Tuesday’s midterm elections gave Democrats a majority in both chambers of Congress. With that comes a handover of the control of the committees that authorize, fund and oversee NASA, NOAA and the Space Force. Whether this somewhat seismic shift will have far-reaching consequences for the space sector remains to be seen. Budgets may not shift all that much but what is done with those budgets may change somewhat – especially for NASA when it comes to its space and earth science activities.
CBS News projects that Democrats will hold at least 54 Senate seats, with two races still unresolved, after flipping Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. In the House, Democrats passed the 218 seats needed for a majority overnight, and CBS estimates they could finish with more than 250. The 120th Congress convenes on 3 January 2027.
The gavels
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, the top Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee has expressed her desire to take over from Rep. Brian Babin, R-TX. Babin, whose district includes Johnson Space Center, will become the committee’s ranking Republican.
Lofgren told the American Institute of Physics in October that a Democratic committee would work to reverse “the tremendous damage that the administration has done to the science enterprise.” At an April hearing, she asked NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman how lawmakers could trust that he would follow what Congress passes, “not what Russ Vought says,” a reference to the White House budget director. From January she will ask these questions as the chair.
Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-NC, the senior Democrat on the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, was reelected and is next in line to chair it. Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-FL. was re-elected and will be the ranking Republican member.
Rep. George Whitesides, D-CA, NASA’s former chief of staff and the former chief executive of Virgin Galactic, won a second term. Whitesides is already vice ranking member of House Science and sits on both its space subcommittee and the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, which oversees military space. A Science subcommittee gavel may come open because Rep. Haley Stevens, D-MI, the senior Democrat on research and technology gave up their seat to run for the Senate but lost in the primary in August.
In the Senate, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA will reclaim the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which she chaired from 2021 to 2025. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX will become the ranking minority member after two years as chair. During that time Cruz helped steer an extra $10 billion to NASA through the 2025 reconciliation law. The Commerce committee’s space Aviation, Space, and Innovation subcommittee, is chaired by Sen. Jerry Moran, R-KS. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Il is the ranking Democrat and is likely to assume the chair.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-ME currently chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and sits ex officio on its Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) subcommittee, which writes NASA’s budget. Democrat Troy Jackson defeated her Tuesday. Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA., is expected to become chair.
Sen. Moran, who chairs the Commerce, Justice, Science subcommittee as well as Commerce’s space panel, loses both gavels. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, the senior CJS Democrat, will take over the subcommittee. Moran and Van Hollen both told Jared Isaacman in May that they wanted NASA to be fully funded. As such, the handover may change the agency’s priorities much more than altering its top line.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, the senior Democrat on House Appropriations, was reelected and is poised to take the full committee chair back from Rep. Tom Cole, R-OK. Rep. Grace Meng, D-NY, the top Democrat on House CJS will succeed Rep. Hal Rogers, R-KY.
On the defense side, Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, who chaired Senate Armed Services from 2021 to 2025, is in line to replace Sen. Roger Wicker, R-MS as chair. Rep. Adam Smith, D-WA, will likely take House Armed Services from Rep. Mike Rogers, R-AL. The top Democratic seat on House Strategic Forces opens up because Rep. Seth Moulton, D-MA., gave up his seat to challenge Sen. Ed Markey and lost the September primary.
Seats near the space centers
Democrat Elaine Luria beat Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-VA., in the district that includes NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. In Colorado Springs, home to Space Force bases and NORAD, Democrat Jessica Killin, challenged Rep. Jeff Crank, R-CO, a Strategic Forces member. Killin has a slight lead over Crank and that election had not been called yet.
Texas elected state Rep. James Talarico to the Senate seat that Sen. John Cornyn R-TX holds. Cornyn lost the Republican primary runoff to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Talarico beat Paxton. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-TX, held the Rio Grande Valley district that includes SpaceX’s Starbase, beating Republican Eric Flores.
Florida stayed Republican at the top: Byron Donalds won the governor’s race and Sen. Ashley Moody kept her seat. Rep. Dale Strong, R-AL, whose district includes Huntsville and Marshall Space Flight Center and the new home for the Space Force was re-elected.
Funding
NASA is operating under a continuing resolution that holds it at this year’s $24.4 billion through 11 December 2026. The White House asked for $18.8 billion for fiscal 2027. The House CJS bill, which never reached the floor, would have cut NASA science programs by about 18 percent while adding money for human spaceflight. Senate appropriators had not released any of their bills by the time that the late-September recess started.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Cole have both said they want to finish the spending bills in the lame duck, which the Planetary Society called possible but unlikely. A government shutdown is the alternative if neither a deal nor another stopgap passes.
