NASA will conduct a second Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) on Thursday in preparation for the launch of Artemis II. The nearly 50-hour test actually begins Tuesday evening as launch teams conduct tests and fill the Space Launch System rocket with propellant. The simulated launch window opens at 8:30 pm ET on Thursday. The first Artemis II WDR on February 2 ended early because of hydrogen leaks, but NASA has replaced seals and is ready to try again.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of February 15-21, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.
Crew-12 headed to the International Space Station this morning aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom. When they arrive tomorrow, the ISS will be restored to its normal crew complement of seven. The unexpected early return of Crew-11 in January meant that only one NASA astronaut is aboard the ISS right now with two Russian colleagues. Freedom is delivering two NASA astronauts, one Russian, and one from the European Space Agency who will spend eight months conducting scientific research and maintaining the earth-orbiting laboratory that has been permanently occupied by international crews for more than 25 years.
United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) new Vulcan rocket delivered U.S. Space Force satellites to geosynchronous orbit today despite a “significant performance anomaly” on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters. This was only the fourth launch of Vulcan and the second time an SRB malfunctioned. In both cases Vulcan’s core stage compensated for the underperformance and put the payloads where they needed to go. ULA and its partners are investigating what happened.
Just 12 months after convincing President Trump to use his inaugural address to extol the vision of sending people to Mars, Elon Musk is changing course. Mars is still the long-term goal, but Musk now acknowledges that is years away. His near-term ambition is a “self-growing city” on the Moon, a planetary object he earlier eschewed as a distraction, that would be home to a manufacturing base for AI satellites and a mass driver to send them into deep space. [Updated, February 11, 2026.]
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of February 8-14, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman issued a directive today to restore the agency’s “core competencies” in order to fulfill President Trump’s December 2025 Executive Order on Ensuring American Space Superiority. The directive identifies actions to be taken within either 30 days or 60 days by Center Directors and other top NASA leadership to begin expanding a strong core of civil servants strengthened by contractors and complemented by international and commercial partners.
The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee unanimously approved a new NASA authorization bill today after adopting a number of amendments. Overall the bill reemphasizes congressional commitment to U.S. leadership in space, especially the Moon-to-Mars human exploration program. More than three dozen amendments were considered. Almost all were adopted by voice vote although an amendment to assess challenges with moving space shuttle Discovery to Houston was withdrawn and another to improve NASA’s ability to detect drones entering its airspace was defeated.
The FY2026 Defense and Transportation-HUD appropriations bills were signed into law today, ending a brief partial government shutdown that began Friday night. The Defense bill funds the U.S. Space Force, and THUD funds the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Coupled with three others in the same package, 11 of the 12 FY2026 appropriations bills are now enacted. Only the Homeland Security bill, controversial because it funds ICE, remains in limbo under a two-week Continuing Resolution.
Following a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) that ended early this morning, NASA decided to pass on this month’s opportunities to send astronauts around the Moon on the Artemis II mission. At a news conference this afternoon, NASA said they need to review data before deciding when they will be ready, but the earliest is March. The four Artemis II astronauts — three from NASA and one from the Canadian Space Agency — ended their pre-launch quarantine for now. Whenever they do launch, they will become the first humans to fly to the Moon since the Apollo era.