Continuity and Change in U.S. Space Exploration Approaches (2017–2025)

In recent years, amid the increasing polarization in American society, the United States has witnessed growing divergences between its key parties on virtually all domestic and foreign policy issues. However, this trend has barely affected U.S. space exploration programs, indicating a degree of continuity between administrations in this area and demonstrating a political consensus regarding its strategic importance, despite some minor interparty differences. To showcase this trend, this article compares the approaches to space policy during the terms of the Republican D. Trump and the Democrat J. Biden The first section examines their initiatives in this field within the context of the traditional narratives of the so-called ‘grand strategy’, such as the ‘American Dream’, ‘exceptionalism’, the ‘frontier’. The second section traces the continuity between D. Trump’s first term and the Biden administration in such areas of space policy as the exploration of the Moon and Mars, airspace traffic regulation, public-private partnership, and asteroid exploration. At the same time, the author indicates new features in the Biden administration’s approaches to the establishment of the U.S. Space Force, outer space demilitarization, and sectoral program implementation to combat climate change and achieve racial and gender diversity. The third section outlines the contours of D. Trump’s second administration’s new space policy. The author concludes that it is the U.S. self-identification as the sole superpower that has a decisive influence on the formation, coherence, and goal-setting of contemporary American space policy, which explains the phenomenon of strategic continuity between different administrations.

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