By Mike Gruss
I’ve long argued the spring rituals for the space industry set the tone for the rest of the year.
There’s the Satellite show, where commercial companies announce their agenda. This year, that meant optimism about the capital coming into the industry. There’s Space Symposium, where national security leaders describe their priorities. And the big one is the release of the White House’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year. (The annual report on space threats marks another rite of spring.)
We’re now most of the way through that gauntlet and there’s a bit more clarity to the path forward.
Here are three broad questions I’ll be listening for next week in Colorado Springs based on what we already know:
How to make sense of the NASA budget?
The White House budget proposal included $18.8 billion for NASA, a 23% reduction from what the agency received in a final fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill in January. That comes at a time when the agency is on the high from the good feelings from the Artemis 2 mission and crystal clear images of the moon.
Congress didn’t like the last budget proposal. It will be interesting to see if they will like this one better. NASA’s Administrator Jared Isaacman defended the budget last week and said “NASA doesn’t have a topline problem.” The head of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratsios, is also scheduled to speak at Symposium. Without a National Space Council in this second Trump administration, people are curious to hear from him.
What kind of operational success has the Space Force had in the last year to lead to such a budget hike at the Pentagon?
The Space Force has a monster budget with funding for the service projected to climb to more than $71 billion, up about $40 billion from fiscal 2026 levels. (Reminder, the Space Force budget from FY2021 was about $15 billion.)
The details for the funding require the legislative mechanism known as reconciliation. But the larger budget request matches one of the year’s trends in which nearly every space company is now also a defense company. I was struck by two recent comments from Gen. Chance Saltzman, the head of the Space Force.
First, he said that “guardians and space capabilities have played an outsized role in enabling the joint force to project power and meet our national strategic objectives.”
Second, he said leadership was convinced of the value of space capabilities. “Our team has done a really good job of explaining why Space Force capabilities are so critical,” Saltzman said at an April 1 event. “The leadership … agree with our advocacy that space capabilities need to grow.”
This year, the Pentagon has been involved in Midnight Hammer, Absolute Resolve and Operation Epic Fury. One thing I’ll be listening for in Colorado Springs are the operational details, anecdotes and examples Space Force leaders share, if any, from those conflicts. In other words, what kind of battlefield successes (or gaps) has the Space Force experienced this year that’s led to this level of budget increase?
What has to happen in the next few years for the infrastructure-in-space movement to become a reality?
There’s sure to be interest in putting more infrastructure in space. And there’s money behind it to make that happen. Think: orbital data centers. (If you’ll be in D.C. on April 30, we’re convening our second event on this topic.) What has to go right? One obvious answer: more rockets. But what else?
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