NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel is warning that SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) could be “years late” for the Artemis III mission that is supposed to take place in mid-2027. The assessment comes after three ASAP members visited SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, TX and met with top SpaceX officials. While they were quite impressed with SpaceX’s manufacturing and operations tempo, they nonetheless found the schedule for HLS is “significantly challenged.”

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 21-27, 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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Unless Congress and the President can reach agreement in the next 10 days, there will be a government shutdown on October 1. Both sides say they do not want that to happen, but both are digging in their heels. Anything can happen at this point, but here is where the situation stands as of September 21, 2025.

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NASA’s much-anticipated but imperiled VIPER lunar rover got some good news today. More than a year after NASA announced it was terminating the mission even though the rover is completely built, it may have a second lease on life. NASA awarded a contract to Blue Origin to take initial steps that, if successful, could lead to VIPER flying on Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander instead of Astrobotic’s Griffin.

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NASA and Northrop Grumman announced this evening that the NG-23 Cygnus cargo spacecraft is back on track enroute to the International Space Station.  NG-23 was supposed to arrive there this morning, but experienced a propulsion anomaly yesterday. The problem has been resolved and it will get there just one day late. [Update, September 18: NG23 successfully berthed to the ISS this morning.]

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The Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship loaded with 11,000 pounds of experiments and supplies for the International Space Station will not dock tomorrow morning as planned. Launched on Sunday, the NG-23 spacecraft experienced propulsion anomalies today as it raised its orbit to match that of the ISS. NASA and Northrop Grumman are assessing what steps are needed next. A new arrival date is to be determined.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 14-20, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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The House Appropriations Committee approved the FY2026 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill last evening including funding for NASA. The committee disagreed with the Trump Administration’s proposal to cut NASA’s budget by 24.3 percent and instead keeps the agency at roughly the same level as FY2025 — $24.8 billion. The House committee has a stronger emphasis on human exploration than its Senate counterpart, but the agency fares much better on both sides of Capitol Hill than it did in the president’s request.

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The House passed the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act this evening, authorizing funding for the U.S. Space Force and other components of the Department of Defense.  Only a fraction of the amendments offered to the NDAA were allowed to be debated on the floor. One that was not cleared would have overturned a requirement in the reconciliation bill to move a space vehicle — likely the Space Shuttle Discovery — from Virginia to Houston.

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A rock sample discovered by NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover last year may hold proof that life once existed on Mars, but scientists need to get the sample back to Earth to confirm it. The finding that the sample shows the best evidence so far of past microbial life on the Red Planet was revealed last year and published today in Nature after a rigorous peer review process. It still is just a possibility, though. Analysis by more sophisticated tools in laboratories here on Earth is the only way to be absolutely certain.

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