What’s Happening in Space Policy May 4-10, 2025

What’s Happening in Space Policy May 4-10, 2025

By Marcia Smith | Posted: May 4, 2025 5:08 pm ET | Last Updated: May 4, 2025 5:55 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 4-10, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

The release of President Trump’s FY2026 “skinny” budget request two days ago is still reverberating. The document provides only top-level figures for departments and agencies funded by annual appropriations bills (“discretionary” funding) so we don’t know the details, but the top line number for NASA is tough to absorb — a cut of $6 billion, from $24.8 billion down to $18.8 billion, more than 24 percent. Cuts to NOAA and other science agencies are similarly dramatic.

DOD is in the opposite position with an increase of 13 percent, raising their FY2026 budget request to just over $1 trillion. Yes, that’s a trillion dollars. For one year. But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and his House counterpart Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) object that’s not enough. They anticipated the FY2026 request would be $1 trillion to which DOD funding in the reconciliation bill would be added, but the request from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) incorporates the reconciliation funding. Basically the FY2026 DOD request is level with FY2025 ($897 billion) and assumes the reconciliation bill — which is separate from the appropriations process — will pass and add another $113 billion to yield $1.01 trillion.  How much of that is for the Space Force is unknown, but OMB says the request “supports U.S. space dominance to strengthen U.S. national security and strategic advantage.”

U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman will testify to the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Tuesday.

The full budget request with all the details is expected to be submitted to Congress by the end of the month, but Congress isn’t waiting. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have a number of hearings scheduled this week. Among them is a House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee oversight hearing on Tuesday morning with Acting Secretary of the Air Force Gary Ashworth, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, and Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman.

Tuesday’s a busy day for national security space events.  At the same time as the House Appropriations hearing, the House Homeland Security Committee is having a hearing on “Beijing’s Air, Space, and Maritime Surveillance from Cuba.”  We’re not sure exactly what will be discussed, but the witnesses are CSIS’s Ryan Berg and the Allison Center for National Security’s Andrés Martínez-Fernández.  Could be interesting.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen will participate in a Mitchell Institute webinar on Tuesday to talk about assured access to space.

At lunchtime, the Mitchell Institute will host Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen to talk about assured access to space.  Panzenhagen wears several hats: U.S. Space Force Program Executive Officer for Assured Access to Space;  Commander, Space Launch Delta (SLD) 45; Director of the Eastern Range; and Director of Launch and Range Operations, Space Systems Command (SSC/S3).

Tuesday afternoon, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein will represent the Space Force at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on military readiness along with representatives from the other military services.

Two other national security space events are on Thursday morning.  The Mitchell Institute will hear from Lt. Gen. Thomas James, Deputy Commander of U.S. Space Command, about space superiority, space fires, Golden Dome, and other topics.  As a reminder, U.S. Space Command is one of the 11 Unified Combatant Commands that conduct warfighting, as compared with the U.S. Space Force, which is one of the six military services that “organize, train and equip” personnel who are assigned to the Combatant Commands as needed.

At about the same time, the Atlantic Council will host a conversation between Gen. Jay Raymond (Ret.) and Breaking Defense reporter Theresa Hitchens.  Raymond was the first Commander of U.S. Space Command since it was reconstituted in 2019 and the first U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations.  He was dual-hatted in both jobs for almost a year. On Thursday he’ll speak on “National Security and the Future of Space Commerce” and later be presented with the Atlantic Council’s 2025 Distinguished Military Leadership Award.

Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, will speak to a National Academies committee and to the Lunar Surface Science Workshop on Wednesday.

On the NASA side of things, Science Mission Directorate head Nicky Fox is on the agenda for two meetings this week, one right after the other on Wednesday morning.

At 10:00 am ET, she’s scheduled to speak to a new National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee on “Key Non-Polar Destinations Across the Moon to Address Decadal-level Science Objectives with Human Explorers.”  NASA is focused on sending astronauts to the Moon’s South Pole because some scientists believe there’s water in the regolith that can be extracted and used to support human operations. But the Moon’s a big place. This committee will prioritize non-polar regions for exploration based on recommendations in the Decadal Surveys the Academies produce for each of NASA’s science disciplines every 10 years  (a decade). Co-chaired by James Day (University of California-San Diego) and Dan Dumbacher (Purdue University, former NASA), this is the committee’s first open meeting and has a great line-up of speakers. Some sessions are open and some are closed. The open sessions will be livestreamed.

At 11:00 am ET, Fox will kick off the 27th virtual Lunar Surface Science Workshop (LSSW).  This “Artemis Community Forum” will “focus on communicating aspects of ongoing activities relating to the Artemis campaign.”  She’ll be joined by Niki Werkheiser from the Space Technology Mission Directorate and Jacob Bleacher from the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.  The three Mission Directorates are working together on Artemis.  OMB’s budget proposal calls for changes to Artemis (replacing the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft with commercial alternatives, terminating the Gateway lunar space station), but not until after Artemis III. This workshop is mostly focused on Artemis II and III, though one speaker will discuss Artemis IV.  Should be interesting to hear what they have to say. OMB’s proposal is just that, a proposal. There’s a lengthy process before we know what the outcome will be.

Lots of other interesting conferences and events as always, including the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Small Satellites for Earth Observations conference in Berlin, IAA’s Planetary Defense Conference in Cape Town, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Global Forum in Rome, and the International Astronautical Federation’s (IAF’s) Global Space Exploration (GLEX) conference in New Delhi.

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, May 4-8

Monday-Friday, May 5-9

Tuesday, May 6

Wednesday, May 7

Wednesday-Friday, May 7-9

Thursday, May 8

 

Last Updated: May 04, 2025 5:55 pm ET

User Comments



SpacePolicyOnline.com has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.  We do not post comments that include links to other websites since we have no control over that content nor can we verify the security of such links.

SPACEPOLICYONLINE.COM

About | Contact | Privacy