What’s Happening in Space Policy November 2-8, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 2-8, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House continues to be in recess indefinitely except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

Today — Sunday — is a big day.  Not only did the United States return to Standard Time at 2:00 am (did you remember to “fall back”?), but this is the 25th anniversary of permanent occupancy of the International Space Station.

Government agencies like NASA that are funded by annual appropriations are still shut down for anything other than essential operations. ISS operations are essential, but we haven’t heard about any celebrations, not even an interview with the current crew. We’ll keep an eye on Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy’s X feed (@SecDuffyNASA) to see if he posts anything.   [Update: Duffy did post a brief message on X at 4:25 pm ET.  House SS&T Committee Republicans posted a brief message on X, too, and Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) sent out a message via email that we don’t see posted to their website yet.]

We offer our congratulations, though, to Expedition 1 — Bill Shepherd from NASA and Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko from what is now Roscosmos (then the Russian Aviation and Space Agency). They floated through the hatch from Soyuz TM-31 into the nascent ISS 25 years ago, two days after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. American and Russian astronauts and cosmonauts have been aboard ever since along with astronauts from the other ISS partners — Europe, Japan and Canada — rotating on roughly 4-6 month schedules.

The ISS was pretty cozy back then, with just the Russian-built Zarya and Zvezda modules and the U.S. Node 1 (later named Unity). Zarya actually counts as a U.S. module because although Russia built it, we paid for it.

The Expedition-1 crew stayed for four months and returned to Earth on the U.S. space shuttle, STS-102, after handing over operations to Expedition 2 — Russia’s Yuri Usachev and NASA’s Susan Helms and James Voss.

NASA has a nice overview of Expedition 1 written five years ago for the 20th anniversary that links to an interview hosted by Jeanne Meserve with the crew plus George Abbey and Ginger Kerrick. At the time of Expedition 1, Abbey was Director of Johnson Space Center and Kerrick was the Russian Training Integration Instructor. The interview took place during COVID so instead of being in person at the Space Symposium, they did it virtually. It was a time when we all were still getting used to the virtual format and ensuring we had good lighting (smile).  But it’s a great interview and in the absence of a new one for this 25th anniversary, is more than sufficient.

Today the ISS is a massive 420 Metric Ton facility with multiple modules from the U.S. and Russia as well as Europe and Japan, plus Canada’s Canadarm2 robotic arm for conducting operations on the exterior of the space station. Commercial companies have also added small segments.  NASA counts 43 modules and elements from seven international and commercial partners.

 

The typical crew size these days is seven, three from Russia and four from the U.S. and the other partners. Expedition 73 is aboard right now composed of Roscosmos’s Alexey Zubritsky, Sergey Ryzhikov, and Oleg Platonov; NASA’s Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke; and JAXA’s Kimiya Yui. People from many other countries also have visited the ISS as part of Russian or American commercial missions.

The first ISS module was launched in 1998, two years before the first permanent crew arrived. The ISS is old. NASA wants commercial companies to step forward with commercial space stations to replace it where NASA can be just one of many customers.  Several are in development or formulation. At other events this week (see below), representatives from some of those companies will be sharing their plans.

Back here on planet Earth, it’s day 33 of the partial government shutdown.  The longest in history was 35 days during President Trump’s first term. This one surely will surpass it. That shutdown didn’t affect as many agencies because five of the 12 appropriations bills, including Defense, had been signed into law. None have this time so employees of all agencies funded through the appropriations process are furloughed. Some are required to work anyway, without pay, because they are considered essential or “excepted” personnel, like the military, air traffic controllers, and NASA personnel operating the ISS (including the three NASA employees who are aboard), NASA’s satellites, and working on the Artemis program.

There are a few signals in the Senate that both sides are trying to find a way out, but nothing definitive. House Speaker Mike Johnson decided on Friday to keep the House out of legislative session for yet another week. They last met for legislative business on September 19. (They meet in pro forma sessions about every three days with no legislative business conducted). With the House out, the shutdown can only end if enough Senate Democrats/Independents decide to vote with most Republicans for Johnson’s version of the Continuing Resolution (CR). Sixty votes are needed in a Senate that is split 53-47. One Republican (Rand Paul of Kentucky) is opposed to the CR, so eight Democrats/Independents would need to vote in favor.  Three have so far (Cortez Masto of Nevada, Fetterman of Pennsylvania and King of Maine), but no others have joined them yet.

