Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of March 9-16, 2025 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
Did you remember to “spring forward” this morning?
Daylight Saving Time began in the United States at 2:00 am
except for Arizona and Hawaii, which don’t observe this annual ritual.
During the Week
It’ll be tough to top last week — a successful lunar landing (Firefly), a not-so-successful lunar landing (Intuitive Machines), President Trump restating support for human Mars exploration, another SpaceX Starship explosion over the Caribbean (second in a row), first commercial Ariane 6 launch, and the return of the Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane — but this week will give it a run for the money.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 took this image of its own shadow on the Moon with Earth on the horizon after landing a week ago today. Blue Ghost continues to operate this week. Firefly is posting updates on its website and X (@Firefly_Space).
First and foremost is preventing a partial government shutdown Friday at midnight when the existing Continuing Resolution (CR) expires.
House Republicans want to pass a “full year” CR that would keep the government funded for the rest of FY2025 at FY2024 levels with some exceptions (“anomalies”) especially for DOD. House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) released the text yesterday along with a “charge and response” document refuting anticipated objections from Democrats. Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) does indeed object. She issued a statement and a list of Democratic counterpoints.
The parties seem pretty far apart. With the unexpected death of Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) early Wednesday, the margin in the House right now is 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats, so a handful of votes will make the difference. President Trump is urging all Republicans to vote in favor, but some are unhappy that the bill maintains FY2024 funding levels from the Biden Administration instead of making deeper cuts. Some Republicans and Democrats don’t want a full-year CR at all, but another short-term CR while they keep working on the 12 regular appropriations bills.
In short, it’s another shutdown showdown with the clock ticking. Although Trump oversaw the longest partial government shutdown in history (35 days) during his first term, he doesn’t want one now. Most congressional Republicans seem to agree. Most Democrats don’t want one either, but also don’t want to agree to a full-year CR that lets the White House eliminate or redirect funding without congressional approval. As we’ve written many, many times — the outcome is unclear, stay tuned.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Chair, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. The committee meets in Executive Session on Wednesday.
Also on the Hill this week, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will meet in Executive Session on Wednesday to consider pending nominations and a long list of legislation. Among them are the nomination of Michael Kratsios to be Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and two space-related bills. The Situational Awareness of Flying Elements in Orbit Act or SAFE Orbit Act (S. 428, Cornyn) furthers the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Traffic Coordination (STC) activities of NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce and has a long list of bipartisan co-sponsors. A similar bill (S. 3658) passed the Senate at the very end of the last Congress (December 21), but time ran out so they are starting again. (The House had a similar bill last year, H.R. 6385, Kean, but there was no action on it.) The bipartisan (Cruz/Peters) Astronaut Ground Travel Support Act (S. 582) allows NASA to transport astronauts who have returned from space to medical appointments associated with their readaptation until they are medically cleared to drive. The House passed a similar bill last year (H.R. 272, Babin), but there was no further action.
Slingshot Aerospace’s Audrey Schaffer is one of the speakers at this week’s SATELLITE 2025 in D.C.
Off the Hill there are two major conferences. One is the annual SATELLITE 2025 here in D.C. The massive four-day conference and exhibit (Monday-Thursday) is known for its focus on the satellite communications business, but really is much broader than that and spans the civil, commercial and military space sectors. The impressive list of government and industry speakers is far too long to summarize here, but we’ll mention a few familiar names (in alphabetical order) with apologies to all the other VIPs — SpaceX’s Stephanie Bednarek, Artemis Group’s Jim Bridenstine, BryceTech’s Carissa Christensen, Iridium’s Matt Desch, Congressional Research Service’s Jen DiMascio, Airbus U.S.’s Debra Facktor, NASA’s Robyn Gatens, Aerospace Corporation’s Steve Isakowitz, Vast’s Rich Leshner, Boeing’s Michelle Parker, Quilty Space’s Chris Quilty, Slingshot’s Audrey Schaffer, and NOAA Office of Space Commerce’s Janice Starzyk.
The other major meeting is the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, TX near Houston. A virtual option is available. The meeting is always chock full of fascinating scientific results, and there certainly is a lot going on in lunar and planetary science, but perhaps a more pressing topic this year will be the future of space science at NASA. The Planetary Society (TPS) raised a red flag on Friday after hearing that the Trump Administration’s FY2026 budget request may propose a 50 percent cut to science at NASA — what TPS calls an “extinction event.” At the same time, all meetings of NASA’s science advisory, assessment, and analysis groups are on hold while NASA determines what is or isn’t in compliance with Executive Orders from the White House. Those groups are a primary mechanism for NASA to interact with the outside science community and several of them usually meet at LPSC.
Still another big event will take place this week in the human spaceflight program — the launch of Crew-10 and their arrival at the ISS followed by the departure of Crew-9. In many respects this is a routine crew exchange like all the others that have taken place roughly every six months since permanent occupancy of the ISS by international crews began 24 years ago. But this one is getting extra publicity in part because Crew-9 includes Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams who have had an unexpectedly long stay at the ISS, and in part because of comments Elon Musk made recently about why they’ve been there so long and recommending that ISS be deorbited two years from now instead of 2030 as NASA and its international partners (Russia, Japan, Canada and 11 European countries) are planning.
