What’s Happening in Space Policy June 7-13, 2026

What’s Happening in Space Policy June 7-13, 2026

By Marcia Smith | Posted: June 7, 2026 3:48 pm ET | Last Updated: June 7, 2026 3:59 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 7-13, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

NASA will announce the crew for the Artemis III mission on Tuesday morning at Johnson Space Center. Under the reconfigured Artemis plan, this will be an earth-orbiting mission to test rendezvous and docking procedures with the Blue Origin and SpaceX Human Landing Systems (HLSs) needed to put American astronauts on the lunar surface before Chinese taikonauts arrive and preferably before President Trump leaves office.

NASA will reveal the Artemis III crew on Tuesday. They won’t fly around the Moon like Artemis II (shown here before their April 1, 2026 flight), but stay in earth orbit to test rendezvous and docking with the lunar surface Human Landing Systems being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has been hoping to launch Artemis III by mid-2027 and was sounding optimistic that both companies would have “pathfinder” versions of their HLSs ready by then. Last week’s explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket during a pre-launch test, significantly damaging the launch pad, throws some uncertainty into the equation, however. Development of the Blue Moon MK2 lander can continue, but New Glenn is the rocket they plan to use to put it in orbit. Blue Origin not only needs to determine and fix the root cause of the explosion, but repair the pad, the only one they have. They have other NASA contracts to deliver uncrewed landers (Blue Moon MK1) to the Moon using New Glenn starting this year as well. Blue Origin is optimistic they’ll be launching again by the end of this year, but it seems a tall order. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Starship IFT-12 suborbital test flight on May 22 was largely a success, but all the Starship test flights so far have been suborbital. It will be interesting to watch if they try for orbit on the next launch. (As a side note, the long-awaited SpaceX IPO is on Friday.) Neither company has shared much information about the status of their HLS systems. Perhaps the announcement of the crew on Tuesday will trigger something.

Here in Washington, Congress continues to work on authorizations and appropriations for national defense this week, though mostly in closed sessions. Only one subcommittee meets in open session during the Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC’s) markup of the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) tomorrow through Wednesday. That’s the Personnel Subcommittee on June 9. All the other subcommittee plus the full committee markups are closed. Their House counterparts on HASC hold full committee markup in public view over many, many hours. They completed their markup of H.R. 8800 last week at midnight June 4-June 5, approving it on a 44-12 vote.

In appropriations action, the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the request for the Department of the Air Force, which incorporates the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, on Tuesday morning. The hearing will be webcast on the committee’s website.

The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee completed their hearings already and will mark up the DOD budget request on Thursday. That’s another closed session. Full committee markup is scheduled for June 24.

As for NASA’s FY2027 funding, the House Appropriations Committee approved their Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill almost a month ago. The Senate Appropriations Committee was getting ready to mark up CJS and two other bills (Agriculture and Legislative Branch) last week, but postponed it. We haven’t heard a new date. CJS is the one of those three that’s especially controversial because it includes the Department of Justice. Many Democrats and some Republicans want to put in law that the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund sought by DOJ on behalf of President Trump cannot be resurrected. It was omitted from the reconciliation bill that passed the Senate early Friday morning, but efforts to permanently ban it failed. The topic is well outside the remit of this website and we mention it only because it could affect the fate of the CJS bill overall. We’ll keep an eye out for when the markup is rescheduled.

Lots of other events this week, of course, including the Berlin Air Show June 10-14 (ESA has an event on June 10 that’ll be livestreamed at 4:15 am ET), a three-day virtual meeting of the Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) that has found a way to continue operations even though NASA no longer is allowed to provide financial support, and a Beyond Earth Institute webinar entitled “On to Mars: Are We Ready?”

Finally, as far as we know JAXA is still on track for the H3 test flight on Tuesday night EDT. They announced the launch date as June 10 at 9:53:59 am Japan Time (June 9, 8:53:59 EDT) back on April 24, but the only update we can find is on JAXA’s “fanfun” website that still shows that date, referencing a May 25 press briefing. The launch window is open through the end of June.

Japan’s H3 rocket on the launch pad at Tanegashima.  Screenshot from JAXA’s February 16, 2024 EST webcast of the H3 rocket’s second operational flight.

The last H3 launch failed in December 2025 when adhesive strips in the payload support structure delaminated and the QZS-5 navigation satellite separated from the rocket. This is a test flight to confirm the problem is solved before putting any other satellites on board. One spacecraft JAXA is getting ready to launch is Martian Moons Exploration or MMX. Lifting off in October, MMX will study Mars’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and return samples from one of them. NASA’s MEGANE and P-SMP instruments are aboard. If JAXA misses the October window, they’ll have to wait until the end of 2028 when Earth and Mars are correctly positioned 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.

Sunday, June 7 (continued from June 4)

Monday-Wednesday, June 8-10

Tuesday, June 9

Tuesday-Thursday, June 9-11

Wednesday-Thursday, June 10-11

Wednesday-Friday, June 10-12 (continues next week)

Wednesday-Sunday, June 10-14

Thursday, June 11

Thursday-Friday, June 11-12

 

Last Updated: Jun 07, 2026 3:59 pm ET

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