The House passed the reconciliation bill today, the final step before sending it to President Trump’s desk in time to meet their self-imposed deadline of July 4.  Officially named the “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act,” H.R. 1 includes $150 billion for DOD, including $25 billion for Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense shield. The U.S. Space Force will get some of that money as well as funding to support operations in the Indo-Pacific.

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The House passed President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” this afternoon. Trump is expected to sign it tomorrow, July 4, a self-imposed deadline Republicans were determined to meet. Dubbed the “megabill” for its far reaching effects on federal spending and revenue, the reconciliation bill (its more common name) includes $10 billion for NASA programs the Trump Administration has proposed cutting in the FY2026 budget request. They include elements of the Artemis program, funding for the International Space Station, as well as $85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to Texas.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 29-July 5, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate schedules are in flux.

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Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro and other top agency leaders held an internal Town Hall meeting on Wednesday to share what they know, and don’t know, about NASA’s future. Three are long-time NASA employees themselves now unexpectedly charged with downsizing their agency’s budget, infrastructure and workforce more perhaps than at any time in history. Certainly more than since the end of the Apollo program. While much remains uncertain, organizational restructuring and piercing budget and workforce cuts are in the offing.

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DOD released additional information about its FY2026 budget request today. Although funding included in reconciliation bills historically has been treated separately from appropriations, the White House is combining them. From that perspective, the request for the U.S. Space Force will be more than $40 billion instead of the $26.3 billion in the FY2026 request itself.

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After almost a month in quarantine and two weeks after their scheduled launch, the four-person Axiom-4 private astronaut mission lifted off this morning enroute to the International Space Station. Weather and a technical problem with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket delayed the launch for two days. After that NASA wanted time to assess the status of air leaks on the International Space Station. Finally this morning they reached orbit and once there shared the name of their brand new SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft — Grace.

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A group of Senate Republicans led by Alaska’s Dan Sullivan and North Dakota’s Kevin Cramer introduced the Golden Dome Act today to authorize President Trump’s new missile defense shield. Indiana’s Rep. Mark Messner is introducing it in the House. Although Congress is expected to approve $25 billion in funding for Golden Dome in the reconciliation bill, legislation has not been enacted to formally establish the program. The bill’s sponsors plan to incorporate it in the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

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Japanese lunar lander company ispace has determined that their second mission to the Moon crashed because of a hardware failure in the Laser Rangefinder that should have told the spacecraft how close it was to the ground. They already are working on their two next missions and do not anticipate schedule delays, but the cost will go up by about $10 million to make the landing system more robust and allow for more testing.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 22-28, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

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ESA celebrated its 50th birthday at this week’s Paris Air Show, signing agreements for future space missions, releasing a space technology vision, and reinforcing its association with the European Union. One of NASA’s oldest partners, ESA is moving forward despite global uncertainty in general and cooperation with NASA in particular. The deep cuts in President Trump’s FY2026 budget request could affect many NASA-ESA joint programs including NASA’s participation in the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA. Nonetheless, ESA optimistically signed an agreement with OHB to begin LISA’s construction.

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