Representatives Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Ken Calvert (R-CA) took the lead in sending a bipartisan letter to President Obama yesterday arguing for a $3 billion per year funding increase for NASA. The letter was signed by 81 Members of Congress from across the country.

The letter references the “$3 billion annual increase recommended” by the Augustine committee, but as noted in an earlier SpacePolicyOnline.com article, the Augustine committee instead recommended a $3 billion increase between FY2011 and FY2014, not $3 billion each of those years. Discovering the committee’s meaning on this issue is challenging, however, so it is not surprising that confusion continues. Many NASA advocates think that a $3 billion per year increase is the right number in any case, though the likelihood of the Obama Administration requesting such an increase appears slim.

Most members of the Texas congressional delegation sent a letter to the President in October asking him to spend up to an additional $3 billion in stimulus funding on NASA. The stimulus bill already provides $1 billion to the agency.

This week is dead quiet for space policy-related events due to the Thanksgiving holiday — Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Next week, though, the pace picks up with two space hearings before subcommittees of the House Science and Technology Committee.

On Wednesday, December 2, the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee will hold a hearing on “Ensuring the Safety of Human Space Flight” at 10:00 am in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building. Witnesses are Brett Alexander of the Commercial Space Flight Federation; Joseph Fragola, Valador, Inc; Jeff Hanley, Program Manager of NASA’s Constellation Program; Bryan O’Connor, former shuttle astronaut and NASA’s Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance; and former Apollo astronaut and retired Lt. Gen. Tom Stafford. Gen. Stafford is a legend in the space business, especially on human space flight safety issues.

On Thursday, a joint hearing between the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee and the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee will be held on “Independent Audit of NASA” at 2:00 pm in 2318 Rayburn. Witnesses are Thomas Howard, NASA’s Acting Inspector General; Daniel Murrin, Ernst & Young (the company that audit’s NASA’s books); and Beth Robinson, NASA’s Chief Financial Officer (and a former staffer for the House Science and Technology Committee before going to OMB and now to NASA). The financial management challenges NASA has faced for a decade or more and its inability to get a clean financial audit have been well documented by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The just-released witness list for December 3rd’s House Science and Technology hearing on “Independent Audit of NASA” lists Acting NASA Inspector General (IG) Thomas Howard as one of the witnesses, but by then the new NASA IG should be on board — if only for a few days.

Paul Martin was confirmed by the Senate on Friday for his new post as NASA IG. The Blog of Legal Times reports that Martin said he is looking forward to the job and “has to get up to speed on all the space lingo” as he reports for duty on November 30. Martin has been deputy IG at the Justice Department.

Martin replaces Robert Cobb, whose controversial tenure included strongly negative reports about his conduct from the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency in 2007 and about his office’s lack of effectiveness from the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) in 2008. Calls for his resignation — including from influential Members of Congress— went unheeded during the George W. Bush Administration, but Cobb finally left after President Obama took office.

Pursuant to the Inspector General Act of 1978, most government departments and agencies have IGs, who are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. They are independent of the department or agency to which they are assigned, reporting to the President. President Reagan drew attention to the IGs by firing all of them on his first day in office so he could replace them, according to his press secretary, James Brady, with people he knew to be “meaner than a junkyard dog.” The sobriquet remains to this day.

The Survey Committee of the National Research Council’s Planetary Science Decadal Survey met at the NRC’s Beckman Center in Irvine, CA earlier this week. It was the second meeting for the Survey Committee, chaired by Steve Squyres, best known as the “father” of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

The Survey Committee is responsible for writing the decadal survey based on input from its five panels and the planetary science community at large. The output will be a consensus-based prioritized list of planetary science missions that should be undertaken in the decade 2013-2022.

Public sessions of the November Survey Committee meeting were devoted to presentations about the availability of launch services and of the Deep Space Network, as well as an update from NASA’s Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green and a summary of the NRC’s recent report on radioisotope power systems (RPS) by Ralph McNutt. Dr. McNutt co-chaired that NRC committee that produced the RPS report and also is a member of the Survey Committee. Presentations from the meeting are available under “National Research Council” on our left menu or by clicking here.

The following presentations were made to the Survey Committee of the National Research Council’s Planetary Science Decadal Survey on November 16-18, 2009 in Irvine, CA. Titles are from the agenda for the meeting.

• Status of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program, James Green, NASA Headquarters
• NRC Report on Radioisotope Power Systems, Ralph McNutt, APL
• Availability of Launch Vehicles 1, Max Vozoff, SpaceX
• Status and Prospects for the DSN (Deep Space Network), Barry Geldzhaler, NASA Headquarters
• Future DSN Operations, Michael Rodrigues, JPL
• Availability of Launch Vehicles 2, George Sowers, United Launch Alliance
• Current and Future Launch Services, Bill Wrobel, NASA Headquarters

In an op-ed in the November 19 New York Times, Universities Space Research Association (USRA) scientist William S. Marshall asks why the discovery of more water than expected at the Moon’s South Pole did not get more media coverage. Saying that a similar discovery 30 years ago would have been “heralded as one of humanity’s greatest discoveries,” he wonders if “it’s a symptom of our age, that the problems that bedevil us on Earth limit our interest in other worlds — just when we need them (and the inspiration they offer) most.”