Quoting Woody Allen’s famous line — “One path leads to despair, the other to destruction. Let’s hope we choose wisely.” — Dan Baker wrapped up a one-day symposium on how the scientific community and the federal government are dealing with the potentially catastrophic effects of a major space weather event. Dr. Baker heads the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder and will head the new National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Survey on Solar and Space Physics.

The comment pretty much captured the mood at the meeting, which was sponsored by the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services and Supporting Research. Speaker after speaker emphasized the challenge of getting the attention of the public and policymakers to the potentially catastrophic impacts of such a low probability event.

NASA, NOAA and their international counterparts have many spacecraft designed to study the sun and improve the ability to forecast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that could disable or destroy satellite systems like the Global Positioning System (GPS) and government and commercial communications satellites, not to mention terrestrial systems like the electric power grid. Dealing with the consequences is another matter. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator W. Craig Fugate emphasized the need to build resiliency into systems that could be disrupted. He also rued the fact that no one is unambiguously in charge of dealing with the impacts of such disruptions.

Dr. Chris Beck, a staff member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that a bill (H.R. 5026) that includes provisions related to protecting the electric power grid from space weather events (“geomagnetic storms” in the language of the bill) is expected to be debated in the House tomorrow.

Overall, the message was that no one in the government is in charge of dealing with the effects of disruptions caused by solar storms. Not only does that need to be fixed, but it is critical for the scientific community to develop better ways to forecast the storms and communicate to policymakers the siginificant harm that could result from them.

The NRC’s Space Studies Board (SSB) published a report last year on the societal and economic impacts of space weather. Dr. Baker chaired that study and is also chair of the SSB’s standing Committee on Solar and Space Physics. SSB Senior Program Officer Art Charo announced at the meeting today that Dr. Baker will chair the new NRC Decadal Survey on Solar and Space Physics, with Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen of the University of Michigan as co-chair. That report is due on March 31, 2012. Dr. Charo is the study director.

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel issued a memo today directing federal agencies to identify low priority programs that could be cut to reduce their funding by 5 percent for FY2012. National security-related agencies (e.g. the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security) are exempt.

The memo says in part:

“Your agency is required to identify the programs and subprograms that have the lowest impact on your agency’s mission and constitute at least five percent of your agency’s discretionary budget. This information should be included with your FY 2012 budget submission, but is a separate exercise from the budget reductions necessary to meet the target for your agency’s FY 2012 discretionary budget request.”

Considering how little progress has been made in Congress on finalizing the FY2011 budgets, it may be hard to think about FY2012 already, but in fact this is the time of year when agencies are readying their FY2012 requests. Although the FY2012 request will not be submitted to Congress by the President until next February, it takes almost the entire year to negotiate the request first within each agency, and then between the agency and the White House.

This part of the exercise must be completed by September 10, 2010 according to the memo. NASA, NOAA and NSF are among the agencies that will have to comply. NASA was not subjected to the freeze in non-security discretionary spending the Obama Administration mandated for FY2011, so there is no way to know what this means for the agency, but the obvious question is whether that $6 billion increase projected in NASA’s FY2011 budget request will turn out to be just a mirage.

The FY2011 appropriaions process is still on hold waiting for the House and Senate to pass an actual budget resolution or a “deeming resolution” instead. The budget resolution sets the amount of funding that each of the 12 appropriations subcommittees is allowed to spend.

As the Memorial Day recess neared, rumors were that the Senate would pass something before the July 4th recess. However, Congress Daily (subscription required) is reporting that Senate Budget Committee chaiman Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) no longer is optimistic that it can be accomplished by then. The Senate Budget Committee agreed to a 5-year budget resolution in April, but ran into difficulty getting the bill to the floor because of higher prioirty legislation. The committee-passed resolution would reduce the deficit by 70% by FY2015 according to Congress Daily.

Action in the House has been even slower than in the Senate. Members of the leadership in both chambers now say that they are likely to pass only those appropriations bills associated with national security before the November elections. Those would be the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and Military Construction-VA bills. The other nine bills, including the one that funds NASA (Commerce-Justice-Science), would not be passed until sometime thereafter.

Absent action on a CJS bill, Congress could include language in any of the three bills that are expected to pass by November, or in a supplemental appropriations bill, resolving whether NASA must continue to spend funds on the Constellation program as directed in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act. Or they may not. The expectation is that Congress and the White House will reach a compromise, but the features of that comproise are anyone’s guess at this point.

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. For more details, see our calendar on the right menu or click the links below. Times, dates and topics for congressional busness meetings are subject to change; check the committee’s website for up to date information. All times are EDT.

Tuesday, June 8

• 2010 Space Weather Enterprise Forum, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm, National Press Club

Wednesday, June 9

• Forum on Earth Observations IV, 8:30 am – 5:30 pm, Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill
• Senate Commerce Committee Business Meeting, including vote on Carl Weiman to be Associate Director for Science at OSTP, beginning at 2:30 pm, 253 Russell Senate Office Building

Wednesday June 9 – Friday, June 18

• U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Vienna, Austria

NASA has a nifty way for people to feel they are part of the last two scheduled space shuttle flights — fly your Face into Space. You can upload your name and a photo of yourself that you can resize to fit in the shuttle’s window. Choose whether you want it to go on STS-133 or STS-134 and check back after the flight to print out a Flight Certificate.

The Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) of the National Research Council has an opening for a Program Officer. Here’s a link to the NRC posting. Program officers are mid-career professionals who serve as study directors, facilitating the work of NRC committees that write reports such as those listed on the left menu of our website. Some say the job is akin to herding cats, but it actually can be a lot of fun and you get to work with some of the country’s leading experts in aeronautics and space — and your NRC colleagues are terrific to work with (though I admit I have a very biased viewpoint on that)!!

The Space Studies Board (SSB) at the National Research Council is about to begin a new Decadal Survey for solar and space physics. This will be the second in this discipline. The first was published in 2003. SSB Senior Program Officer Art Charo will be the study director for this one as he was for the first.

A website has been established for the study where you can learn about its parameters and nominate someone (including yourself) to serve on the steering committee or one the panels. Decadal Surveys typically take two years to complete. The steering committee is expected to hold five meetings in 2010-2011 and each of the three panels (Solar & Heliosphere Physics, Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interactions, and Atmosphere-Ionosphere-Magnetosphere Interactions) will meet three times in 2010-2011.

The Decadal Survey is intended to prioritize research for the 2013-2022 time frame, so presumably will have to be completed in time to influence FY2013 budget decisions, which would be sometime before August 2011.

The NRC is at the end stages of the Astro2010 Decadal Survey for ground- and space-based astronomy and astrophysics. Decadal Surveys for Planetary Science, and for Biological and Physical Sciences in Space, also are underway.

To help you keep track of our Summer Reading List, we’ve added it to our left menu under “Other Links.” Enjoy!