Astronomy Prints 🌌: Editor's Choice: Space diplomacy in a second Trump administration

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Editor's Choice: Space diplomacy in a second Trump administration

07/16/2025

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Today, we're launching Editor's Choice, a newsletter to highlight some of our favorite recent stories to our SpaceNews This Week readers. You can reply to this email and send us feedback on this new format. Thanks for reading.

By Mike Gruss

Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, leaders at the State Department have talked about a massive reorganization. They've eliminated some offices and shrunk teams, including some space-related groups, and fired 1,300 people Friday.

The re-imagining of diplomacy comes at a time when Trump himself has called into question the value of alliances with many of the United States' long-standing partners, including those who share interests in space.

This naturally raises a question for the space community: in the first six months of a new Trump administration, what does diplomacy look like for space and what could happen to the tens of millions of dollars in contracts that are at play internationally?

Here's what Debra Werner found:

After decades of working closely with international space agencies, the Trump administration is reevaluating programs through an "America First" lens, which prioritize domestic prosperity over foreign-policy considerations. Through that lens, policymakers would consider whether a joint space program created U.S. jobs, improved the U.S. balance of trade with another nation or offered access to unique technology.

"In the past, we would often be space partners either because we had a rich history of being a partner or because it was something we wanted to do as an extension of our foreign policy," said Kevin O'Connell, who led the Office of Space Commerce during the first Trump administration and is head of consulting firm Space Economy Rising. "I don't think that's going to be the case anymore. There's going to be much more of a hard-hitting calculation of where there's concrete mutual interest in partnership."

Now, European leaders and American space officials are adjusting to this new reality, one in which long-term partnerships are being re-evaluated, formerly easy relationships face tension and the U.S. is changing tack on international space issues.

You can read the full story here. It's a compelling look at some of the headscratching going on at European space agencies.

SIGNIFICANT DIGIT

$24.9B

The amount of money Senate appropriators want to set aside for NASA for fiscal year 2026. That's slightly above the $24.875 billion that the agency received in 2025 and far more than the $18.8 billion that the administration offered in its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal. Read the full story.

Jared Isaacman at his April 9 Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing regarding his nomination to be NASA administrator. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

ADMINISTRATOR SAGA

President Donald Trump said on July 6 it would have been "inappropriate" for Jared Isaacman to lead NASA given his ties to Elon Musk and history of political donations. He did not offer a timeline or hints at who would lead NASA instead.

But then a few days later, on the evening of July 9, Trump announced Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, would serve as interim NASA administrator. It's a bit of an unprecedented move. No cabinet secretary has ever led the agency during its 70 year history. Janet Petro had been the acting administrator.

Isaacman, for his part, now says he is interested in a career in politics.

Trending This Week

Northrop Grumman is angling to become a lead contractor for Golden Dome and has moved to centralize coordination of its efforts in Huntsville, Alabama.

Boeing won a $2.8 billion contract to develop a new generation of secure military satellites that will serve as the backbone of the United States' nuclear command, control and communications network. That wasn't the only big news about the Space Force's plans for satellite communications.

The U.S. Space Force also canceled a competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman to build a new class of jam-resistant communications satellites, abandoning a traditional procurement approach in favor of a more flexible strategy.

"Exploration is great, commercialization is even better." That's Mike Gold on a recent panel on NASA's lunar program. The whole session is on the Space Minds podcast this week.

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