State officials have tapped San Antonio to host the first-ever Texas Space Summit in September 2026 to discuss the booming commercial space business.
The three-day conference will run Sept. 21-23 at the Henry B. González Convention Center and is expected to bring in more than 2,000 attendees including space industry leaders.
“The summit will bring together buyers, funders, policymakers and researchers from the (Defense Department), NASA and leading Texas-based space contractors, innovators and investors,” according to a news release.
An official announcement is set for Tuesday morning at a hangar at Brooks, the former Air Force Base where researchers studied the effects of space on the human body and screened the first astronauts in the early days of the space race.
President John F. Kennedy dedicated the School of Aerospace Medicine there in 1963, and his comments about space exploration still echo today as the Trump administration threatens billions in NASA’s science budget, including a combined $267 million from a San Antonio research hub and university.
“There will be, as there always are, pressures in this country to do less in this area as in so many others, and temptations to do something else that is perhaps easier,” he said. “But this research here must go on. This space effort must go on. The conquest of space must and will go ahead. That much we know.”
In addition to keynotes, panels and networking, the conference, with a theme of “Land Here, Go Beyond,” also will have “live demonstrations and scale models of launch systems, satellites, robotics and life-support technologies” and exhibits “including lunar bases and Mars simulations.”
The state’s space business employs more than 150,000 people and is home to major space organizations including NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Axiom and Lockheed Martin. Southwest Research Institute and UT San Antonio also support the state’s space effort.
The state’s space office has been working to make things easier for the industry by helping ease regulatory hurdles and offering millions in grants.
So far, it’s invested $126 million in grants from the $150 million that the Texas Legislature appropriated in 2023 for the state’s Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research fund.