Policy Update (3 September 2025)

Congress is back in Washington, with funding for federal agencies set to expire in 27 days. Fewer than 14 legislative days remain to reach a funding agreement, as both the House and Senate will be out of session during the last week of September for Rosh Hashanah. With little time to pass all 12 appropriations bills for FY2026, Congress will likely need to adopt a Continuing Resolution or risk a government shutdown at the end of the month. For more information, check out: 

• Crunch time: Can Congress avert a shutdown? (Punchbowl) 
• What’s Ahead: The Week of August 25th, 2025 (AIP FYI) 
• What’s Happening in Space Policy 31 August – 6 September 2025 (SpacePolicyOnline) 

On 3 September, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing titled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race.” The hearing examined the legislative priorities for the reauthorization of NASA, as well as the “strategic, economic, and scientific importance of American dominance in low Earth orbit (LEO), lunar operations, Mars exploration, and deep space missions.” Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator, and multiple Senators voiced support for NASA science and STEM education programs. You can watch the recording here. 

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking public comment on a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would limit the length of time foreign students can remain in the United States to four years and require students to apply for extensions after that time. Currently, students may stay as long as they remain enrolled at a US university. In addition, a new Executive Order (EO) titled Further Exclusion from the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program eliminates employee unions at NASA and other federal agencies. The EO argues that these agencies are critical to national security and thus exempted from collective bargaining rights under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. For more information, see reporting from Politico on the student visa rule and SpacePolicyOnline on the EO. 

Last week, the AAS submitted two reply comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in response to public comments on the NPRMs titled “Satellite Spectrum Abundance” and “Modernizing Spectrum Sharing for Satellite Broadband.“ Our public reply comments for each NPRM can be found here and here, respectively, in which we advocate for continued protection of frequency bands allocated to radio astronomy. As mentioned in our last policy update, the AAS is also drafting a comment to the NPRM, which aims to overhaul the FCC's environmental regulations to align them with the amended National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) statute. Comments on the NEPA NPRM are due 18 September 2025.  

As a reminder, the AAS policy team is requesting input from astronomers, observatories, and night sky users worldwide regarding the potential impacts of Reflect Orbital’s proposed reflector satellites on astronomical research and night sky visibility. We are also requesting input from AAS members who have yet to receive funds for federal grants in FY2025. We will contact those who respond to help connect you with your congressional representatives and advocate for the release of those funds as soon as possible. 

The AAS is partnering with The Planetary Society, the American Geophysical Union, and other organizations for a Day of Action to Save NASA Science on 5-6 October 2025. Participants will hold congressional meetings on the Hill to preserve NASA Science funding for FY2026 and ensure that active science missions are not prematurely canceled. If you are interested in participating, please register here.   

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