The House and Senate committees each passed a NASA authorization bill without dissent this year, but neither reached a floor vote, and both will die if they don’t pass by January 2027. The Senate version, from Sen. Cruz and Sen. Cantwell, authorizes $25.3 billion for FY 2027 and directs NASA to build a permanent base on the Moon.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which operates the civil weather and space-weather satellites, answers to the same committees as NASA. The White House asked for $4.4 billion for NOAA in FY 2027, $1.6 billion less than this year, a request the House Science environment subcommittee reviewed in April, E&E News reported. Congress rejected similar cuts for FY 2026.
The Commerce Department moved its Office of Space Commerce out of NOAA and into the commerce secretary’s office last year. The FY 2027 request gives the office $11 million, down from $52.5 million this year, FedScoop reported. The department’s detailed budget proposed halting work on the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), the civil system being built to warn satellite operators of possible collisions, while it works out a new financial structure that may include user fees.
Appropriators reversed similar cuts in the 2026 spending bills, and the House Appropriations Committee’s FY 2027 bill, approved in May 2026, puts $50 million back for the office and backs continued work on TraCSS.
Rep. Gabe Amo, D-RI, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Environment Subcommittee, which oversees NOAA, is in line to chair it in January 2027.
Golden Dome, the Administration’s space-based missile shield, got about $25 billion through the 2025 reconciliation law. Less than $400 million of its 2027 request sits in the regular defense budget, Breaking Defense reported; the rest was meant to come through a third party-line bill, after the one Congress passed in June 2026 to fund immigration enforcement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in September 2026 that the Senate would “probably” not take up another reconciliation bill until after the election, Arms Control Today reported. With Democrats running both chambers from January, 2027 onward, that route probably closes since Senate Armed Services Democrats have called its funding a “slush fund.”
SpaceX in Washington, Texas and Louisiana
The Federal government accounted for about a fifth of SpaceX’s 2025 revenue of $18.7 billion, or roughly $3.9 billion, according to the company’s IPO prospectus. That total includes xAI and X, which merged into SpaceX before the filing, so the government’s share of the rocket and satellite business alone is higher, Washington Technology noted.
The Space Force awarded SpaceX $2.29 billion in late May 2026 for a Golden Dome communications network and, three days later, $4.16 billion for missile-tracking satellites, CNBC reported.
House Democrats have signaled that restrictions on Starlink and Starshield, SpaceX’s military and intelligence satellite line, in Ukraine will be a top investigative priority. In an October 2026 letter to the White House, Silicon Valley Democrats demanded “immediate, government-wide investigation into the decision to restrict SpaceX’s Starshield satellite-based intelligence and military support services in Ukraine,” CNBC reported.
The office of Rep. Robert Garcia, D-CA, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told Politico in October the panel plans to investigate Elon Musk’s role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk spent at least $474 million on the midterms, $224 million of it in Texas according to CNBC. SpaceX shares fell almost 7 percent in premarket trading Wednesday but had recovered most of that loss by late morning according to Quartz.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa beat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “Greg Abbott gave Elon Musk the keys to the castle,” Hinojosa told KRGV during the campaign. “We can be pro-business, but I think it’s important to differentiate between making sure we are supporting the business community and our Texas communities, but also making sure they’re not taking advantage of us.”
Hinojosa campaigned against corporate subsidies, called for a moratorium on new data centers, and opposed a possible sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX after Texas Monthly reported the state parks commission had discussed the matter. SpaceX is building data center capacity in Texas, CNBC reported.
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk posted on X early Wednesday, pointing to plans he has floated for putting AI computing in orbit, Benzinga reported.
The FAA is reviewing SpaceX’s plan for up to 456 Starship launches a year from Starbase and will accept public comments until 30 November 2026. From January 2027 onward, a Democratic-led Congress will oversee the matter. Starbase, which is now its own city, finished annexing more than 7,100 acres in September, including much of the state park, the Texas Tribune reported.
Rep. Julia Letlow, R-LA, beat Democrat Jamie Davis by about two points, or roughly 25,000 votes, for the Senate seat Sen. Bill Cassidy lost in the spring primary. Letlow strongly backs Starbase Louisiana, the $100 billion Starship launch site SpaceX announced in August for the coastal marsh of Vermilion Parish. Three parish residents and a new nonprofit sued parish officials on 26 October 2026 alleging that the bodies approving the project’s property tax deal violated Louisiana’s open meetings law, WWNO reported. They are asking the court to void the deal.
President Donald Trump told Louisiana voters in an election-eve call that he had recommended Vermilion Parish to Musk, the Louisiana Illuminator reported. Gov. Jeff Landry, who announced the project, faces voters next year, and Davis used his election-night speech to put him “on notice.” SpaceX plans to start construction in 2027 and launch from the site in 2029.
Before the new committees take over in January, a lame-duck Congress has five weeks to keep NASA funded. 2027 will be a pressure-filled year for NASA as it prepares the Artemis III mission. Artemis III will require both SpaceX and Blue Origin to launch versions of their prospective lunar landers for docking tests with an Orion spacecraft during 2027. The success of that mission will then drive NASA’s attempts to make one -or possibly two – lunar landings in 2028.
