More than 90 companies involved in the commercial satellite sector are strongly opposing a draft international protocol that they say would add unnecessary bureaucracy and costs.

The draft “Space Assets Protocol” was developed by the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT).  Based in Rome, Italy, the organization operates under a 1940 mullilateral statute to which 63 countries, including the United States, are signatory.  Its purpose is to harmonize and coordinate private law between countries and groups of countries.

In a December 9 letter to UNIDROIT’s Deputy-Secretary General, a who’s who of the commercial satellite industry charged that UNIDROIT ignored their concerns during the years the protocol was being developed:  “Indeed, the organization has consistently disregarded the views of the satellite manufacturing, operator and financing communities in the UNIDROIT meetings and drafting.”

UNIDROIT plans to ask for approval of the protocol at a February 27 – March 9, 2012 meeting in Berlin, Germany — the Diplomatic Conference for the Adoption of the Draft Protocol to the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment on Matters Specific to Space Assets.  The letter calls on UNIDROIT to “halt your plans” to adopt the draft protocol.  

The organizations signing the letter span the spectrum of the commercial satellite marketplace around the world — operators, manufacturers, launch service providers, insurers, underwriters, financiers, and trade associations.   A few of the most recognizable names are Intelsat, Inmarsat, SES, Eutelsat, Arabsat, EchoStar, Iridium, Globalstar, Asiasat, Eurasiasat, Thuraya, Telesat, Sky Perfect JSAT, Korea Telecom, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences, Space Systems/Loral, Astrium, Thales/Alenia, Mitsubishi Electric Corp. Space Division, OHB, Arianespace, International Launch Services, SpaceX, Sea Launch, Aon Risk Services, Munich Reinsurance Co., Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Cable & Satellite Broadcasing Association of Asia, and the Satellite Industry Association (SIA).

SIA and three other industry associations from Europe, Australia and Canada issued a joint press release questioning why “unnecessary and totally counter-productive burdens should be placed on the satellite industry” when “governments are urging industry to create more jobs and to enable growth…”

The following events may be of interest in the coming week – though we know of very few as everyone begins wrapping up their activities for 2011.  The House and Senate are both in session this week and have full agendas, including many hearings though not on space policy-related topics.   

During the Week 

If all goes according to plan, this will be the final week of the first session of the 112^th Congress.   Before the House and Senate can go home, however, they have critically important legislation to pass.   Among the most important items from a space-policy standpoint are the following: 

• Final passage of the FY2012 Defense Authorization bill (S. 1867).   House and Senate negotiators have been working on the final version since the Senate passed the bill on December 1.  Rumors are that the conference version will be completed as early as tomorrow, Monday, December 12, but a wrinkle developed over the weekend.   The Washington Post reports that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) released a report that the bill contains $834 million in earmarks, including many by Republican freshman who campaigned against earmarks.   Legislators pledged not to include earmarks in legislation for this year and next year.  Whether McCaskill’s report will delay final negotiations remains to be seen.
• Final passage the remaining FY2012 appropriations bills.  Three of the bills were bundled together and passed as a “minibus” earlier this month, but agencies and departments in the remaining nine bills – including the Department of Defense (DOD) – have not yet passed.  Currently they are bundled together into H.R. 2055, but two (Labor-HHS and Interior) are especially controversial and may be pulled out and dealt with separately.    The current Continuing Resolution (CR) that is funding these agencies expires on Friday, so some action must be taken before then. 

Thursday, December 15 

• Industry Day for Space Launch System Advanced Booster, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL

NASA announced today that SpaceX will launch its pathbreaking demonstration commercial cargo flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on February 7, 2012.  Pending final safety reviews and tests, it also is allowing the company to combine its second and third test flights as it requested.

SpaceX is one of two companies working with NASA under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop systems to take cargo to the ISS now that the space shuttle program has ended.    SpaceX conducted the first test of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft in December 2010.   Two more test flights were planned to demonstrate the ability to rendezvous and berth to the ISS, but SpaceX asked to combine them into a single mission after the success of the earlier flight.

NASA’s announcement today stopped short of final approval for combining the two tests, which will require “final safety reviews, testing and verification.”    NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said “There is still a significant amount of critical work to be completed before launch, but the teams have a sound plan…”

The agency is anxious for SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., NASA’s other COTS partner, to initiate their commercial cargo services.  Orbital has not yet launched its Taurus II launch vehicle or Cygnus spacecraft.  Both companies plan to begin offering commercial services in 2012, however.     The space shuttle was the primary means of taking cargo to (and from) the ISS.    Although there are other non-U.S. spacecraft that can deliver cargo to the ISS — Russia’s Progress, Europe’s ATV and Japan’s HTV — the United States itself has no means at all today to send either cargo or crews there.   NASA also is working with SpaceX and other companies to develop a “commercial crew” capability that it hopes will result in a U.S. commercial human spaceflight transportation system in the middle of this decade.

