SpaceX announced today that May 7 is the new date it has chosen to attempt its second test launch as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. 

The Space X announcement in the form of an email said “NASA and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station have approved SpaceX’s request to set May 7th as the target launch date for the upcoming COTS 2 mission.”   NASA later issued its own press release quoting NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier as saying:  “We appreciate that SpaceX is taking the necessary time to help ensure the success of this historic flight. We will continue to work with SpaceX in preparing for the May 7 launch to the International Space Station.”

NASA refers to the mission as C2+ — the second COTS test flight that combines objectives from the third (and last) test flight at SpaceX’s request.  SpaceX refers to it as COTS 2.  The goal is not only to launch the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the vicinity of the International Space Station (ISS), but to actually berth with the ISS and transfer supplies and equipment.  That latter objective was to be part of the third test flight, but SpaceX convinced NASA to let it try on this flight.

SpaceX announced today that it is delaying its test launch to the International Space Station by another week to allow more testing.

The launch was tentatively approved for April 30 (with May 3 as a backup date) last week after a NASA Flight Readiness Review, but NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said at the time that additional software testing was required and a final decision had not been made.  Today was the day that SpaceX had to report to NASA on its progress in testing the software.

In an e-mailed message, SpaceX said: 

“After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data. While it is still possible that we could launch on May 3rd, it would be wise to add a few more days of margin in case things take longer than expected. As a result, our launch is likely to be pushed back by one week, pending coordination with NASA.

“We will send out an announcement when a new target it [sic] set.”

The House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee approved its draft FY2013 CJS appropriations bill today.  Across Capitol Hill, the full Senate Appropriations Committee gave the nod to its version of the bill.   These are only the first steps in the lengthy congressional process to get approval for FY2013 spending, and the two bills are quite different, but they are steps nonetheless.

The Senate bill is now ready for floor action, although it is anyone’s guess as to when that will occur.  The House bill still must be marked up at full committee level.  No date for that action has been announced.

The biggest difference in the two bills with regard to space programs is that the Senate wants to take the management of weather satellite programs away from NOAA and give it to NASA.   The Senate bill transfers more than $1 billion from NOAA to NASA to pay for it.   Thus the Senate total for NASA is $19.4 billion, although the committee said that if the transfer did not take place, the total for NASA would be $41.5 million less than the President requested.    The House bill does not call for transferring NOAA’s satellite programs to NASA.  It would provide NASA $17.6 billion, $138 million less than the President’s request.

Both bills would add money for robotic Mars exploration.  The Senate bill adds $100 million; the House bill adds $150 million.  However the House bill requires that the National Research Council (NRC) certify to Congress that NASA’s new Mars plan conforms with the NRC’s decadal survey priority of missions that will ultimately return a sample of Mars to Earth.   If the NRC does not make such a certification, the $150 million will be allocated to a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa instead.  The Europa mission was the second priority for large missions in the decadal survey.   Both bills provide the requested funding for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Both bills support the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft, as well as commercial crew.   Not all the details of the bills have been made public yet, but it appears that the Senate adds about $160 million for SLS and $175 million for Orion.  The Senate provided $525 millon instead of the $830 million requested for commercial crew.   The House bill would add $110 million for SLS and keep Orion funding at the requested level.  The House has not publicly indicated its funding level for commercial crew, but the Commercial Spaceflight Federation issued a press release stating that the amount is $500 million and asked Congress to provide “the highest possible funding level” as it finalizes the NASA budget.

The House did not appear to make any major changes to NOAA’s satellite programs.  Overall, it reduced the NOAA request from $5.1 billion to $5.0 billion.   It fully funded NOAA’s $916 million request for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).  As mentioned, the Senate would move the money allocated for NOAA’s satellite programs to NASA. 

NASA already is the acquisition agent for NOAA’s satellites, but the agencies work together on a reimburseable basis.  Congress appropriates the money to NOAA and NOAA then transfers much of it to NASA.    Senator Mikulski, who chairs the Senate CJS subcommittee, says that the government will save $117 million in FY2013 by getting rid of unnecessary management duplication by giving the money directly to NASA.  Mikulski criticized NOAA for continuing overruns on its satellite programs and insisted that NASA could do a better job.  NOAA would continue to operate the satellites once they are in orbit under the Senate CJS plan.

Others argue that whatever agency sets the requirements must be the agency responsible for obtaining the money to pay for implementing them.  Otherwise, there is no brake on the requirements-setting process and “requirements creep” sets in.  As the agency that needs the data to produce weather forecasts, NOAA presumably would remain in control of the requirements, while NASA would have to fight the budget battles to pay for satellites to meet them, a difficult position to be in.   Consequently the Senate proposal is expected to be controversial.

