Europa Clipper, the mission currently in formulation that would fly by Europa dozens of times, is likely to continue without Culberson’s support. NASA has formally endorsed the mission, and it is highly ranked by the planetary science decadal survey report. If pressed, I would say the odds of Europa Clipper launching on an SLS have now dropped considerably, and its launch date also now likely to be in the mid-2020s as opposed to 2022.

I have a hard time seeing how the Europa lander project continues without Culberson, because NASA has not formally requested the mission, and it lacks consensus support from the scientific community. Culberson had been planning -- and still may be able to -- allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to this effort in fiscal year 2019, but no other member of Congress is likely to pick up that effort in 2020 or beyond.

The losses of Dana Rohrabacher and Randy Hultgren are not as seismic, but they did represent two members of the Republican party with strong interests in space and science. Rohrabacher had seniority and—had Republicans maintained control of the House—may have run for the chairmanship of the full Science Committee. His loss also makes for one less SLS skeptic in Congress, already a rare breed. Hultgren was a moderate Republican with an interest in national labs (he had one in his district) and a member of the Planetary Science Caucus.

Not much will change in the Senate because the Republican party retains control. If Bill Nelson loses his seat, that would represent a significant loss for human spaceflight and Florida’s space coast. There were few Senators more committed to those ideas, and as the only serving member of Congress to have flown in space, his commitment to NASA went beyond the normal parochial political concerns of Florida senators.

In the coming weeks, we will have a better sense about which Democratic House members will assume leadership of key committees, including the all-important Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations chair. We will also be publishing a special Space Policy Edition on November 16th with further analysis.

Overall, we expect that Congressional space policy and support will be largely unchanged. Though lacking the idiosyncratic commitments of certain members, the bipartisan nature of NASA and space will ensure a relatively smooth transition—except for Space Force, which is another post’s worth of discussion entirely.