What’s Happening in Space Policy March 15-22, 2026

What’s Happening in Space Policy March 15-22, 2026

By Marcia Smith | Posted: March 15, 2026 4:38 pm ET | Last Updated: March 16, 2026 11:03 am ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of March 15-22, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

It’s a busy week and because Roscosmos will launch Progress MS-33 next Sunday before we publish our next edition of What’s Happening, we’re including an extra day.

Let’s start with tomorrow’s (Monday’s) 100th anniversary of the first liquid-fueled rocket launch. On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard combined liquid oxygen with gasoline and sent a rocket named Nell into the skies in Auburn, MA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is named in his honor.  One of the fathers of modern rocketry (along with Russia’s Konstantin Tsiolokovsky and Germany’s Hermann Oberth), Goddard persevered despite ridicule that his idea of rockets travelling through space violated the laws of physics. His critics clearly were wrong and his achievements are being recognized this week in Auburn and nearby Worcester, his hometown. Organizers planned to recreate the launch tomorrow, but an ominous weather forecast forced them to do it yesterday instead. Events are planned throughout the week. AIAA is encouraging “rocketry and space enthusiasts of all ages” to launch a rocket and share it on social media using the hashtag #Goddard100launch.

Back here in D.C., we’ll be keeping an eye out to see if the Senate takes up the nomination of Matt Anderson to be NASA Deputy Administrator this week. The Senate Commerce Committee approved his nomination on Thursday. A vote by the full Senate is the next and last step. At the nomination hearing, Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Anderson would help ensure a safe and successful Artemis II mission, suggesting he’ll try to get him through the process quickly. The Artemis II launch is coming up soon. NASA will roll the SLS/Orion stack back to the launch pad this Thursday, with April 1 as the target date for liftoff.

The SLS/Orion stack will roll back to Launch Complex 39B on Thursday, with April 1 as the target date for the Artemis II launch. Here’s the stack on its way back to the VAB for repairs on February 25. Photo credit: NASA

We haven’t heard anything about a Senate confirmation vote yet, but they can come up suddenly if there’s not too much opposition. Anderson’s post-hearing responses to Democratic Questions for the Record (QFRs) are posted on the committee’s website. The committee vote was 23-5. All five no votes were from Democrats, but eight voted yes.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, Commander of U.S. Space Command, will testify to a House Armed Services subcommittee on Tuesday.

Two interesting hearings are on tap this week.  On Tuesday afternoon, the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces will hold its annual posture review hearing. Witnesses include U.S. Space Command Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Mark Berkowitz. The hearing will “explore the policies, programs, and priorities associated with United States strategic forces – including national security space, nuclear forces, missile defense, and conventional prompt strike – for the fiscal year 2027.” Also testifying are Gen. Gregory Guillot, Commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD; Adm. Richard Correll, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command; and Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical, and Biological Defense.

Across Capitol Hill, the Senate Commerce Committee’s Telecommunications and Media Subcommittee will hold a hearing Tuesday morning on a topic many in the space community don’t follow closely despite its importance to just about everything that happens in space — radio frequency allocations. In the United States, frequencies are assigned to government users by NTIA in the Department of Commerce and to the commercial sector by the FCC. Those assignments are based on allocations made by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations. Every four years the ITU holds a World Radio Conference (WRC) where ITU member countries battle over terrestrial and space frequency allocations and, for space, slots in geostationary orbit. WRC-27 is next year in Shanghai. This hearing will address “Strategy and Challenges” for U.S. leadership at WRC-27. As Chairman Cruz commented: “With approximately 80 percent of the agenda focused on space-based services, the United States must arrive with a unified front to ensure we dominate what I have called the ‘second space race.'”

Meanwhile, up at the International Space Station, on Wednesday NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Chris Williams will do one of the spacewalks that had been planned for Crew-11. Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman were within a day of performing a spacewalk on January 8 when NASA called it off because a NASA crew member was ill.  Soon all four of the Crew-11 team were on their way back to Earth. NASA wouldn’t say who it was, but Fincke later said he was the one who became ill, though he didn’t specify the ailment. In any case, the spacewalks now will be done by Crew-12. This is the first of the two. The agency will hold a press briefing tomorrow (Monday) afternoon to describe what the spacewalks entail and perhaps indicate when the second one will take place. This will be Meir’s fourth spacewalk and Williams’ first.

Crew-12 is greeted by the Soyuz MS-28 crew, February 14, 2026. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (Crew-12 commander, front row, second from right) and Chris Williams (Soyuz MS-28 flight engineer, back row, center) will perform a spacewalk on Wednesday.

The annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LSPC) is this week at The Woodlands, TX, near Houston. As usual, it is chock full of fascinating sessions about scientific aspects of lunar and planetary exploration plus updates from NASA headquarters.

NASA HQ officials will discuss the Nexus of Exploration and Discovery on Wednesday at the LPSC conference. NASA hasn’t indicated if a livestream will be available for this event.

NASA will livestream on YouTube two “town hall” sessions with the head of the Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD’s) Planetary Science Division, Louise Procktor, on Monday, and the leaders of planetary research on Tuesday.

NASA hasn’t indicated if two plenary sessions with other NASA HQ officials will be livestreamed. The first is tomorrow (Monday) with Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. Then on Wednesday there’s a fireside chat on the “Nexus of Exploration and Discovery” with Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) Acting Associate Administrator Lori Glaze and others from ESDMD and SMD. (Glaze previously was Director of SMD’s Planetary Science Division.) If we learn of a virtual option for those two, we’ll update our Calendar entry with the details.

NASA is ending its financial support for the Planetary Science Division’s Assessment and Analysis Groups, or AGs, at the end April when the grants that support them expire. Some are finding other ways to continue their work. The Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) will hold an in-person meeting and then a virtual meeting (via Zoom) at LPSC on Wednesday to discuss future plans.

Over in Kazakhstan, Roscosmos will launch the Progress MS-33 cargo spacecraft from Site 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sunday. Progress launches are quite routine and usually don’t attract much attention, but this is the first use of Site 31 since the infrastructure was damaged during the launch of the Soyuz MS-28 crew in November. Moments after Roscosmos’s Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev and NASA’s Chris Williams lifted off, a “maintenance cabin” or “service platform” at the base of the pad collapsed. Site 31 is the only launch pad at Baikonur that can be used for launches to the ISS now. Working through the harsh winter weather, over 150 Roscosmos employees plus contractors managed to complete the repairs in record time. The launch is at 7:59 am EDT Sunday morning. NASA usually livestreams these launches. A link hasn’t been posted yet, but we’ll add it to our Calendar entry if/when we get it.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning (March 15) are shown below. Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Sunday-Wednesday, March 15-18 (continued from last week)

Sunday-Sunday, March 15-22 (continued from yesterday)

Monday, March 16

Monday-Friday, March 16-20

Tuesday, March 17

Tuesday-Friday, March 17-20

Wednesday, March 18

Thursday, March 19

Sunday, March 22

 

This article has been updated to add the ASAP meeting on March 16.

Last Updated: Mar 16, 2026 11:03 am ET

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