What’s Happening in Space Policy March 16-22, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of March 16-22, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

The week started already with Crew-10 entering the International Space Station at 1:35 am ET this morning.  Commander Anne McClain (NASA), pilot Nichole Ayers (NASA), and mission specialists Takuya Onishi (JAXA) and Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos) are replacing Crew-9 — NASA’s Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore and  Roscosmos’s Aleksandr Gorbunov. Also greeting Crew-10 were Russia’s Soyuz MS-26 crew: Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner (Roscosmos) and Don Pettit (NASA). Crew-9 and Soyuz MS-26 together are Expedition 72.

We’ve written extensively about Butch and Suni’s extended stay on the ISS and how they have never been stranded and could come home anytime but have been waiting for their replacements on Crew-10 to arrive. We won’t repeat it here. All we’ll say is that, weather permitting, they’ll be coming home this week, perhaps as early as Wednesday. [UPDATE, March 16, 9:00 pm ET: NASA has advanced Crew-9’s return one day based on weather forecasts. They will undock on Tuesday, March 18, at 1:05 am ET and splash down that day at 5:57 pm ET.)

ISS crews have been rotating on roughly six-month schedules for the past 24 years. The Crew-9/Crew-10 rotation is really quite routine and the Soyuz crew is also about to change.  NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is getting ready to launch with two Russian crewmates on Soyuz MS-27 on April  8. He’ll talk with reporters from Star City, Russia’s cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, on Wednesday morning before he heads down to the Baikonur Cosmodrome to prepare for launch.

Another big event today is the end of a very successful 14-day period of operations of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission-1 (BGM-1) lander on the Moon.  Like the other small, relatively inexpensive lunar landers built these days, BGM-1 relies on solar energy instead of radioisotope power sources for electricity and warmth. The lander’s systems and instruments can’t operate after the Sun goes down and temperatures drop to about -250ºC for the next 14 days. But BGM-1 certainly has done a great job over the past two weeks including sending back this stunning photo of the Sun emerging from behind Earth after Thursday-Friday’s eclipse. More amazing photos are on the company’s website.

BGM-1 is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. We’ve heard NASA and Firefly will have a news conference on Tuesday to talk about the mission, but haven’t seen it officially announced yet. We’ll post whatever information we get on our Calendar.

It’s a quiet week on Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions. The House actually left last Tuesday after narrowly passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through the end of FY2025.  The early departure was pre-planned because House Democrats were holding their annual retreat at the end of the week, but it also put the onus on the Senate to pass the CR without amendments to keep the government open after midnight Friday. Any amendments would have had to have been approved by the House, meaning a shutdown at least until they return on March 24.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) angered many Democrats by helping get the CR past a 60-vote procedural step that allowed the bill to be taken up and passed by a simple majority.  The chasm between Democrats who viscerally reject the CR because Democrats worry it empowers President Trump and Elon Musk to do whatever they want with government spending and Democrats who believe the alternative, a government shutdown, would be even worse, could not be wider. Whatever the future holds, the government is funded through September 30, 2025 notionally at FY2024 levels, but the White House apparently can make changes.

Trump hasn’t sent his FY2026 budget request to Congress yet, which should provide clues about what he has in mind for NASA, DOD and the rest of the departments and agencies funded by the annual appropriations bills.  NASA’s own plans should become more apparent this week, though, when it submits to the White House an initial Agency RIF [Reduction-in-Force] and Reorganization Plan (ARRP). All agencies are required to prepare them pursuant to a February 11 Trump Executive Order. They were due last Thursday, but NASA got a one-week extension because they were busy with launches including Crew-10.

