ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher announced today that NASA has confirmed it will help get the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars. Developed in partnership with Roscosmos, ESA terminated all its activities with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and turned to NASA to provide critical components to achieve the rover’s mission. ESA’s 23 Member States are meeting in Germany right now to decide on ESA’s programs and budget for the next three years, including the rover’s future.

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China launched an uncrewed Shenzhou-22 spacecraft this evening Eastern Standard Time to replace the damaged Shenzhou-20 attached to the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou-20 crew returned to Earth in Shenzou-21’s spacecraft leaving that three-man crew aboard the space station without a safe haven or a way to come home until this new capsule arrives. Shenzhou-20’s spacecraft apparently was damaged by space debris.  [UPDATE — It docked 3.5 hours after launch on November 25, 2025.]

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NASA and Boeing have agreed to modify the contract for the Starliner commercial crew vehicle designed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Repeated setbacks in Starliner’s development, including last year’s Crew Flight Test that left two NASA astronauts on the ISS for over nine months instead of eight days, already have cost Boeing more than $2 billion under the fixed-price contract. Now Starliner will launch four instead of six times for NASA, the first of which will carry only cargo.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 23-29, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions.

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Democratic members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee are calling on NASA’s Inspector General to investigate what is happening at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Over the past two months, including during the government shutdown, laboratories and other facilities were suddenly closed or relocated even though some are needed for programs like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that is nearing completion.  They want the NASA IG to find out why and the implications for Goddard’s ability to execute its responsibilities.

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Changing the way the government acquires national security space systems — indeed, military systems writ large — to be faster and more cost effective has been a goal of countless Congresses and Administrations. The Trump Administration is trying anew and the head of the U.S. Space Force is convinced this time is different.  Gen. B. Chance Saltzman calls it a “national security imperative and a generational opportunity.”

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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.

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The Democratic members of the Maryland congressional delegation have written to Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy asking for an explanation of reported laboratory and other facility closures at Goddard Space Flight Center. Their letter follows one from the top Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), on Monday. NASA responded to her today disputing that anything inappropriate is taking place.

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China’s three-man Shenzhou-20 space station crew landed safely this morning (EST) in the Shenzhou-21 capsule. Their Shenzhou-21 colleagues remain aboard Tiangong-3 with the Shenzhou-20 capsule that apparently was damaged by space debris. China says a new Shenzhou-22 capsule will be launched for them “at the appropriate time in the future.”

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Blue Origin not only had a successful launch today and sent two NASA cubesats on their way to Mars, but landed their New Glenn-2 first stage on a barge at sea on just their second try. It was a winning trifecta for Jeff Bezos’s company that is beginning to compete in the orbital launch market after years of suborbital launches from the West Texas desert.

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