What’s Happening in Space Policy September 7-13, 2025

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 7-13, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

The Senate and House will work on the FY2026 NDAA this week and the House Appropriations Committee will hold the full-committee markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that was postponed in July.

The Senate began consideration of their version of the NDAA last week and will continue tomorrow (Monday).  The House begins their debate this week. The House Rules committee meets tomorrow to decide which of the 1,146 proposed NDAA amendments are allowed to be considered on the floor, which is expected to begin on Tuesday. This year’s House NDAA (H.R. 3838) is officially the “Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026,” combining the NDAA with the bipartisan “Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery” or SPEED Act to “fundamentally reform defense acquisition.”

Several of the amendments are space-related, but one that may be of particular interest to this readership is number 314 that would repeal the provision in the reconciliation bill (H.R. 1) to transfer what everyone assumes is the Space Shuttle Discovery (even though NASA won’t confirm it) to Houston. It’s sponsored by four Virginia Democrats (Subramanyam, Beyer, Scott and Vindman).

Discovery is currently at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA, in Subramanyam’s district.

Separately, the House Appropriations Committee will take up the CJS bill on Wednesday morning. It cleared subcommittee on July 15 and was supposed to be taken up at full committee level on July 24, but the House adjourned a day early so was postponed. The committee nonetheless released the text of the report that provides details on how it wants the money spent. Like the Senate Appropriations Committee, the House committee rejects the Trump Administration’s drastic 24.3 percent cut to NASA. Both the Senate and House committees would keep NASA roughly at its current $24.8 billion level, but there are considerable differences in the details.  The House committee would add more money to human exploration and take it from science and other accounts, for example, but those other accounts still fare better than the Administration’s proposal.

Senate Appropriations CJS subcommittee chair Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) hoped to bring the CJS bill to the Senate floor for a vote as part of a package with three others that passed on August 1, but Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is fervently opposed to a non-NASA provision in the bill concerning the location of a new FBI headquarters. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, which is the “J” in CJS.  The decision was to wait to vote on CJS until hopefully a resolution can be found. Senate appropriators usually work on a bipartisan basis.

FY2026 begins on October 1, three-and-a-half weeks from now. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether there will be a Continuing Resolution (CR) or a government shutdown. The House and Senate have both passed the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA) bill and it’s theoretically possible one or more of the other 12 appropriations bills might clear both chambers in that time period. The likelihood of a compromise being reached between the two sides of Capitol Hill on any of them by the end of the month is daunting, however.

Differences abound as to what politicians think is the right level of government spending, but none more so it seems than among House Republicans. Keeping House Republicans united is the task of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his majority is expected to shrink this month. The split is currently 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats following Rep. Mark Green’s (R-TN) resignation. Special elections will be held this month to replace two of the three Democrats who died early in the year. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) died on May 21 and that special election is Tuesday. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) died on March 13 and the special election for his replacement is September 23. Both seats are expected to remain in Democratic hands so during this intense period of government funding decision-making the split will be a very close 219-214. The other two vacancies will be filled later. Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) died on March 5, but that special election isn’t until November 4. Rep. Green resigned on July 21. His replacement will be chosen on December 2.

Off the Hill there are several really good conferences this week.

The American Astronautical Society’s annual Glenn Space Technology Symposium is tomorrow through Wednesday at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, home to NASA’s Glenn Research Center. A virtual option is available.

Tomorrow’s keynote speaker, at 5:00 pm ET, is Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability. Hopefully he’ll give an update on Starship, not just when they’ll do the next flight test, but the prospects for Starship HLS to be ready for the Artemis III mission two years from now.  As former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine pointed out at last week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing, getting American astronauts back on the Moon is dependent on a human-rated version of Starship being ready by then, including the requisite in-space cryogenic refueling capabilities. Bridenstine’s skeptical SpaceX can do it before China lands taikonauts there, but Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy angrily responded “I’ll be damned” if China gets there before American astronauts return. No one can beat America to the Moon. We landed six two-person crews there between 1969 and 1972.  The question is who will be the first to do it in the 21st Century. NASA’s current plan is to put two Artemis III astronauts at the lunar South Pole in mid-2027.

Also this week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, DC Tuesday-Thursday. A lot of the summit is about the “aero” part of aerospace, but NASA Chief of Staff Brian Hughes will be interviewed on Tuesday morning and Senate Commerce Committee chairman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) will be there on Wednesday. Thursday features most of the space discussions. Cruz’s fellow Texan and House counterpart, Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, will be there along with others from Congress, the FCC, and the commercial space sector. That includes Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), chairman of HSS&T’s space subcommittee, former HSS&T chairman Lamar Smith, FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz, Matt Desch (Iridium), Max Haot (Vast), Jason Kim (Firefly), Suzanne Hake (Maxar), Andrew Bunker (Rocket Lab), and Peter Marquez (Amazon Web Services). A panel on the Commercial LEO Economy features Will Bruey from Varda, Sarah Mineiro from Tanagra Enterprises, Jason Aspiotis from Axiom, and Scott Pace from GW’s Space Policy Institute. There does not appear to be a virtual option.

On the same three days, the NEXPLORE Conference will be taking place at Amazon HQ2 across the river in Arlington, VA. Sponsored by xFoundry, Amazon Kuiper, SpaceCom and NASA, its theme is “charting the future of extended human lunar and Martian habitation.” Speakers from NASA include Clayton Turner, NASA AA for the Space Technology Mission Directorate and his Deputy Christyl Johnson, and Lakiesha Hawkins, Acting Deputy Associate Administrator of the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. Industry and academia representatives include Matt Ondler from Axiom, Beth Dean-Pope from Vast, Sammy Moseley from Palantir, and Darryll Pines, President of the University of Maryland College Park. As with the Global Aerospace Summit, no virtual option appears to be available.

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, September 7 (continued from yesterday)

• International Space Elevator Conference, virtual

Sunday-Friday, September 7-12

• EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland

Monday-Wednesday, September 8-10

• AAS Glenn Space Technology Symposium, Cleveland, OH/virtual
• Lunar and Planetary Science Panel of Cmte on Key Non-Polar Destinations Across the Moon (Natl Acad), Beckman Center, Irvine, CA (open sessions will be livestreamed)

Tuesday, September 9

• Heliophysics Panel of Cmte on Key Non-Polar Destinations Across the Moon (Natl Acad), virtual, 4:00-5:30 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 9-10

• Outer Space Security Conference (UNIDIR), Geneva/online

Tuesday-Thursday, September 9-11

• 2025 Global Aerospace Summit (U.S. Chamber of Commerce), Washington, DC
• NEXPLORE 2040 (xFoundry et al), Arlington, VA
• NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium, Philadelphia, PA (livestreamed)

Wednesday, September 10

• House Appropriations Committee Markup of FY2026 CJS Bill, 2359 Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• Lunar Surface Science Workshop (LSSW): Artemis IV Landing Site Workshop, virtual, 11:00 am-5:00 pm ET

Thursday, September 11

• Launch of Progress MS-32 Cargo Ship to the ISS, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 11:54 am ET (NASA coverage begins 11:30 am ET)

Saturday, September 13

• Progress MS-32 Docks at ISS, Earth orbit, 1:27 pm ET (NASA coverage begins 12:30 pm ET)

 

Note: This article has been updated.