What’s Happening in Space Policy September 13-19, 2026

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 13-19, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

This week is the first time the House and Senate have been in town at the same time since the end of July. It’s only for one week, though. The House will recess on Thursday until after the November 3 midterm elections.  The Senate currently plans to be here until October 2.

The House was in session during the week of August 31 and approved the Senate-passed Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through December 11. With that critical issue settled, the pressure to deal with other legislation eased and Speaker Mike Johnson decided most of it can wait until after November 3 and it’s clear which part(ies) will control the House and Senate next year.

Two congressional hearings this week may be of interest.

On Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Danielle Thumann Severs to be one of the five FCC Commissioners. She’s currently Senior Counsel to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. The FCC assigns radio frequencies to commercial users. All satellite operators need frequencies to communicate with their spacecraft and the FCC has been increasing its space footprint in recent years with regulations on space debris, for example.  Later this month they’ll be taking up a Report and Order on “Unlocking Satellite Spectrum Abundance” and another to “overhaul” existing FCC environmental rules including those associated with space-based operations.

Only three of the five commission slots are filled right now. Historically, three seats are held by representatives of the President’s party and two by the other party. Right now there are two Republicans (Carr and Olivia Trusty) and one Democrat (Anna Gomez). Thumann Severs is a Republican nominee. For many years, the Senate would consider two nominees at a time, one from each party. Commerce Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell opposed Trusty’s nomination last year because it wasn’t paired with a Democrat. Trusty was confirmed 53-45 with only one Democrat (Fetterman) voting in favor. The same objection could arise with Thumann Severs’ nomination. We’ll find out more on Thursday.

Before that, on Tuesday, the House Appropriations Transportation-HUD subcommittee will have an oversight hearing on the FAA with FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation regulates the commercial space launch and reentry business. Aviation issues usually dominate these hearings, but attention is growing on the commercial space launch industry, especially with President Trump’s new National Space Transportation Policy that calls for 1,000 launches and reentries a year by 2030. How the FAA will manage that rapid rise in launches/reentries and deconflict them with the busy airline industry certainly could come up.

The notion of launching 1,000 times a year is associated with Elon Musk’s oft-stated goal for Starship. SpaceX is far from that now, but they are getting ready for the next Starship test flight, IFT-14. We aren’t going to post it on our Calendar until SpaceX officially announces a launch date, but today’s FAA’s Operations Plan Advisory shows September 18 at 1215Z-1414Z, with September 19 as a backup. That is just an advisory, though, not a definitive launch date. Z is Zulu, another name for UTC/GMT, so that’s 8:15-10:14 am EDT, a morning launch instead of evening as they’ve been recently. We’ll update this and our Calendar if/when a launch date is official.

It’s quite busy this week already with many important conferences. We can’t highlight all of them here, unfortunately, but the Air and Space Force Association’s (AFA’s) Air, Space & Cyber conference near D.C., World Space Business Week in Paris, and the AAS Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland capture the breadth of defense, commercial, and civil space.

The AFA conference at National Harbor, MD (Monday-Wednesday) is jam-packed with high-level dignitaries. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink kicks it off tomorrow (Monday) morning, talking about “Advancing Combat Power in Air and Space.” That’s followed by a panel with Gen. Michael Guetlein, Director of Golden Dome; Gen. Gregory Guillot, Commander of U.S. Northern Command; Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces subcommittee; and moderated by Gen. Kevin Chilton (Ret). Newly appointed U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Scheiss presents the opening keynote Tuesday morning. That’s immediately followed by a fireside chat also moderated by Chilton with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. Chilton, by the way, is a former NASA astronaut who returned to military service and rose up the ranks to become Commander of U.S. Strategic Command. Much, much more over the three days. A virtual option is available.

In Paris, Novaspace’s World Space Business Week, with the Summit for Satellite Financing and the Summit on Earth Observation Business, takes place Monday-Thursday in conjunction with the Space Innovation Summit and alongside the Space & Defense Security Summit. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher is the opening speaker tomorrow followed by top commercial space operators from around the world over the next several days talking about key issues in the industry, far too many to list here. We do note that Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space, will speak briefly before a lunch his company is sponsoring on Monday. Hopefully he’ll give an update on LINK, the Katalyst spacecraft that many hoped would rescue NASA’s Swift space observatory. That didn’t work out and the most recent entry on Katalyst’s website is from September 4, saying they expect LINK to be deorbited in 2-3 weeks, which is pretty soon. Katalyst and two other companies (D-Orbit and Firefly) recently won contracts from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and Space Development Agency (SDA) to work on in-space transportation and logistic capabilities.

Closer to home in Cleveland, the American Astronautical Society’s Glenn Space Technology Symposium (Tuesday-Wednesday), part of Ohio Space Week, is focused on NASA and especially plans for the Moon Base. NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya is Tuesday’s luncheon speaker, preceded by a panel with NASA’s Moon Base manager Carlos Garcia-Galan and representatives from Blue Origin, SpaceX, Lunar Outpost, AstroLab, and Northrop Grumman. Later in the day there’s a panel about the Mars Telecommunications Network with speakers from NASA Glenn and NASA Goddard. They likely will focus on the capabilities they expect from the system, not the controversy over who won the contract. Rocket Lab is protesting NASA’s September 1 decision to award the contract to Blue Origin.

There’s much more on tap this week, but we will just briefly mention that (1) Djibouti will sign the Artemis Accords at NASA HQ tomorrow, (2) the Progress MS-35/96P launch reportedly has been rescheduled for Wednesday (NASA hasn’t said anything yet, but Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com posted the news today), (3) Crew-12 will hold a pre-departure media briefing from the ISS on Wednesday, although NASA hasn’t said when their replacements on Crew-13 will arrive (an oxidizer leak on Crew-13’s Crew Dragon postponed the launch from September 12), and (4) Saturday is International Observe the Moon Night, when many of us will be reminiscing about the Artemis II crew’s spectacular journey.

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.

Monday, September 14

• Djibouti Signs the Artemis Accords, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 11:00 am ET

Monday-Wednesday, September 14-16

• AFA Air, Space & Cyber Conference, National Harbor, MD

Monday-Thursday, September 14-17

• World Space Business Week, Paris, FR
  • Summit for Satellite Financing (September 14-16)
  • Summit on Earth Observation (September 16-17)

Tuesday, September 15

• House Appropriations THUD Subcommittee FAA Oversight Hearing, 2358-A Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 15-16

• Space Defense & Security Summit, Paris, FR
• AAS Glenn Space Technology Symposium, Cleveland, OH

Tuesday-Thursday, September 15-17

• LEAG (Lunar Exploration Analysis Group), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN/online

Tuesday-Friday, September 15-18

• 2026 Advanced Maui Optical and Surveillance (AMOS) Technologies Conference, Maui, Hawaii/online

Wednesday, September 16

• Space Innovation Summit, Paris, FR
• Rescheduled Launch of Progress MS-35/96P, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 9:33 am ET (not yet confirmed by NASA, but usually it webcasts these launches — check NASA Live for updates)
• SSB Planetary Research Program Metrics, Mtg 3 (Natl Acad), virtual, 12:00-2:00 pm ET
• Crew-12 Pre-Departure Media Briefing, virtual, 2:45 pm ET

Wednesday, September 16-17

• 2026 Industry Space Days (ESA), The Netherlands

Wednesday-Friday, September 16-18

• III Central American Space Congress, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Thursday, September 17

• Senate Commerce Committee Hearing on Nomination of Danielle Thumann Severs to be FCC Commissioner, 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)

Saturday, September 19

• International Observe the Moon Night, global