NASA will hold a media briefing on Thursday, November 10, about the upcoming launch of its next Mars mission, Curiosity.

The briefing is at 1:00 pm EST and will be broadcast on NASA TV. Participants are:

— Doug McCuistion, director, Mars Program, NASA Headquarters
— Ashwin Vasavada, MSL deputy project scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
— Pete Theisinger, MSL project manager, JPL

Curiosity’s launch is scheduled for November 25 at 10:25 am EST. The launch window is open until December 18.

The Women and Mars conference sponsored by Explore Mars, Inc. today and tomorrow (Wednesday and Thursday) will be webcast at this link: http://www.livestream.com/exploremars.

The keynote speaker this morning at 9:10 am EST is NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Three panels follow on why so many women are involved in Mars exploration, how to advance STEM education for young women interested in Mars, and a largely industry panel on “Getting to Mars.” The day’s activities end with an afternoon keynote at 4:00 pm featuring Penny Boston, Director, Cave and Karst Studies Program at the National Cave and Karst Research Institute. Two more panels — on policy and on Mars science — are on the agenda for tomorrow morning.

For the complete program, visit the conference website.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing about the future of the planetary exploration program next week.

Witnesses are Jim Green, director of the planetary sciences division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and Steve Squyres, chair of the National Research Council’s recent decadal survey on planetary science.

Budget constraints at NASA are heightening concerns about what the future holds for the U.S. planetary science program. With the launch of NASA’s next Mars probe, Curiosity, just weeks away, what will come next is an open question. Grand plans of merging the U.S. and European robotic Mars exploration programs are endangered by NASA’s inability to commit funds to planned missions in 2016 and 2018. U.S. plans for large “flagship” missions to destinations like Jupiter’s moon Europa are in abeyance until the budget situation stabilizes. In recent meetings of NASA’s planetary science subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC), Green has been alerting planetary scientists to the need to explain the return on investment in planetary exploration. Squyres, best known as the father of the twin Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, was just named as the new chair of NAC.

Still, in response to a recent op-ed in the Washington Times lamenting the state of the planetary science program, Green said that the U.S. program is still the best in the world.

The hearing is at 10:00 am EST on November 15 in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building.

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. For more information, click the links below or check our calendar on the right menu. The Senate is in session this week until Thursday (Friday is a federal holiday, Veterans Day). The House is in a Constituent Work Week and meets only in pro forma session on Monday and Thursday.

During the Week

Russia is scheduled to launch its first robotic mission to Mars in 15 years. This mission, Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-soil), is a sample return mission to Mars’s moon Phobos. It also carries China’s first Mars probe, a Mars orbiter called Yinghuo-1. The launch is just after 3:00 pm Tuesday, November 8 EST (November 9, Moscow Time). One report gave the time as 00:26 Moscow Time on November 9, which converts to 3:26 pm EST November 8 (now that Moscow decided not to return to standard time), although Spaceflightnow.com reports the launch time as 2016:03 GMT (3:16:03 pm EST) November 8. Russia has been jinxed at Mars, with none of the many Mars probes it has launched since the 1960s being a complete success, and the partial successes quite modest. Its most recent Mars probe, Mars-96, was launched in 1996 and failed to leave Earth orbit. (Editor’s note: The time of launch was given as 4:26 pm EST in an earlier version of this article, but that did not reflect the recent decision by Moscow to remain on summer time.)

Tuesday-Wednesday, November 8-9

• National Research Council (NRC) Space Studies Board (SSB), Irvine, CA (no details have been posted on the SSB website other than the date and location)

Wednesday, November 9

• Secure World Foundation, China’s Space-Based Surveillance Activities, 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 11:00 am – 1:00 pm EST
• Mark Albrecht Lecture on his new book Falling Back to Earth: A First Hand Account of the Great Space Race and the End of the Cold War, George Washington University’s (GWU’s) Elliot School Lindner Family Commons, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC, 5:30 pm EST

Wednesday-Thursday, November 9-10

• Explore Mars Inc., Woman and Mars conference, GWU Jack Morton Auditorium, 805 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC
• National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Board, Crowne Plaza Old Town Alexandria, VA, Washington Ballroom

Thursday, November 10

• AIAA National Capital Section luncheon with Kathy Sullivan, NOAA, Pier 7 restaurant, 650 Water Street, Washington, DC, 11:30 am EST

Steve Squyres, a highly respected planetary scientist, will be the new chair of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC).

NASA announced his appointment today. NAC provides advice to the NASA Administrator on programs and issues affecting the agency. It has a number of committees, subcommittees, and analysis groups.

Squyres is probably best known as the “father” of the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. A professor at Cornell University, he also chaired the recent Decadal Survey on planetary science for the National Research Council. He recently took part as an “aquanaut” in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) simulation of a mission to an asteroid, which had to be terminated prematurely because of Hurricane Rina.

This afternoon the Senate passed the “minibus” appropriations bill (H.R. 2112) that combines three of the regular appropriations bills into one, including funding for NASA, NOAA and the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST).

The Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill includes NASA and NOAA. The Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD) includes AST. The third bill in the package is Agriculture.

The vote was 69-30.

The bill now goes to the House where its future is unclear. The most recent reports indicate that the House will, in fact, accede to the Senate’s approach to the appropriations bills for FY2012, dealing with them in groups instead of combining all 12 into a single “omnibus” package. Omnibus bills have become common in recent years and initially it appeared the House preferred that method.

The House and Senate appropriations committees were fairly far apart in their recommendations for NASA. The House committee approved $16.8 billion, and, among other things, recommended terminating the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) program. The Senate approved $17.9 billion and recommended increasing JWST funding by $156 million so it could be launched in 2018 instead of years later. The President’s request for NASA was $18.7 billion, of which $374 million was for JWST.

The two also were far apart on overall funding for NOAA. The House committee approved $4.5 billion; the Senate approved $5.0 billion. The request was $5.5 billion. However, regarding the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), the two are quite close: $901 million in the House versus $920 million in the Senate, compared to the request of $1.07 billion.

The two also were fairly close in their recommendations for AST, approving about half of what the President requested. The request was $26.6 million, a significant increase from its FY2011 level of $15 million. The House committee approved $13 million, while the Senate approved $15 million.

After the House passes its bill, with whatever amendments are adopted, the two chambers will have to reach a compromise and the President will have to agree with it, so there still are several steps to go. Today’s action, however, moves the process closer to providing certainty to at least some federal agencies as to their FY2012 funding levels.

The government is currently operating under a Continuing Resolution that expires on November 18. Congress will need to pass some sort of appropriations bill(s) before then to avoid a full or partial government shutdown.