The world of policy is always a bit of a roller coaster, and 2025 in space policy is no exception.
President Donald Trump championed a crewed landing on Mars in his inaugural address, then proposed a budget that made historic cuts to NASA. Jared Isaacman was nominated to lead NASA, then withdrawn, then nominated again—and is poised to be confirmed soon. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Trump went from friends to enemies.
If you’ve gotten whiplash, we can’t blame you.
Here are some of the highlights of the year in space policy.
Two paths: One clear takeaway from 2025 is: It’s not Moon to Mars; it’s Moon and Mars. After initially focusing on a crewed return to the Moon, with Mars being a distant follow-on goal, NASA then made clear that it is pursuing paths to the two solar-system bodies in parallel.
It’s a message that was hammered home during Isaacman’s first congressional testimony in April, presumably as a way to appease both lawmakers (who want to be sure the US does not cede the Moon to China) and the administration (which has its eyes on the Red Planet).
The message was quickly picked up by industry, who pivoted to share how their tech designed for LEO or the Moon could be tweaked to facilitate a government-led push to Mars.
Golden: Golden Dome deserves its own story for how much it’s driven space policy and industry investment this year (which is why we wrote one.) But a policy recap also wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the space-based missile defense program that took the US by storm this year.
While the Pentagon was working to build a missile-defense constellation before Trump took office, his January executive order put the effort on a national stage—and established a program that policy makers and industry could get behind.
Competition: The drive to beat China underpinned every piece of space policy in 2025, from America’s lunar ambitions, to winning the space diplomacy race, to fighting to boost NASA’s science budget.
Yet—even while competition with China loomed—academics gathered to debate if the US was only hurting itself by refusing to cooperate with Beijing, and if taking steps to work together would actually be in America’s best interest.
