SpacePolicyOnline

What’s Happening in Space Policy August 3-9, 2025 spacepolicyonline.com/news/whats-h...

Redwire will hold an event at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday (Aug 5) on "From In-Orbit to Innovative Insulin: How Space Will Revolutionize the Pharmaceutical Sector."

Great thread from Bill Harwood of the arrival of Crew-11 at ISS in the wee hours this morning including the welcoming remarks (thank you, Bill!).

Axiom has posted the video of the Ax-4 post-mission press conference that was held yesterday. www.axiomspace.com/mission-blog...

The three bills that passed are MilCon/VA, Agriculture, and Legislative Branch. It's been a long time since the Senate passed any approps bills this early, so it is good news overall, if not for NASA and NOAA.

Well...the Senate did pass three appropriations bills, but CJS wasn't one of them. Sen Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is blocking the CJS bill because of the FBI HQ issue even tho that means blocking $ for NASA's many activities in the state (Goddard, STScI, APL), too, and lots more.

Liftoff!

Weather at the moment.

Everything still on track for 11:43 am ET liftoff, but weather is still a watch item.

YouTube video by NASA NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Launch

Just over an hour to the second attempt to launch Crew-11 at 11:43 am ET. Weather is 60% "go."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0IL...

Crew-11 is indeed going to try again trmw, Aug 1, at 11:43 am ET. If it goes, the post-launch press conference is at 1:00 pm ET and, according to the updated NASA press release, will incl Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov! www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Crew-11 Must Wait Another Day, While Duffy Meets With Bakanov spacepolicyonline.com/news/crew-11...

F9/Crew 11: The next launch opportunity is at 11:43:42am EDT (1543 UTC) Friday; transit time to the space station will be considerably shorter, 16 hours as opposed to 39, setting up an ISS docking at 3am EDT (0700 UTC) Saturday, the same time the crew would have docked if they had launched today

Next launch opportunity is tomorrow, Aug 1, at 11:43 am ET.

This is what the weather looks like.

Hold HOld Hold due to weather

T-2 minutes

NASA/SpaceX are monitoring a pop up storm cell north of the pad. Not a problem at the moment, but keeping an eye on it. 17 minutes to launch.

Everything is looking good for the Crew-11 launch at 12:09 pm ET, in about 30 minutes.

Senate Commerce Clears NOAA Nominations spacepolicyonline.com/news/senate-...

More from Tass on Roscosmos Director General Bakanov's upcoming meeting with Acting NASA Admin Duffy at the Crew-11 launch. He'll then go on to JSC.
tass.com/science/1995...

Blue Origin sets August 3 as date for next New Shepard passenger flight, NS-34.
x.com/blueorigin/s...

Spacecraft separation!

LIFTOFF!

NISAR Launch Coverage of the Launch of NISAR, an Earth-observing satellite and the first collaborative mission between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation)

10 min to launch of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite from India's Sriharikota launch site: plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-vi...

Should the Wolf Amendment Be Repealed? | Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy After 15 years, the efficacy and relevance of the Wolf Amendment continue to be hotly debated. Does closer examination offer insight into whether the amendment should be repealed or retained?

NEW paper today in our @AeroPolicy debate series, this time on the topic of whether the Wolf Amendment should be repealed! We have compelling arguments from Dan Hart and Dean Cheng for/against and why this issue may shape the future of space activities: csps.aerospace.org/papers/shoul...

NASA Selects Firefly for New Artemis Science, Tech Delivery to Moon - NASA NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, $176.7 million to deliver two rovers and three scientific instruments to the lunar surface as part of

Firefly gets another NASA CLPS contract. $177M to deliver 2 rovers and 3 instruments to the lunar South Pole in 2029.
www.nasa.gov/news-release...
fireflyspace.com/news/firefly...

SpaceX says on X the test went fine and the Crew-11 launch continues to be NET Thursday.

F9/Crew 11: SpaceX aborted a Falcon 9 1st stage engine test firing today at KSC pad 39A less than a minute before the 3:09pm EDT (1909 UTC) target time; no details yet on what might have triggered the abort or what impact, if any, it might have on NASA's plans to launch the mission Thursday

The head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, says he's been invited to the launch of Crew-11 this wk in FL and will meet with Acting NASA Admin Sean Duffy. tass.com/science/1994...