The expiration date for Johnson’s CR is November 21 so even if the Senate agreed to it this week, it wouldn’t buy much time. There’s talk about pushing that date to next January or later — some are suggesting past next year’s mid-term elections — but any change at all requires the House to vote again.  Which they can’t do if they’re home. Johnson can always call them back to D.C., but he’d probably have to give them at least a couple days notice.  As we say week after week, anything can happen in Washington, but ending the shutdown this week with House members at home would be a challenge.  Government workers received notices on Friday that the furlough could last through the month of November. The notices are required when a shutdown exceeds 30 days and do not necessarily mean it will last that long.

Meetings and conferences with government speakers are adapting as best they can with modified speaker lists, postponement, or cancellation. This week’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) decided to cancel. The website for NASA’s Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG) shows the meeting taking place in Niagara Falls as planned. The NSF-NASA-DOE Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC) website shows the meeting as taking place, but a header at the top of the page notes that NSF is closed. That one’s a virtual meeting so check that website to see if it’s happening on Friday or not. It’d be surprising if it did.

There are quite a few interesting events here and overseas.  Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Bloomberg Center and Space News are partnering this year for JHU’s Discovery Series of events to discuss the “geopolitical, commercial, scientific, and security dimensions of space.” The first in the series is tomorrow night (Monday) at the Bloomberg Center in D.C. Space News’s Jeff Foust and Mike Gruss will lead a discussion with Marshall Smith from Starlab, John Thornton of Astrobotic, Devon Papandrew of Stoke Space, Wes Puckett from Apex, and Robert (“Bobby”) Braun from JHU’s Applied Physics Lab.  They’ll discuss “what’s possible, where we’re headed, and the collaboration powering the next breakthroughs that will take us there.”

The Economist will hold its third Space Economy Summit Wednesday-Thursday in Orlando, FL. It’s got an impressive list of speakers. We don’t want to offend anyone by omitting them, but we will highlight a few names that probably are familiar to the readers of this website: former NASA Administrators Dan Goldin and Bill Nelson, former Goddard Space Flight Center Director Makenzie Lystrup, former NASA Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy and Strategy Bhavya Lal, JPL Director Dave Gallagher, University of Central Florida Associate Provost (and NASA Chief Financial Officer Nominee) Greg Autry, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, Axiom Space (and former NASA) astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, Kiko Dontchev from SpaceX, Rich Leshner from Vast, John Couluris from Blue Origin, Chris Kemp from Astra, and Alan Stern from SwRI. It’s a really top notch group.  Unfortunately there does not appear to be a virtual option.

Lots of other great meetings and conferences also are on tap like the National Space Society’s Space Settlement Summit, DSI’s 12th Joint Space Operations Summit, a Mitchell Institute discussion of a new paper on “A Broader Look at Dynamic Space Operations,” and much more.

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, November 2

• Daylight Saving Time Ends in the United States, 2:00 am
• 25th Anniversary of Permanent Occupancy of the International Space Station

Monday, November 3

• ESA Pre-Launch Briefing for HydroGNSS, virtual, 4:00 am ET (10:00 Central European Time), watch on ESA TV
• Discovery Series: The Future is Now (JHU/Space News), JHU Hopkins Bloomberg Center Theater, 555 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC, 6:00-7:30 am ET

Monday-Tuesday, November 3-4

• Space Settlement Summit (NSS), Orlando, FL

Monday-Thursday, November 3-6

• Global MilSatCom 2025, London

Monday-Friday, November 3-7

• Space Exploration 2025: A COSPAR Symposium on Humanity’s Challenges and Celestial Solutions, Nicosia, Cyprus

Tuesday, November 4

• Launch and Post-Launch Briefing for Europe’s Sentinel-1D, Kourou, French Guiana, 4:03 pm ET and 5:30 pm ET (launch coverage on ESA TV begins 3:35 pm ET)

Tuesday-Thursday, November 4-6

• Asia-Pacific Satellite Communications Council (APSCC) 2025, Taipei, Taiwan
• Security for Space Systems (3S) 2025 (ESA), Noordwijk, The Netherlands

Wednesday-Thursday, November 5-6

• 12th Joint Space Operations Summit (DSI), National Harbor, MD
• Space Economy Summit (Economist), Orlando, FL

Wednesday-Friday, November 5-7

• NASA Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG), Niagara Falls, NY/online (check the VEXAG website for updates)

Thursday, November 6

• Broader Look At Dynamic Space Operations (Mitchell Inst), virtual, 11:00 am-12:00 pm ET

Thursday-Friday, November 6-8

• Space Vision 2025 (SEDS), Seattle, WA

Friday, November 7

• Interagency (NSF-NASA-DOE) Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), virtual, 10:00 am-5:30 pm ET (check the AAAC website for updates)
• 3rd Annual Space Diplomacy Symposium (Univ of Washington), Kane Hall, Seattle Campus, Spokane, WA, 9:00 am-6:00 pm PACIFIC Time