The Trump Administration sent the full FY2026 budget request to Congress late Friday spelling out the details of the $6 billion (24.3 percent) cut to NASA revealed in the May 2 “skinny budget.”  The request drives home the point that human spaceflight now outweighs everything else at NASA, a sea-change from an era when science had an almost equal seat at the table. On top of that, yesterday’s decision by President Trump to withdraw the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA Administrator adds uncertainty. The White House said a replacement will be announced soon, but whoever it is still must go through the confirmation process, keeping the agency in limbo.

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Today the White House announced it is withdrawing Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA Administrator. The reason given is that the Administrator must be “in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda” and apparently they think Isaacman is not. The White House said a replacement nominee would be announced soon. Isaacman tweeted that he is grateful to those who supported him and he has “not flown my last mission” and remains “incredibly optimistic” about the future of the space program.

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Undeterred by the third Starship RUD in a row two days ago, Elon Musk remains optimistic about sending an uncrewed Starship to Mars at the end of next year and a crewed flight 26-months later. In a talk to SpaceX employees today, delayed from Tuesday, Musk highlighted recent successes while avoiding the problems, and kept the focus on his vision of humanity’s future — sending millions of people to Mars to create a multiplanetary species.

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China launched the robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft today to return samples from a Near Earth Asteroid that is in an orbit around the Sun similar to Earth’s. China has brought back samples from the Moon twice already, but this will be the first time from an asteroid. If successful, it will join Japan and the United States in achieving that feat and, like those spacecraft, Tianwen-2 will continue on to a secondary mission — studying a comet in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

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Starship’s ninth Integrated Flight Test (IFT-9) did not go as planned, but it got further than the last two attempts.  IFT-7 and IFT-8 exploded over the Caribbean.  IFT-9 made it past that milestone, but then experienced fuel leaks on its way over to the Indian Ocean and began spinning. SpaceX lost contact and it broke apart — another Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly or RUD. Reuse of a Super Heavy booster for the first time was mostly a success, however.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 25-31, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.

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SpaceX said today it plans to launch the ninth Starship Integrated Flight Test, IFT-9, on Tuesday, May 27.  The flight follows two successive failures of the Starship second stage. Both exploded over the Caribbean leading the FAA to expand the hazard warning area for this flight. SpaceX also is reflying a Super Heavy first stage for the first time. They plan to conduct several flight experiments and will direct it to splash down in the Gulf rather than returning to the launch pad. No “catch” this time.

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One day after President Trump received a draft plan for the Golden Dome missile defense system, the House passed the reconciliation bill that includes the first tranche of funding, $25 billion. Trump assigned U.S. Space Force Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein to lead the project, a layered defense system that will include space-based interceptors. At the same time, however, the head of the Space Force is warning that the service already is under-resourced.

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President Trump appointed U.S. Space Force’s Gen. Michael Guetlein today to lead the Golden Dome missile defense shield project.  In a televised Oval Office meeting, Trump projected Golden Dome will take three years and $175 billion to complete, a much lower cost and shorter timeframe than others have estimated.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 18-24, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

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