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

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

By Marcia Smith | Posted: November 16, 2025 4:34 pm ET | Last Updated: November 17, 2025 8:54 am ET

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

During the Week

The week’s events could start tonight with the launch of the NASA-ESA Sentinel-6B ocean monitoring satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base, but the weather is quite iffy.  An atmospheric river is pouring rain over Southern California. As of yesterday’s pre-launch press conference, the forecast for tonight is only 40 percent favorable and 60 percent tomorrow.  The 20-second launch window opens tonight at 9:21:32 PACIFIC time (12:21:32 am Eastern).  The backup is 9:08 pm PACIFIC time on Monday. [UPDATE, November 17, 8:30 am ET: Weather cooperated and liftoff was on time.]

Illustration of Sentinel-6B orbiting the Earth. Credit: NASA

Sentinel-6B is the second of a pair of satellites developed through a U.S.-European partnership to measure global sea level involving NASA, NOAA, ESA, EUMETSAT and the European Commission with participation by France’s space agency CNES. They follow on the legacy of other satellites starting with the 1992 NASA-CNES TOPEX-Poseidon mission.

Both of these satellites were built by Europe’s Airbus simultaneously to save costs. The total of approximately $1 billion was shared equally between the U.S. and Europe according to Karen St. Germain, NASA Earth Science Division Director, and Pierrik Veuilleumier, ESA’s project manager for Sentinel-6, at a press conference yesterday. The Sentinel satellites make detailed measurements of sea surface height and study “ocean currents, sea level and wave height,” providing a “view into the inner workings of the ocean” according to St. Germain.

The first of the two, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, is named in honor of the late NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer while the project was underway and died just three months before the satellite launched in November 2020. This second satellite has been sitting in cold storage until a year ago. EUMETSAT, Europe’s operational meteorological satellite agency, created a graphic to show the satellite’s journey to the launch pad since then. Interestingly, Veuilleumier explained yesterday that Sentinel-6B made the trip to Vandenberg via cargo ship from Germany to Texas and then by truck to California instead of by air, the typical mode of conveyance. Cargo aircraft are in high demand to support Ukraine, he said, which is why they had to find an alternative.

Credit: EUMETSAT

Capitol Hill is back to work this week. It’s been eight editions of What’s Happening since we’ve been able to write “the House and Senate will be in session this week.” Until last Wednesday when they met briefly to pass the bill (H.R. 5371) to end the 43-day government shutdown, the House hadn’t convened for legislative business since September 19. They left as soon as the voting ended, but return tomorrow, Monday, and will be in session through the rest of the week. The Senate was in session throughout the shutdown and left for the pre-scheduled Veterans Day recess after they passed H.R. 5371 last Monday. They return this Tuesday and likely will leave on Thursday for the Thanksgiving recess.  Both chambers are scheduled to be out next week.

They have a lot of work to do.  Setting aside issues that are not within the purview of this space policy website, finalizing the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a priority before the end of the year. Both parties on both sides of Capitol Hill are proud that they have passed an NDAA every year since the first in 1961 no matter the level of political acrimony on other topics. The House and Senate have each passed their own bills, so now they just have to reach compromise on the final text. A major difference is how much funding the two bills recommend, but it’s an authorization bill, not appropriations, so hammering out a common funding level is not expected to be a showstopper. We may not hear anything officially about NDAA next steps before Congress returns from Thanksgiving, but hopefully soon thereafter.

The Defense appropriations bill that will actually determine how much money the U.S. Space Force and the rest of the military gets is one of those still waiting for action. Three of the 12 FY2026 appropriations bills were incorporated into H.R. 5371 — MilCon-VA, Leg Branch, and Agriculture — but the other nine, including those that are space-related — Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS, which includes NASA and NOAA), and Transportation-HUD (including the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation) — are in various stages in the two chambers. They are funded through January 30 in the new CR. Congress bought itself another 11 weeks, but that will pass quickly especially with all the holiday breaks.

