Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of July 26-August 1, 2026 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House is on summer recess, returning August 31 with only pro forma sessions until then.

During the Week

The week began this morning with the safe landing of Soyuz MS-28 on the steppe of Kazakhstan at 6:27 am ET. The three crew members spent 241 days (about 8 months) aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Chris Williams and his Russian colleagues Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev were helped out of their capsule within about half an hour and carried (as is Russian practice) to nearby seats for initial medical checks. By tradition each crew member is given a Russian matryoshka doll painted in their image as a welcome home gift and Williams seemed delighted with his.

Their replacements on Soyuz MS-29 arrived on July 14 — Roscosmos’s Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina and NASA’s Anil Menon. They joined Crew-12, which includes NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA’s Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos’s Andrey Fedyaev. Meir assumed command of the ISS from Kud-Sverchkov yesterday.

It’s a pretty quiet week otherwise. The House left for summer recess on Thursday and won’t be back until August 31. The Senate is in session this week and next, but part of this week will be devoted to honoring the late Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who died on July 11. A ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda Tuesday morning will be followed by a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral that afternoon. The next day he’ll be taken to South Carolina for additional services and burial. Graham’s sister, Darline, has been appointed to fill out the rest of her brother’s term and other Senators assigned to replace him on committees, but his death is another complication is trying to get Congress’s work done by the end of the year. He was an influential figure especially in budget, foreign affairs, and national security debates.

Off the Hill, two highlights are a Secure World Foundation (SWF) panel discussion about orbital data centers and a NASA briefing on the upcoming launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Both are on Wednesday.

Early this year SpaceX announced plans to put one million AI data centers in orbit and others quickly followed suit. SWF points out that StarCloud has filed plans with the FCC for 88,000 satellites, Blue Origin for 51,600, and Cowboy Space for 20,000. That’s just U.S. companies. The SWF panel will focus on the space sustainability aspects of putting so many satellites in orbit and “how can space policy and safety measures help maintain a stable orbital environment while continuing to foster innovation?”

The event will NOT be livestreamed, but SWF plans to make a recording available afterwards. As of today, the website says registration is full so check first if you want to attend.

On Wednesday afternoon, NASA will have a virtual briefing on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that’s getting ready for launch on August 30 on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, Roman is a wide-field telescope — its original name was Wide-Field Infrared Space Telescope or WFIRST — that will complement the James Webb Space Telescope. Both will survey the universe in infrared wavelengths, but JWST has a narrow field of view allowing it to zoom in on areas of interest while Roman’s “big picture” view can identify more of those areas for JWST to investigate in detail.

Briefing participants are Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s astrophysics division at Headquarters, and three experts from Goddard Space Flight Center where Roman was built: Jackie Townsend, project manager; Julie McEnery, senior project scientist; and Jeremy Perkins, integration and test scientist.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below. Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Tuesday, July 28

  • Boeing 2nd Quarter 2026 Financial Results, virtual, 10:30 am ET

Wednesday, July 29

  • Orbital Data Centers & Space Sustainability Implications (SWF), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC, 11:30 am-2:30 pm ET (in-person)
  • NASA Media Briefing for Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, virtual, 2:00 pm ET (watch on X and YouTube)

Thursday, July 30

  • 2026 Air and Space Summit (Potomac Officers Club), Hilton-McLean, McLean, VA, 7:00 am-4:15 pm ET (in-person)