The four crew members of Fram2, a private astronaut mission that circled the North and South Poles for the first time, are back home. Calling themselves “Framonauts,” they spent three-and-a-half days in space aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience. They returned to Earth today marking another first — the first Crew Dragon to splash down off the coast of California instead of Florida. SpaceX is moving all Dragon splashdowns to the West Coast to better control where remnants of the spacecraft’s “trunk” land after it separates during reentry.

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A congressionally chartered commission that monitors U.S.-China economic and security affairs heard from the head of the U.S. Space Force and a panel of experts today that China is the major space competitor to the United States. Russia’s military space program remains formidable, but civil and commercial activities have withered. The United States continues to be the global leader across all space sectors, but keeping that edge will be a challenge without more resources and preventing the “hollowing out” of the nation’s scientific base because of the DOGE cutbacks.

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The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA Administrator next week. If confirmed, he will be the agency’s 15th Administrator.

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NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro enthusiastically endorsed NASA’s space science program today in an address to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Noting the exciting missions already enroute to their destinations and under development, she was careful in talking about the future, however. While acknowledging rumors about impending cuts, she could not confirm if they have substance.

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Four private astronauts lifted off from Kennedy Space Center this evening on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. They are the first humans to orbit the Earth circling around the North and South Poles, giving them a unique view of the planet. Fram2 takes its name from a Norwegian ship, Fram, that explored the Arctic and Antarctic at the turn of the 20th Century. The privately-funded mission includes a Chinese-born billionaire who now is a citizen of Malta, a Norwegian, a German, and an Australian.

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The two NASA astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, but returned on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, will soon meet with Boeing’s leadership about getting Starliner ready to fly again. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pushed back on questions about assigning blame for Starliner’s woes during their Crew Flight Test last summer and insist it is a very capable spacecraft.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of March 30-April 5, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

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NASA’s Artemis II crewed test flight is just over a year away.  That April 2026 mission appears to be on track, but questions remain about whether the next flight, Artemis III, will be ready to put a crew on the lunar surface and return them to Earth in mid-2027. SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System is a critical element that still has to demonstrate a number of technical milestones, including a precursor uncrewed landing — and liftoff — from the Moon.

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The U.S. Space Force certified the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Vulcan rocket today, making it eligible to launch national security satellites. Two successful test flights are needed to win certification. The first went perfectly in January 2024, but a hiccup with the second in October delayed the process until now.

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As NASA’s space science program faces an uncertain funding future, the director of one of the country’s top space science laboratories cites lower launch costs, higher risk tolerance for robotic missions, and technological advancements as factors that could help the balance sheet. But keeping a steady cadence of competed missions in the Discovery and New Frontiers series is critical for the planetary science ecosystem.

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