What’s Happening in Space Policy May 25-31, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy May 25-31, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: May 25, 2025 4:24 pm ET | Last Updated: May 26, 2025 2:00 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 25-31, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.

During the  Week

The week starts tomorrow (Monday) with a federal holiday, Memorial Day, which is celebrated on the last Monday of May. That’s arrived a little earlier than usual this year and seems too soon.

Memorial Day typically is the beginning of summer vacations and Congress is taking the week off, but the space policy world remains busy, busy, busy.

President John F. Kennedy addresses a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961. Credit: JFK Library video.

First, though, we would be remiss not to point out that today is the 64th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s speech to Congress kicking off the Apollo program. On May 25, 1961, six weeks after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth (April 12) and just three weeks after Alan Shepard became the first American to cross the imaginary line separating air and space on a suborbital flight on May 5, JFK addressed Congress on Urgent National Needs. One of them was calling on the country to commit to the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth “before this decade is out.”

It was a bold proposal considering how little experience we had. An American wouldn’t even reach orbit for another nine months (John Glenn on February 20, 1962).  JFK’s call to action met a tepid response from the public and Congress, which is why he made what’s become a more famous speech at Rice University a year-and-a-half later with the rallying cry “we do these things because they are hard.” That speech is often misremembered as the beginning of Apollo, but it was on this day 64 years ago that JFK set America on its historic path to the Moon. John Logsdon’s definitive book “John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon” is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what happened in those early years instead of the mythology that surrounds it today as an idea that was immediately embraced by Congress and the public. Not so. But with strong, consistent leadership and technical prowess, the country did it anyway.

We’re trying to do it again now, of course, with the Artemis program. On Tuesday, SpaceX will conduct the next test flight of Starship, an integral part of NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the lunar surface in mid-2027. Starship is the Human Landing System (HLS) for that mission, Artemis III, and will take two NASA astronauts from lunar orbit down to and back from the surface two years from now. SpaceX is required to conduct an uncrewed test flight to the lunar surface first.

Starship has not even reached Earth orbit yet, though, and the last two tests, Integrated Flight Test-7 (IFT-7) and IFT-8, ended with explosions over the Caribbean. The FAA issued a license for IFT-9 on Thursday, but expanded the Aircraft Hazard Area (AHA) because of those explosions and the fact that SpaceX also is reusing a Super Heavy booster for the first time. SpaceX is all about reusability and that applies to both the Super Heavy first stage (the “booster”) and Starship, the second stage or “the ship.” They’re reusing the booster from IFT-7 and will conduct some tests with it. For safety reasons they’ve decided not to return it to the launch site so no “catch” this time. The launch window opens at 6:30 pm CENTRAL Time (7:30 pm Eastern). SpaceX’s webcast begins 30 minutes before liftoff.  [UPDATE, May 26: Elon Musk will talk about Starship and Mars tomorrow at 1:00 pm ET prior to the launch. Livestreamed on X on SpaceX.com.]

Two interesting meetings are taking place earlier on Tuesday, both in D.C.  The Aerospace Corporation and George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute have an all-day symposium on “Emerging Challenges and Opportunities for Civil and Commercial Uses of GPS.” Steven Bradbury, Deputy Secretary of Transportation, will give the keynote address followed by panel discussions on “How Yesterday’s Policies Shaped Today’s GPS,” “GPS is Used for THAT???,” “The Price of Dependency: Challenges from GNSS Jamming and Spoofing,” and “The Future of PNT: Global and Commercial Alternatives and Augmentations.”  For those not familiar with the acronyms, GPS is the U.S. Global Positioning System. Owned and operated by DOD, the U.S. government allows anyone on the planet to use the non-military signals for free. Other countries have their own systems. Collectively they are called Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and do three things: Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, or PNT. GPS, GNSS and PNT often are used interchangeably, though they mean different things. Most of us have no idea how dependent we are on these systems and the challenges they face. This symposium is a great way to find out. A virtual option is available for registrants.

Louise Prockter, NASA Planetary Science Division Director, will speak at a National Academies panel meeting on Tuesday.

