is the parent of NOAA and its Office of Space Commerce.

Elsewhere, the big event is Commercial Space Week in Orlando. It’s a collection of three separate but related conferences:

  • Global Spaceport Alliance’s Spaceport Summit (Monday),
  • Space Mobility Conference and Expo (Tuesday), and
  • SpaceCom|Space Congress (Wednesday-Thursday)

All together they promise “5,000+ attendees” from “80+ countries” and “200+ speakers.”  All three conferences have stand-out sessions, far too many to highlight here so we’ll pick just two.  Space Mobility has a panel on Tuesday on “Expanding Launch Capacity for Assured Access to Space” with former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (now Managing Partner at the Artemis Group), George Nield (Global Spaceport Alliance), Mark Bontrager (U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command), Bradley Smith (NASA Director of Launch Services for Space Operations), and Lars Hoffman (Blue Origin). And SpaceCom has a panel on Wednesday with an update on Artemis II with Brad McCain from Amentum (now in charge of Exploration Ground Systems at KSC having merged with Jacobs’ Critical Mission Solutions), Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and Matthew Ramsey from NASA, John Shannon from Boeing, and Kirk Shireman from Lockheed Martin. But those are just samples of the many excellent sessions all week.

Commercial Space Week will take place in Orlando Monday-Thursday.

Two conferences overseas may be of interest.  Tomorrow (Monday), the annual Ilan Ramon International Space Conference takes place in Tel Aviv, Israel, honoring the life and legacy of Israeli Air Force pilot Ilan Ramon who perished in the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. Tuesday and Wednesday, the European Union and ESA hold the 17th European Space Conference in Brussels, portions of which will be webcast including a “press point” Tuesday morning with ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and EU Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius. That will be livestreamed on ESA TV. It’s early in the U.S. (3:30 am EST), but ESA does a good job of posting replays pretty quickly.

Two other events we’ll highlight are Blue Origin’s New Shepard-29 (NS-29) launch from West Texas on Tuesday and a NASA media telecon on science results from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission on Wednesday.

NS-29 won’t carry any passengers, but has a particularly interesting mission — spinning the capsule to mimic lunar gravity. Of the 30 experiments on board, 29 will test lunar-related technologies during 2 minutes of simulated lunar gravity, which is one-sixth that of Earth.  Blue Origin says the experiments involve six technology areas: “in-situ resource utilization, dust mitigation, advanced habitation systems, sensors and instrumentation, small spacecraft technologies, and entry descent and landing.”  The launch window opens at 10:00 am CENTRAL Time (11:00 am Eastern).

As for OSIRIS-REx (O-Rex), it brought back a motherlode of samples — more than expected — from the asteroid Bennu in September 2023.  After struggling to get the sample container open, in January 2024 scientists finally were able to retrieve all 121.6 grams (4.29 ounces) of Bennu material for analysis. Some of that analysis is being conducted at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington, D.C.  Goddard’s Danny Glavin and Jason Dworkin will brief the media on their findings along with Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Joining them are TimMcCoy from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum in London.

We’ll also note that the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston is holding a two-day workshop (Tuesday-Wednesday) on “Itokawa and the Dawn of Asteroidal Sample Return.” O-Rex is actually the third spacecraft to bring back samples from an asteroid. The first two were Japanese: Hayabusa returned 1,500 grains from asteroid Itokawa in 2010 and Hayabusa2 brought back 5.4 grams from Ryugu in 2020.  This workshop originally was planned to take place in Houston with a virtual option, but the website now says it’s virtual only because of the time zone challenges.

We’d be remiss not to mention two important telecons: Boeing’s fourth quarter 2024 financial results on Tuesday — they’ve already said they’re taking more losses on Starliner (“Commercial Crew” in their press release), and NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel on Thursday — this time of year they usually share the major concerns they put in their annual report to NASA that’s submitted in January.

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 27

Monday-Thursday, January 27-30

Tuesday, January 28

Tuesday-Wednesday, January 28-29

Wednesday, January 29

Thursday, January 30

Thursday-Friday, January 30-31

 

This article has been updated, correcting Brad (not Bruce) McCain’s name as the panelist from Amentum at Commercial Space Week.

Last Updated: Jan 27, 2025 5:33 pm ET

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