It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro proposes. There’s a lot of chatter about moving NASA HQ out of Washington, perhaps to Kennedy Space Center (where Petro was Director until tapped as Acting Administrator on January 20) or Johnson Space Center (Acting NASA Associate Administrator Vanessa Wyche was JSC’s Director until a few weeks ago) or split among several centers. NASA was exempted from firing probationary workers, but its first Trump Administration RIF happened last week. Tensions are high that many more are in the offing.  (JPL laid off more than 900 workers last year, but those were not RIFs, a process that applies to government employees.  JPL is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, FFRDC, operated by Caltech under contract to NASA.) Many other agencies, including DOD and NOAA, have had to fire workers already and more are expected, although the courts are ordering some back to work. It’s a very confusing situation.

The American Astronautical Society (AAS) is holding its 2025 Goddard Space Science Symposium near Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) outside D.C. from Wednesday to Friday.  It has a great line-up of speakers from government, industry and academia.  They include Makenzie Lystrup, GSFC Center Director; Lori Glaze, NASA Acting Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development; Mark Clampin, Acting Deputy Associate Administrator, Science Mission Directorate; Joe Westlake, NASA Heliophysics Division Director; Irene Parker, NOAA/NESDIS Deputy Assistant Administrator for Systems; Gillian Bussey, Deputy Chief Science Officer, U.S. Space Force;  Brent Blevins, space subcommittee staff director, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee; Thomas Zurbuchen, ETH Zurich Space (and former head of science at NASA); and many, many more.

The symposium is bookended by a Maryland Space Business Roundtable luncheon with Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and the National Space Club’s annual Goddard Memorial Dinner. Ivey’s district includes GSFC. It will be interesting to hear his thoughts on the CR and its potential impact on NASA.  That luncheon immediately precedes the opening of the AAS symposium at the same venue, Martin’s Crosswinds in Greenbelt, MD.

The Goddard Dinner at the Hilton Washington on Friday evening, after the AAS symposium concludes, may not be as festive as usual with so many people inside and outside the government worried about the DOGE cuts. The “space prom” usually brings together about 2,000 of the key movers and shakers in government and industry space circles. Everyone undoubtedly will be trading insights and rumors and trying to have a little bit of fun anyway.  Wonderful people (and one company) are getting awards:  Gen. Les Lyles will receive the Goddard Memorial Trophy, ABC News Producer Gina Sunseri the Press Award, the SpaceX Team the Nelson P. Jackson Aerospace Award for the first Starship “catch,” and more. Congratulations everyone!

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, March 16

• Crew-10 Arrives at the International Space Station, dock 12:04 am ET, hatch opening 1:35 am ET

Monday-Tuesday, March 17-18 [UPDATED, March 16, 9:00 pm ET]

• Crew-9 Returns to Earth
  • March 17, 10:45 pm ET: hatch closing
  • March 18, 12:45 am: NASA+ coverage begins for 1:05 am ET undocking
  • March 18, 4:45 pm ET:  NASA+ coverage begins for —
    • 5:11 pm  ET: deorbit burn
    • 5:57 pm ET: splashdown
    • 7:30 pm ET: post-splashdown media telecon

Tuesday, March 18

• Possible NASA/Firefly news conference re Blue Ghost Mission-1, details TBA [check our Calendar for updates]

Wednesday, March 19

• Pre-Launch Interviews with NASA Astronaut Jonny Kim, virtual, 9:00 am ET (NASA+)
• MSBR Luncheon with Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD), Martin’s Crosswinds, Greenbelt, MD, 11:30 am-1:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Thursday, March 19-20

• Farnborough International Space Show, Farnborough, UK

Wednesday-Friday. March 19-21

• American Astronautical Society Goddard Space Science Symposium, Martin’s Crosswinds, Greenbelt, MD

Thursday, March 20

• ESA Briefing Following 332nd ESA Council Meeting, Paris, FR, 9:00 am EDT/14:00 CET (ESA Web TV)
• Air & Space Domain Lessons from Russia-Ukraine, Part 1 (CSIS), virtual, 10:00-11:00 am ET

Friday, March 21

• Goddard Memorial Dinner (National Space Club), Hilton Washington, Washington, DC, 6:30 pm ET