An Executive Order issued by President Trump to exclude NASA and other agencies from collective bargaining rights does so by designating them as having intelligence or national security as a primary function. That is quite a departure from NASA’s historical status as the nation’s premier civil space agency.  Apart from the Executive Order’s effect on the approximately 50 percent of NASA workers now represented by unions, what impact, if any, it will have on how NASA is viewed domestically and internationally remains to be seen.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of August 31-September 6, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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SpaceX got some much needed good news today with a successful Starship flight test. After three failures in a row, tonight’s suborbital Integrated Flight Test-10 seemed to be flawless with launch, payload deployment, in-space engine relight, and soft landings of the booster in the Gulf and the ship in the Indian Ocean. 

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SpaceX is still trying to get its 10th Starship Integrated Flight Test, IFT-10, off the ground.  Yesterday’s attempt was canceled because of a ground-side liquid oxygen leak. Today’s was scrubbed because of a stubborn anvil cloud that wouldn’t move away from the launch site before the launch window closed. SpaceX might try again tomorrow. Elon Musk made a surprise appearance on the launch webcast sharing his views on the need for a multiplanetary species, but offering no new insights on when Starship might be ready to land humans on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of August 24-30, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September 2 except for pro forma sessions.

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The U.S. Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle lifted off from Kennedy Space Center just before midnight on its eighth flight, OTV-8. Looking like a small space shuttle, the spaceplane was nestled inside the fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The USSF released a pre-launch photo and shared a few nuggets about some of the experiments aboard, but little is known about what these X-37B missions do during their lengthy flights.

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In four weeks, NASA will introduce a new class of astronauts as it begins gearing up for the launch of Artemis II, the first time humans will travel around the Moon since the Apollo era.  NASA hasn’t announced the date other than saying it will be no later than April 2026, but will start building the excitement with three briefings in conjunction with the astronaut candidate ceremony.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of August 17-24, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September 2 except for pro forma sessions.

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President Trump issued a broad Executive Order this afternoon addressing commercial space activities overseen by the Department of Transportation and the Department of Commerce.  Among the provisions, DOT must reform regulations for commercial space launch and reentry and several agencies working together are to advance development of spaceport infrastructure. DOC must propose a process for regulating novel space activities — commonly referred to as mission authorization — and the Secretary of Commerce must elevate the Office of Space Commerce to the Secretary’s office.

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ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket lifted off on a national security mission for the first time this evening. One payload aboard the U.S. Space Force’s USSF-106 mission is the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 that is testing new technologies for future satellite navigation systems like GPS. NTS-3 is a small spacecraft on a very big rocket being launched in one of its most capable configurations. The USSF is not saying what else is aboard.

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