Overall, the House and Senate are working under very different budget assumptions for FY2013.   The Senate is using the top level assumptions that are in law as part of the Budget Control Act (BCA) enacted last year after considerable debate over raising the debt limit.    The Senate insists that those are the budget targets for this year, but the House decided to pass a different, lower set of spending numbers to guide its appropriations process.  Hanging over all of this is the threat of sequestration, also part of the BCA, wherein NASA, for example, would be subject to an eight percent across-the-board cut beginning January 1, 2013.  

Thus, even though these appropriations actions may make it appear that Congress is moving more quickly than usual in funding the government for the upcoming fiscal year, it is not expected that the FY2013 appropriations bills will be finalized before the election in November.  FY2013 begins on October 1.

 Editor’s Note:   This story is updated with the Commercial SpaceFlight Federation press release.

Senate Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee appropriators had a surprise for everyone when they marked up the FY2013 appropriations bill today.  They want to transfer NOAA’s satellite activities other than operations to NASA, increasing NASA’s budget accordingly.   NASA would get $19.4 billion for FY2013 compared to the $17.7 billion request.  NOAA would get $3.4 billion for FY2013, compared to the $5.1 billion requested.

CJS subcommittee chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) complained that they had told NOAA, part of the Department of Commerce, “time and time and time again” that they need to “get their act together.”   The subcommittee is weary of cost overruns on NOAA satellite programs.  She particularly mentioned that the projected life-cycle cost for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) went up $1 billion in the last year, from $11.9 billion to $12.9 billion.

Mary Kicza, head of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) said at a FY2013 budget briefing in February that the $1 billion increase was due to lengthening by four years (from 2024 to 2028) the operational time frame for the system. 

Mikulski invoked what she called the Marine rule — be best at what you do best.  She and other subcommittee members clearly believe that NASA is better at building and launching satellites than NOAA.   In fact, NASA is already NOAA’s procurement agent for satellites.  NOAA sets the requirements and reimburses NASA for procuring and launching them.  NOAA then operates the satellites once they are in orbit.

If the subcommittee’s recommendation becomes law, NOAA would still operate the satellites, but NASA would in charge of everything else and the money would be in NASA’s budget.  Mikulski estimated that the government would save $100 million per year by having NASA manage the programs directly instead of through the current reimburseable arrangement.

As for NASA’s other programs, a summary provided by the committee and statements by Mikulski and ranking member Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) asserted that NASA is fully funded to pursue the balanced program laid out in the 2010 NASA authorization act.   Funds are provided for science, the Orion and Space Launch System programs for human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit, and for a commercial crew capability to exist by 2017 to take crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS).   The following paragraph and bullet points are from the committee’s summary:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is funded at $19.4 billion, an increase of $1.6 billion over the fiscal year 2012 enacted level. The large increase results from a reorganization of operational weather satellite procurement from NOAA into NASA. Without the funds for weather satellite procurement, this level represents a $41.5 million cut from the fiscal year 2012 enacted level.

• The bill preserves a NASA portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments.
• Funding for the development of the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle is $1.2 billion, the same as fiscal year 2012. Heavy lift Space Launch System (SLS) development is funded at $1.5 billion, $21 million less than fiscal year 2012. The bill also provides $244 million for construction needed to build, test, and operate Orion and SLS. Commercial crew development is provided $525 million, an increase of $119 million above fiscal year 2012.
• The bill provides $5 bilion for Science which is $69 billion less than fiscal year 2012.  Within Science, the bill restores $100 million of a proposed cut to robotic Mars science programs, resulting in a total of $461 million for Mars robotic science.

At the beginning of the markup, Miksulski asked her colleagues to refrain from introducing amendments because they will be considered during full committee markup, which she said would be on Thursday.  The time and location are not yet posted on the committee’s website. 

One place where Mikulski and Hutchison publicly disagreed was whether the funding for commercial crew supports only two competitors or more.   Hutchison said “our priority for NASA is to select two competitors” so the commercial crew program can be “robust” but also saves taypayers from funding more companies than necessary.  Mikulski rejoined that that was Hutchison’s view, not the subcommittee’s.   Mikulski said she did not know how many companies would be funded, maybe four (the number NASA is currently funding), but that she and Hutchison were in agreement that NASA needs a balanced program including Orion/SLS, commercial crew, and science.

Hutchison is retiring from the Senate this year and several Senators lauded her work over many years and noted this was her last subcommittee markup.  She will, however, remain a powerful presence in the Senate on NASA programs for the rest of this year.