What’s Happening in Space Policy July 6-12, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of July 6-12, 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

After the marathon sessions last week, forgoing most of their July 4 week-long break to finish the reconciliation bill, the Senate will continue to be hard at work this week, but the House decided to take the week off, giving them just two more weeks before their August recess begins on July 28 (through September 2). The Senate is scheduled to be in recess from August 4-September 2. There’s a lot to do between now and then.

This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will begin marking up their FY2026 bills. The Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that funds NASA, NOAA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) is up on Thursday along with two others (Agriculture and Legislative Branch).

The CJS subcommittee has not held hearings on NASA or NSF. NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce (DOC) and there was a DOC hearing on June 4. Several Senators asked questions about NOAA, but mostly about fisheries and the National Weather Service, not space.

The full budget request for NOAA hadn’t been submitted at the time of the hearing. In fact, NOAA’s detailed budget just came out a few days ago. Like NASA and NSF, NOAA is targeted for a deep cut — 27 percent — including elimination of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Some OAR programs would shift elsewhere in NOAA, but many would be terminated.

Another hard hit program is NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce (OSC). Cut from $65 million to $10 million, the request would terminate funding for the Tracking Coordination System for Space (TraCCS) that OSC has been diligently working on since the first Trump Administration issued Space Policy Directive-3.  Section 5 of SPD-3 directed DOC to develop an Open Architecture Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Data Repository (OADR), which is now TraCSS. TraCSS started beta testing last September and was updated in May. The budget request says “private industry has proven that they have the capability and the business model to provide civil operators with SSA data and STM services using the releasable portion of the DOD catalog” and the intent of SPD-3 has been satisfied.  By contrast, the SAFE Orbit Act (S. 428, Cornyn) was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee on March 12 to formally authorize OSC to build TraCSS. So far Congress has supported TraCSS through appropriations, but not with a companion policy-oriented authorization bill. This is it. The bill has seven bipartisan co-sponsors.

The House Appropriations Committee has marked up several bills and was scheduled to mark up their CJS bill this week, but it’s been postponed. No new date was set. There haven’t been any hearings on NASA or NSF there either. Their DOC hearing was the day after the Senate’s and there was little discussion of NOAA.

Speaking of NOAA, it doesn’t have a confirmed administrator at the moment (Laura Grimm is Acting). On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Neil Jacobs to be NOAA Administrator and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere.

An atmospheric scientist, Jacobs was acting NOAA Administrator in the first Trump Administration and nominated to be Administrator back then, but the 2019 Sharpiegate incident interfered. He was cited by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) for violating NOAA’s scientific integrity policy and although the Commerce Committee approved his nomination by voice vote, a separate report from DOC’s Inspector General had a harsher assessment and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), then as now the top Democrat on the committee, subsequently opposed the nomination. It was never voted on by the Senate.

The hearing will also consider the nomination of Taylor Jordan to be Assistant Secretary for Environmental Observation and Prediction (Steve Volz is Acting). Jordan was a senior policy advisor at NOAA in the first Trump Administration and more recently has been a lobbyist at Innovative Federal Strategies.  A third nomination is for Harry Kumar to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs.

Separately, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) will mark up the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week.  Except for the Personnel Subcommittee, all the subcommittee and full committee markups are closed to the public, however. The subcommittee markups are tomorrow and Tuesday morning. Full committee mark up begins Tuesday afternoon and they’ve reserved the rest of the week in case they need it. [UPDATE: The committee updated the schedule and all the markups will be between July 8-10.] Stay tuned for news towards the end of the week. Senators Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) introduced the Golden Dome for America Act on June 24 that they want to incorporate into the NDAA.

Lots of other great meetings this week, including Beyond Earth Institute’s Friday webinar on “You’re Gonna Need Juice for That: Establishing Infrastructure in Space,” but we will highlight just one more.

NASA will hold pre-launch briefings on Thursday for the next crew heading to the International Space Station, Crew-11.  Although there’s been talk of the possibility of reducing the size of crews and frequency of cargo flights to the ISS, this is a typical four-person crew: two NASA astronauts, one from Japan, and one from Russia.

Commander Zena Cardman was bumped off Crew-9 when it had to slim down from four to two crew members so Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams could use two of the seats to return to Earth instead of coming back on the Starliner Crew Flight Test. Mike Fincke is Crew-11’s pilot. He had been slated to pilot the first operational Starliner mission, Starliner-1, but with Starliner’s schedule uncertain he was switched to this flight. Joining them are JAXA’s Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos’s Oleg Platonov.  The launch date hasn’t been set yet, but is expected later this month or in early August.

Cardman and Platonov are rookies. Fincke is launching to the ISS for the fourth time. The first two were on Russian Soyuz spacecraft (TMA-4 in 2004, TMA-13 in 2008-2009) and he was ISS commander on that second mission (Expedition 18). He went again in 2011 on the next-to-last U.S. space shuttle mission, STS-134.

Yui spent 142 days on the ISS in 2015 and controlled the robotics for berthing Japan’s HTV-5 (Kounotori) cargo ship. Japan flew a total of nine of the original HTVs between 2009 and 2020 and is getting ready to launch the first of an advanced version, HTV-X, on the new H3 rocket. If the schedule holds for HTV-X1’s launch later this year, Yui may get to do it again.

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.

Tuesday-Thursday, July 8-10

• Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Subcommittee and Full Committee markup of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), various times and locations, all but one subcommittee markup (Personnel) are closed [Update: the committee updated the schedule and all the markups will be July 8-10 instead of July 7-11.]

Wednesday, July 9

• Human and Biological Science Panel of the Committee on Non-Polar Lunar Destinations (Natl Acad), National Academy of Sciences building, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC, open sessions 9:30 am-3:00 pm ET (livestreamed)  [corrected date]
• Senate Commerce Cmte Hearing on NOAA Nominations, 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• Future Space 2025, Kennedy Caucus Room, Russell Senate Office Building, 1:00-4:50 pm ET continuing at Hogan Lovells, 555 13th St, NW, at 5:30 pm ET

Thursday, July 10

• Senate Appropriations Markup of Commerce-Justice-Science (incl NASA and NOAA) Bill, 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 9:30 am ET (webcast)
• NASA Briefings on Upcoming Crew-11 Launch, JSC (watch on NASA’s YouTube channel)
  • 12:00 pm ET: Mission Overview News Conference
  • 2:00 pm ET: Crew News Conference
• Schriever Spacepower Series with STARCOM Leadership (Mitchell Inst), virtual, 1:30 pm ET
• ISU-DC Space Café with Bradley Cheetham Advanced Space, 2101 L St., NW, Washington, DC, 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Friday, July 11

• Establishing Infrastructure in Space (BEI), virtual, 1:00-2:30 pm ET

 

Correction: Although the House schedule still shows that it is in session this week and the list of committee meetings on Congress.gov shows many this week (as least as of Sunday morning), in fact the House decided to take this week off except for pro forma sessions. We’ve corrected the opening paragraphs.