Taking people to and from low Earth orbit (LEO, where the ISS is located) was relegated to the commercial sector instead of NASA by President Obama in February 2011.  The decision was very controversial and Congress has not provided as much funding for NASA to assist the commercial companies as the President requested, making the timing of when such services will be available open to question.   Congress instead directed NASA to proceed with developing a new spacecraft and launch system to take astronauts beyond LEO and to serve as a backup in case the commercial plans fall through.  NASA’s system is not expected to be ready to launch people anywhere until 2021, however.

Russia has not given up on contacting its Phobos-Grunt spacecraft that has been stranded in Earth orbit since launch on November 8.

The European Space Agency (ESA) resumed efforts to contact the spacecraft on Monday at Russia’s request using a ground station in Spain.  The request from Russia casts doubt on recent reports in the press that the spacecraft may be tumbling or even falling to pieces.  Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, and the company that built Phobos-Grunt and the Fregat upper stage that apparently malfunctioned, Lavochkin, have not provided any public updates, however, making ground-based visual observations by skilled amatuers the main source of information about the spacecraft’s condition.

Unfortunately, ESA’s latest efforts have not borne fruit.   The agency reported today that its attempts to communicate with the spacecraft using a “redundant transmitter” on Phobos-Grunt on Monday, Tuesday and today “did not succeed.”   It will continue to try through Friday.  ESA was able get a response from the spacecraft twice, but it fell silent thereafter.

Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-soil) was designed to return a sample of soil from Mars’s moon Phobos to Earth.  It also carries a small Chinese spacecraft that was to orbit Mars.   This is the first Mars spacecraft launched by Russia in 15 years.   That spacecraft, Mars-96, also failed to leave Earth orbit, another in a long string of Mars failures for the Russian space program.  Of the more than a dozen spacecraft sent to Mars since the 1960s by Russia, only one (Phobos 2) has been even a partial success.  The United States also has had Mars failures, but the majority have been great successes, including the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.  NASA launched its most recent Mars probe, Curiosity, just after Thanksgiving.   It is scheduled to arrive at Mars in August 2012.  It also is a rover.

House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX) lauded the scientific advances expected to result from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), but warned that repeated overruns and schedule delays are trying Congress’s patience.  

Reminding JWST Program Director Rick Howard and the other witnesses at yesterday’s hearing about the severe budget situation, Hall said that “NASA’s latest replan for the [JWST] is the agency’s last opportunity to hold this program together.”

 

A memo prepared by committee staff in preparation for the hearing succinctly reviews the history of the troubled program, originally slated to cost $500 million with launch in 2007.   The latest cost estimate is $8.8 billion with launch in 2018.

 

Hall and several other Republican members of the committee honed in on those cost increases and expressed concern about whether the latest estimate is any more reliable that those submitted previously.   Howard began his testimony by admitting that the agency managed the program poorly.  After thanking Congress for providing an increase in JWST funding for FY2012, he said:  “We at NASA recognize that we made your already difficult task of funding important programs in these distressed fiscal times even more difficult through our poor past performance on JWST.”

 

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who chaired the committee in the late 1990s during a troubled time for the International Space Station (ISS), worried that JWST will be “another money pit” like the ISS.  Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) pressed the witnesses to rank JWST as a priority within NASA and say what programs should receive less funds if JWST needs more.

 

Howard, who took over the JWST program management responsibilities last year following a management shakeup, told the committee that NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has said that the agency’s top three priorities are JWST, the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).   He stopped short of saying what programs should be cut.   The other three witnesses also declined to specify what should be cut.  As Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) later pointed out, since none the latter three works for the government, they were not in a position to answer and he called for a subsequent hearing with appropriate witnesses if that line of questioning is to be pursued.  The other witnesses were Roger Blandford of Stanford University who chaired the most recent National Research Council Decadal Survey for astronomy and astrophysics; Garth Illingworth, an astrophysicist at the University of California Santa Cruz who served as a member of the Independent Review Team that led to the management shakeup last year; and Jeffrey Grant of Northrop Grumman, prime contractor for JWST.

 

The overall message from the committee to NASA was that despite congressional support for the scientific goals of JWST, this must be the last time the agency comes to Congress with news of overruns or schedule slips.  NASA’s response was that it will restore Congress’s confidence by ensuring that JWST comes in on the cost and schedule promised in the latest replanning effort — $8.8 billion life cycle cost (of which $8 billion is development) and launch in 2018.

 

Howard’s statement that Bolden identified NASA’s top three priorities are JWST, SLS and MPCV is different from what Bolden told the Senate Commerce Committee on November 17.  Bolden listed the agency’s top three priorities as SLS/MPCV (combined as one), the International Space Station with enhancements including commercial crew, and JWST. 

 

• Hearing Charter
• Opening statement by Chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX)
• Opening statement by Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
• Written statement of Rick Howard, JWST Program Director, NASA
• Written statement of Roger Blandford, Stanford University
• Written statement of Garth Illingworth, Univ of California Santa Cruz
• Written statement of Jeffrey Grant, Northrop Grumman
• Webcast