The other is the first meeting of the Lunar and Planetary Science panel of a new National Academies’ study on “Key Non-Polar Destinations Across the Moon to Address Decadal-level Science Objectives with Human Explorers” and lasts three days (Tuesday-Thursday).  Open sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday will be livestreamed. The first full committee meeting was in early May and now each of the six panels are getting started. Their task is to determine what places on the Moon other than the South Pole — NASA’s current target of interest — would benefit from having astronauts on-site to conduct scientific studies instead of relying on robotic landers and rovers. On Tuesday the panel will hear from Louise Prockter, NASA’s new Planetary Science Division Director in the Science Mission Directorate (SMD). She’s taken the job for one year while a search is underway for a permanent replacement for Lori Glaze who moved over to the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD). Prockter will be followed by SMD’s Joel Kearns and Sarah Noble. All of them will discuss with the panel what advice they are seeking. Lots of other interesting presentations during the two days as well.

Vanessa Wyche, NASA Acting Associate Administrator, will speak at the Humans to the Moon & Mars (H2M2) summit on Wednesday.

This week also is the annual Explore Mars summit. The event will take place in-person at George Washington University in D.C. on Wednesday and Thursday and will be livestreamed. Originally named the Humans to Mars or H2M summit, it’s now Humans to the Moon & Mars, H2M2. The change aligns with NASA’s focus on going back to the Moon before Mars.

As usual it has a really top notch group of keynote speakers including Vanessa Wyche, NASA Acting Associate Administrator; David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin; Jake Bleacher, NASA Chief Exploration Scientist in ESDMD; and Bob Zubrin, President of the Mars Society. The many panels also have stellar speaker lineups. Topics include how much of a priority it is to get back on the Moon before China gets there, the complexity of lunar logistics, the Artemis Accords and international cooperation in deep space, and nuclear propulsion for Mars. Two panels, one each day, have tantalizing titles, but the participants are listed as “TBA” as of today. Wednesday’s is “A Congressional Perspective” and Thursday’s is “Why the Moon and Mars.” We’re looking forward to learning who will tackle those important subjects.

Speaking of China, it’s expected to launch its first asteroid sample-return mission this week, Tianwen-2. As usual, China’s not saying exactly when, but China space observers think it will be Wednesday, May 28, around 1:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time (May 29, 1:30 am Beijing time). If we get any definitive information we’ll add it to our Calendar entry for this event. China’s CGTN network provides live coverage of high-profile launches, but we don’t know if this will be one of them. CGTN is available on YouTube.  [UPDATE, May 26: China confirms the launch date is May 29 Beijing time, but not the launch time.]

Tianwen-2 will collect samples from asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3), which is in an orbit around the Sun similar to Earth’s. Scientists think it originated on our Moon and was ejected into space by an impact that created the Giordano Bruno crater on the lunar far side. The spacecraft will swing back by Earth to get a gravity assist and drop off the sample return canister and then continue on to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter where it will study comet 311P/PANSTARRS, a rare main-belt comet. Space reporter Andrew Jones who closely follows China’s space program published a useful article about Tianwen-2’s mission in Space News last week as well as a mission timeline on his X feed (@AJ_FI). Dates reflect Beijing Time.

If successful, China will be the third country after Japan (in 2010 and 2020) and the United States (in 2023) to return asteroid samples to Earth.

Lots of other interesting events this week, but we’ll leave it there. As a heads up for next week, though, just before the Senate left for the Memorial Day recess, Majority Leader Sen. John Thune took the first step (filing cloture) towards Senate consideration of Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA Administrator. We don’t know precisely when the Senate will take it up, but probably early next week. Something to keep an eye on.

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, May 25

Monday, May 26

Monday-Friday, May 26-30

Tuesday, May 27

Tuesday-Wednesday, May 27-28

Wednesday, May 28

Wednesday-Thursday, May 28-29

Thursday, May 29

Thursday-Friday, May 29-30

 

This article has been updated.

Last Updated: May 26, 2025 2:00 pm ET

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