Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of August 3-9, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September 2 except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

The week began this morning (Sunday) with the launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard-34 (NS-34) passenger flight. One of the six crew members was Justin Sun, the Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire who paid $28 million in 2021 at an auction to be on New Shepard’s first passenger flight with Jeff Bezos and then decided he didn’t want to go at that time. He was ready today, joining Arvi Bahal, Gökhan Erdem, Deborah Martorell, Lionel Pitchford, and J.D. Russell for the roughly 10-minute flight from Blue Origin’s launch pad in West Texas, up above the 100 kilometer (62 mile) imaginary line that separates air and space, and back down to the Texas desert.

Six passengers in Blue Origin’s New Shepard-34 spacecraft descend under parachutes to land in the West Texas desert, August 3, 2025. Screenshot.

Today is also the day that NASA should decide which space vehicle to transfer to a NASA field center “involved in the administration of the Commercial Crew Program” pursuant to the reconciliation bill.

Space Shuttle Discovery on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s (NASM’s) Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. Credit: NASM

The section of the bill crafted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, gives the NASA Administrator 30 days from the bill’s enactment to “identify a space vehicle” that conforms with specifications in the bill: it must have flown into space, carried astronauts, and is selected with the concurrence of a nonprofit entity designated by the Administrator. Today is 30 days after enactment, which was July 4.

The Congressional Research Service has a useful “In Focus” report explaining all the possible space vehicles that meet those qualifications, but Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) have a bill pending in the Senate (S. 1403), and Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) has one in the House (H.R. 4065), that make their intent crystal clear. The “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” calls for the Space Shuttle Discovery to be transferred from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA to Johnson Space Center. Those bills haven’t passed though. From a legal standpoint only the reconciliation bill matters at the moment. It allocates $85 million to transfer the vehicle, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he asked NASA and the Smithsonian how much it really would cost to move Discovery and their answer was $305 million. We’ll keep an eye out for when Acting Administrator Sean Duffy makes the announcement.

The Senate worked through the day yesterday (Saturday) confirming President Trump’s nominations for a variety of positions in the government.  There are more waiting and for a while it appeared they might stay in town a little longer to vote on more of them, but negotiations between President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) rancorously broke down last night with Trump using his social media platform to tell Republicans to go home and Schumer to go … somewhere else.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) blocked Senate consideration of the FY2026 CJS bill that funds NASA and NOAA.

On Friday, the Senate did pass three appropriations bills but, alas, the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill wasn’t one of them.  As we reported last week, there was hope CJS, which funds NASA and NOAA, would be bundled with two other bills, but Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) blocked it because of the controversy over the location of a new FBI Headquarters building. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice — the J in CJS. Otherwise there’s no connection to NASA or NOAA. Van Hollen has a lot of NASA and NOAA interests in Maryland, too, but for now he’s focused on trying to get Congress to insist on putting the new FBI HQ in Greenbelt, MD. The site was chosen by the General Services Administration after a lengthy competition, but the Trump Administration abruptly decided last month to move the FBI into the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC.

The House and Senate will return on September 2 with the clock ticking down to the start of FY2026 on October 1. So far the House has passed two of the 12 annual appropriations bills (MilCon/VA and Defense) and the Senate three (MilCon/VA, Agriculture, and Legislative Branch). The likelihood of them agreeing on any of the 12 bills before October 1 is remote, and certainly not all of them. Whether they’ll pass a temporary Continuing Resolution or shut down the government is up in the air. We’ve been through this many times before and, as always, there’s no way to forecast what will happen.

Congress may be gone for a month, but the space policy world remains busy. In fact Redwire is holding an event at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday morning, August 5, to talk about “From In-orbit to Innovative Insulin: How Space Will Revolutionize the Pharmaceutical Sector.” Be sure to RSVP to Redwire (see the link in our Calendar entry) to get details on the location.  The emailed announcement cautions that space is limited, but the company asked us to help spread the word. Speakers include Ken Bowersox, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Space Operations; John Vellinger, Redwire’s President of In-space Industries; John Barnett, ExesaLibero Pharma’s President and Chief Scientific Officer; and Dave Cavossa, President of the Commercial Space Federation.  Looks intriguing.  By the way, Redwire will release their second quarter 2025 financial results after the market closes August 6, with the quarterly earnings telecon the next morning.

Crew-10 may begin their trip home from the International Space Station on Wednesday, though NASA and SpaceX are assessing the weather before making a final decision. Their replacements on Crew-11 arrived yesterday morning and were welcomed by ISS Commander Takuya Onishi (JAXA) and the rest of Expedition 73.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, Commander, U.S. Space Command, will speak at the 2025 SMD Symposium on Tuesday.

The annual Space and Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium will take place Tuesday-Thursday in Huntsville. It always has an impressive agenda and this year is no exception, although the website notes that the “Golden Dome for America Panel” has been “removed from our program” and information about Golden Dome “will be promulgated by the government.” Golden Dome is the Trump Administration’s effort to build a missile defense shield similar in concept to Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Congress appropriated $25 billion for it in the reconciliation bill and Gen. Michael Guetlein was recently confirmed to lead the program, but details are pending.  The Symposium agenda has lots of other speakers on space-related topics, however, including U.S. Space Command Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting and a SPACECOM panel introduced by Whiting’s Deputy, LTG Thomas James.

Also on tap this week are a Mitchell Institute webinar with U.S. Space Force Chief Operations Officer LTG DeAnna Burt (Monday), an open FCC meeting where they’ll discuss streamlining reviews by the Space Bureau (Thursday), and open sessions of a meeting of the Lunar and Planetary Science panel of the National Academies’ study on Key Non-Polar Destinations Across the Moon to Address Decadal-level Science Objectives with Human Explorations (Thursday).

We’ll also mention that the 39th Small Satellite (Smallsat) Conference begins next Sunday before our next edition goes to press.  Sunday is mostly for side meetings, with the main conference beginning on Monday.  For the first time Smallsat is not taking place in Logan, Utah having outgrown its historic roots. This year it is in Salt Lake City.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below. Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Sunday, August 3

Monday, August 4

Tuesday, August 5

Tuesday-Thursday, August 5-7

Wednesday, August 6

Thursday, August 7

Thursday-Friday, August 7-8

Sunday-Wednesday (August 10-13)

Last Updated: Aug 03, 2025 3:05 pm ET