What’s Happening in Space Policy June 8-14, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy June 8-14, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: June 8, 2025 6:02 pm ET | Last Updated: June 10, 2025 2:07 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 8-14, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Congress will be busy this week both with the reconciliation bill and hearings on FY2026 authorization and appropriations bills for DOD, as well as the nomination hearing for the new head of the FAA.

Elon Musk and President Trump in the Oval Office, May 30, 2025, Musk’s last day as a Special Government Employee. White House photo.

The meltdown between President Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — that’s the reconciliation bill’s official name — captured the headlines last week. At one point Trump suggested one way to save billions of dollars would be to terminate Musk’s government contracts. Musk rejoined that he’d start by decommissioning Dragon, the spacecraft that takes crews and cargo to and from the International Space Station. Fortunately Musk quickly backed off — in fact there’s a private astronaut Crew Dragon launch to the ISS this week (see below) — but the incident highlighted how dependent the U.S. government is on SpaceX for operating and eventually deorbiting the ISS, launching satellites for DOD and NASA, and providing communications for DOD with Starlink and Starshield satellites.

Whether Musk’s opposition to the bill, a “disgusting abomination” in his words, will sink it in the Senate remains to be seen. The major issues are well beyond the scope of this website, but the bill does involve funding for space activities, even more so in the Senate version. The House-passed bill and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s proposal provide $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense system that includes space-based sensors and interceptors, as well as for the U.S. Space Force. The House bill doesn’t address NASA, however. The Senate bill does. Contrary to Trump’s FY2026 budget request, the Senate Commerce Committee wants to add $10 billion for NASA to fully fund the Gateway lunar space station and continue SLS and Orion at least through Artemis V. There are other important differences, too. The Senate committee’s proposal is separate from any changes that might be made through the appropriations process. Appropriations and reconciliation are separate.

All of these issues will be part of the debate this week in the Senate either in front of the cameras or behind the scenes. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is trying to get the bill passed expeditiously so it can go back to the House for another vote (both chambers must agree to identical text) and to Trump’s desk before the July 4 recess, which nominally begins on June 30.

Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will testify to three congressional committees this week on DOD’s budget request. Separately President Trump said Caine is choosing a new NASA Administrator nominee.

Also on the Hill this week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine will be busy testifying to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) about the FY2026 DOD budget request. OMB published a separate appendix just for DOD, although it is not the detailed request Congress is accustomed to having before making budget decisions. Among the many questions that could be asked is why the U.S. Space Force budget would drop more than $2 billion (from $28.7 B in FY2025 to about $26.3 B in FY2026). USSF Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman is concerned about getting enough resources for all that the USSF has been asked to do already and that doesn’t include its new role in building the Golden Dome missile defense system. Even if OMB’s idea is that some of the $25 billion in the reconciliation bill for Golden Dome is headed to USSF, Saltzman has a lot of other programs on his plate. He’s also worried about losing 14 percent of his civilian workforce.

Hegseth and Caine testify to the House Appropriations Defense (HAC-D) subcommittee on Tuesday morning and the  subcommittee will mark up the bill immediately thereafter in a closed session with full committee markup on Thursday, which is open.  The two testify to the Senate Appropriations Defense (SAC-D) subcommittee Wednesday morning and to HASC on Thursday morning. With all that’s going on in the military right now the Space Force may not be at the top of the list for discussion in these hearings, but we’ll be keeping an ear open.

Speaking of Gen. Caine, Trump said on Thursday that Caine “is going to be picking somebody” for NASA Administrator and “we’ll be checking him out.” Speculation about who will replace Jared Isaacman as the nominee has settled on one particular retired military officer, but we are going to wait for an official announcement before naming him rather than feeding the rumor mill.  When a  nomination will be announced is anyone’s guess. Stay tuned.

As many are saying on social media, Isaacman continues to be a class act in all of this. In that All-in podcast interview last week he noted that this is the first time in 26 years (when he quit high school at 16 to start his Shift4 payment processing company) that he’s been out of work and he needs to work and have a mission and he will. He handed over the CEO reins at Shift4 and won’t try to take them back, but might be an Exec Chair there and “I love flying, and I love space, and I like the philanthropic efforts we’ve been doing with St. Jude, so I’ll keep busy.”  He posted a video of one his flying escapades on X today.


Also on the Hill this week, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on Bryan Bedford’s nomination to be the new Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is the parent of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST).  Bedford’s background, not surprisingly, is in the airline business, not space.  With all the problems in the aviation field, AST probably won’t get much attention, but as with the DOD hearings we’ll be listening.

Off the Hill, the big event this week is the launch of the Axiom-4 private astronaut crew to the International Space Station. Launch is scheduled for 8:22 am ET Tuesday morning, weather permitting, with docking the next day at 12:30 pm ET.

It’s an international crew led by renowned former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson who now works for Axiom. She’s joined by first-time space fliers from India, Poland, and Hungary: Shubhanshu Shukla, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, and Tibor Kapu. Shukla is one of the four Indian astronauts chosen for the Gaganyaan human spaceflight program. Uznański-Wiśniewski is a member of ESA’s reserve astronaut corps. Kapu is part of the Hungarian Astronaut to Orbit or HUNOR program. Each is the first astronaut from their respective countries to fly to space in more than 40 years. They’ll spend up to 14 days on the ISS conducting a wide range of experiments in the company of ISS Expedition 73 and their Zero G Indicator, Joy, a plush baby swan they showed off at a pre-launch press conference last week.

The Axiom-4 crew introduced their Zero-G Indicator Joy, a plush baby swan, during a pre-launch press conference, June 3, 2025. Launch is scheduled for Tuesday morning. L-R: Peggy Whitson (Axiom), Shubhanshu Shukla (India), Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (Poland), Tibor Kapu (Hungary).

Axiom, SpaceX and NASA will have a pre-launch press briefing tomorrow (Monday) following the Launch Readiness Review. Axiom typically doesn’t livestream their press conferences, but posts the video on YouTube the next day.  They will livestream the launch itself, however, along with SpaceX starting at 6:15 am ET Tuesday morning. NASA will join them on NASA+ at 7:25 am ET.

Lots of other great events as usual, but we’ll highlight just one more. On Thursday, NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Associate Administrator Nicky Fox will discuss SMD’s budget with the science community and anyone else who wants to participate via WebEx. Today’s Planetary Exploration Newsletter announced the meeting and provides the links to listen and to ask or upvote questions. The White House is proposing to slash NASA’s science budget by 47 percent.

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-Thursday, June 8-12

Monday, June 9

Monday-Wednesday, June 9-11

Tuesday, June 10

Wednesday, June 11

Thursday, June 12

Friday, June 13

This article has been updated.

Last Updated: Jun 10, 2025 2:07 pm ET

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