We’ve written a lot about all that already and won’t repeat it here. The point for this issue of What’s Happening is that Crew-10 is scheduled to launch on Wednesday evening and arrive on Thursday morning, with Crew-9 departing on Sunday.
Crew-10 is scheduled to launch to the ISS on Wednesday evening, replacing Crew-9 who will return on Sunday. L-R: Takuya Onishi (JAXA), Nichole Ayers (NASA), Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos), Anne McClain (NASA).
That’s the plan, but during a post-Flight Readiness Review (FRR) briefing on Friday, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said they are working two outstanding issues. First, NASA is looking at the degradation of coating on the Draco thrusters on Crew-10’s Crew Dragon Endurance, which is making its fourth trip to space. Crew-10 was supposed to launch last month on a brand new Crew Dragon, but it’s not ready yet so they swapped capsules and are using Endurance instead so as not to further delay Crew-10’s arrival and Crew-9’s return. (Many ask why Butch and Suni haven’t come home already since their spacecraft, Crew Dragon Freedom, has been sitting right outside the hatch since September. The answer is that they are waiting for their replacements to arrive.)
Second is an investigation of why the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage that launched a group of Starlink satellites on March 2 experienced a fuel leak. SpaceX’s Bill Gerstenmaier explained that the leak occurred during ascent and spewed fuel onto one of the engines. There wasn’t any oxygen at that point in the trajectory so nothing happened until the stage landed on the drone ship. At that point oxygen entered the engine compartment and 45 seconds later a fire started that eroded the structural integrity of one of the landing legs and the stage fell over. The fire “was pretty extensive” and “melted a lot of aluminum components” in that engine, complicating SpaceX’s analysis of what happened. Space photographer Jenny Hautmann took this photo of what remained when it was brought back into port.
https://t.co/3CSIxzXilf
— Jenny Hautmann (@JennyHPhoto) March 6, 2025
The FRR polled “go” pending resolution of those issues and Stich said they’re keeping the March 12 launch date for now at least.
Crew-9’s planned departure on Sunday means a shorter handover between crews. Usually it’s five days. ISS Program Manager Dana Weigel said NASA wants to limit the consumption of consumables as much as possible because a June resupply flight may be delayed. The shipping container for Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft was damaged during transport to Kennedy Space Center and they are assessing the schedule impact.
NASA statement, March 5, 2025.
A SpaceX Cargo Dragon is headed to the ISS in April and NASA will add more food and other supplies to that one, but a shorter handover will help with four fewer crew members to support. Not to mention it gives them more leeway if the weather doesn’t cooperate. Quite a few departures have been delayed due to bad weather at the splashdown sites in the waters near Florida. In fact, this will be the last Crew Dragon to splashdown in that part of the country. SpaceX is moving splashdowns to the West Coast so they can jettison Dragon’s “trunk” in a manner that any surviving pieces will land in the ocean and not populated areas as has happened several times. A side benefit is that the weather is usually better off California.
The detailed schedule for Crew-10’s launch and arrival is available, but not for Sunday’s Crew-9 departure. We’ll add whatever info we get to our Calendar entry for that event.
One last thing — don’t forget to keep checking Firefly’s website and social media accounts to keep up to date on Blue Ghost’s activities. It has 10 NASA payloads and is doing very well. Firefly reported yesterday they are power-cycling to keep the lander cool because it’s the hottest part of the lunar day — 250ºF (121ºC). They’ll get back to full power when the surface temperture cools down. Here’s Firefly’s imagery of the March 2 landing — the first fully successful commercial landing on the Moon. Blue Ghost will operate for a total of about 14 days until lunar sunset. After that, the solar panels can’t recharge the batteries and the bitter cold lunar night is expected to freeze the electronics.
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 post on our Calendar or changes to these.
Sunday, March 9
Sunday-Saturday, March 9-15 (continued from March 7)
Monday-Thursday, March 10-13
Monday-Friday, March 10-14
Wednesday, March 12
SASC Sbcmt Hearing on Current Readiness of the Joint Force, SD-G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 9:30 am ET (webcast)
Senate Commerce Committee Markup of Nominations and Legislation, 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
Routledge Handbook of Space Policy: A Virtual Book Talk (CSIS), virtual, 10:00 am ET
UK Launch of the Woomera Manual, London, 4:00-7:00 pm GMT (12:00-3:00 pm ET, but there does not appear to be a virtual option)
Safe, Stable, and Sustainable Space Activities: Promoting Perspectives from Latin America (in Spanish), virtual, 1:00 pm ET
Launch of Crew-10 to ISS, Kennedy Space Center, 7:48 pm ET (NASA+ coverage begins 3:45 pm ET)
Crew-10 Post-Launch News Conference, KSC, 9:30 pm ET (watch on NASA+)
Thursday, March 13
Crew-10 Arrives at ISS (NASA+ coverage begins 4:15 am ET)6:00 am ET, dock
7:45 am ET, hatch opening
8:20 am ET, welcoming remarks
Sunday, March 16
Last Updated: Mar 09, 2025 5:03 pm ET