The House Appropriations Committee has cleared all 12 bills and the House passed three of them — Defense, MilCon-VA and Energy-Water —  on partisan lines.  None of the others are on the floor schedule this week. The Senate has been taking a bipartisan approach and might begin consideration of the House-passed Defense bill this week. They could add as many as three others, potentially including CJS, if they can get unanimous consent to do that. We’ll have to wait and see.

Senate Commerce Committee will vote on several nominations on Wednesday including Timothy Petty to be Deputy Administrator of NOAA.

Separately the Senate Commerce Committee will vote on the nomination of Tim Petty to be Deputy Administrator of NOAA along with several others on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, there’s a lot going on. Meeting organizers planning on government speakers have had to be very flexible since the shutdown began. The Faga Forum on Space Intelligence scheduled for this week decided to postpone until next year. NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG) opted to meet anyway, but without government participation so they shortened the meeting to two days (Tuesday-Wednesday) instead of three and will focus on science. Still looks like a great meeting with updates on Europa Clipper, JUICE, New Horizons, Dragonfly and others.

The National Academies’ Space Studies Board (SSB) and Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA) will meet over three days at the Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.  As usual, some sessions are closed and some are open and the open sessions will be livestreamed. The open sessions are on Tuesday and Wednesday (note that times on the agenda are PACIFIC time, add three for Eastern).  They do have a few government speakers including either Angela Hart or Christie Hansen on a Tuesday panel about Commercial LEO space stations that includes representatives from Axiom Space, Starlab, Blue Origin, and VAST. Other panels are Public Private Partnerships for Science, Philanthropy and Science and Technology Priorities for Funding, and AI for Science. In addition, Bhavya Lal and Roger Myers will brief their recent report on strategic options for space nuclear leadership.

USSF Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman will participate in a fireside chat with Stephen Kitay at the CSIS/Hudson Institute Summit on Thursday.

On the national security space front, CSIS and the Hudson Institute will hold an almost day-long summit on “Delivering Space Capabilities for Warfighting Advantage.” It kicks off with a fireside chat between U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman and Stephen Kitay, now with True Anomaly and previously Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. Another fireside chat later in the day is with Chris Scolese, Director of the National Reconnaissiance Office, interviewed by Gen. David D. Thompson (Ret.), now with Elara Nova and previously USSF Vice Chief of Space Operations. Plus three panels with top-notch participants from government (current and former) and industry. Looks terrific. A virtual option is available.

Lots of other really, really good events here and abroad this week — too many to highlight here unfortunately. We will take just a moment though, as we did last week, to add a final note about something we’re watching in China’s space program. China doesn’t share much information about its human spaceflight plans and the return of the Shenzhou-20 crew on Shenzhou-21’s spacecraft on Friday happened with little official notice. Shenzhou-20’s spacecraft apparently was hit by space debris and deemed unsafe to bring them home. The Shenzhou-21 crew, which arrived on October 31, is still aboard the Tiangong space station with the damaged Shenzhou-20. They need a new spacecraft both as a lifeboat while they’re there and to bring them home. China is accelerating launch of Shenzhou-22, which was scheduled to take the next crew to Tiangong in the spring, but now will launch with only cargo. The launch date is TBA. Reuters reported last night preparations are underway, but that’s all we’ve heard. We’ll keep an eye out for updates.


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-Monday, November 16-17

  • Launch of NASA-ESA Sentinel-6B, Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA, 9:21 pm PACIFIC Time (12:21 am November 17 Eastern), webcast begins 11:30 pm Eastern on NASA+ and ESA’s website

Monday-Tuesday, November 17-18

Monday-Friday, November 17-21

Tuesday, November 18

Tuesday-Wednesday, November 18-19

Tuesday- Thursday, November 18-20

Tuesday-Friday, November 18-21

Wednesday, November 19

Wednesday-Thursday, November 19-20

Wednesday-Friday, November 19-21

Thursday, November 20

 

This article has been updated.

 

Last Updated: Nov 17, 2025 8:54 am ET

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