What’s Happening in Space Policy October 12-18, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 12-18, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House is in recess indefinitely except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

The week starts tomorrow (Monday) with a Federal holiday, Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  Many government offices have been closed since October 1 because of the shutdown, but those that remain open because they are funded by sources other than the annual appropriations bills get the day off.

Federal holiday notwithstanding, SpaceX is planning its 11th Starship Integrated Flight Test (IFT) tomorrow. The 75-minute launch window opens at 6:15 pm CENTRAL Time (7:15 pm Eastern). SpaceX’s webcast begins 30 minutes before liftoff. If all goes according to plan, it’ll follow the same suborbital trajectory as IFT-10 and conduct similar tests. The Starship/Super Heavy combo will lift off from Starbase, TX. The booster (Super Heavy) won’t try to return to the launch site for a “catch.” SpaceX is using it to test a new landing burn engine configuration so it will make a soft landing in the Gulf instead as it did last time. The second stage (Starship) will continue over to the Indian Ocean and make a soft landing there just over an hour later.  Eight Starlink simulators will be ejected along the way, as with IFT-10. They are on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship so will fall into the ocean, not go into orbit.

As SpaceX says, “excitement guaranteed.”

Starship stacked for flight. This is planned to be the final launch from Pad 1 at Starbase in its current configuration pic.twitter.com/UK89VrHLl4

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 12, 2025

Whether there will be any excitement in Washington, D.C. this week remains to be seen. The House and Senate are out tomorrow for the holiday and both were supposed to return to work on Tuesday. The Senate will. The House won’t. On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he will keep the House out of legislative session until the government reopens.

He’s trying to force Senate Democrats to relent and agree to the CR that passed the House on September 19. The Senate has tried seven times already to pass either that CR or a Democratic alternative, with no success.  They plan to try again on Tuesday, but as of today it doesn’t seem that either side is ready to concede. Democrats want changes related to health care, but if any changes are made the bill has to go back to the House for approval. If the House isn’t in session, that can’t happen. That’s the leverage Johnson is trying to exert.

As we often say, anything can happen in Washington, and it’s only Sunday, but it’s really not clear what it’ll take to reopen the government. The shutdown affects agencies funded by the 12 appropriations bills, not those who get their money through means like mandatory spending (such as Social Security and Medicare) or money that was in the recently enacted reconciliation bill. DOD, NASA, NOAA are in the shutdown category. President Trump directed DOD to find a way to ensure military personnel get their paychecks on October 15 despite the shutdown.  DOD reportedly will use $8 billion in unobligated RDT&E funding to do that. Military personnel and others in the government performing essential duties, like NASA personnel operating the International Space Station and getting Artemis II ready for launch in the spring, must continue working during a shutdown, but don’t get paid. Non-military federal employees missed their first paychecks on Friday.

We won’t rehash the arguments that brought the government to this point. What’s new is that on Friday the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russell Vought, began firing federal workers. Usually they are furloughed during a shutdown and go back to work when it’s over, but he is using the shutdown to implement Reductions-In-Force (RIFs) to eliminate their jobs. Vought is the primary author of Project 2025. Although President Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, on October 3 he posted on his Trump Social media platform that he’d be meeting with “Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”

Federal employee unions and Democrats claim what Vought’s doing is illegal. The unions filed a lawsuit and The Hill posted a link to the government’s reply, which is about the only data we’ve seen on which agencies are affected and how much. NASA and DOD are not on that list although the Department of Commerce (NOAA’s parent) is.

What will break the logjam is unknown. The Senate at least is still getting other work done, like passing the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act. But the House isn’t and Johnson is getting some pushback from other Republicans that staying on vacation, as many view it, is bad optics. As a practical matter, the House and Senate need to pass FY2026 appropriations bills. Even if they were to reach agreement immediately, the House-passed CR is only through November 21 and the Democratic alternative is even shorter, October 31.  Then they’ll be right back where they are now.  The only good news on that front is that the House Appropriations Committee has cleared all 12 bills, albeit on partisan lines. Senate Appropriators have cleared eight of the 12 and are proud of their bipartisan nature.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty quiet week apart from the IFT-11 launch. The only D.C.-area event we have on our list is George Washington University’s Scott Pace speaking to the Maryland Space Business Roundtable on Wednesday at lunchtime. Pace is Director of GW’s Space Policy Institute and his long career in Washington gives him unique insight to the government’s inner workings. Among other positions, he was Executive Secretary of the White House National Space Council in the first Trump term and NASA Associate Administrator for Program Analysis and Evaluation when Mike Griffin was Administrator. Should be interesting!

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-Wednesday, October 12-15

• 9th Interstellar Symposium (IRG/IAA), Austin, TX

Monday, October 13

• Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Federal Holiday)
• Starship IFT-11 Test Flight, Starbase, TX, 7:15 pm ET (webcast by SpaceX)

Wednesday, October 15

• MSBR Luncheon with GW’s Scott Pace, Martin’s Crosswinds, Greenbelt, MD, 11:30 am-1:00 pm ET