Yesterday, NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD released their plans in case of a government shutdown on Tuesday, the beginning of FY2014.  The Senate passed its version of a Continuing Resolution (CR) yesterday as expected, but agreement has not yet been reached with the House.

DOD’s shutdown plan is posted on its website .  It states that military personnel should report for duty as usual   Civilians must report on October 1 to receive their emergency furlough notices, but after that, only those who support “excepted activities”  such as military operations will be able to work.  Military personnel and excepted civilians will be paid retroactively, according to DOD, but furloughed civilians will not unless Congress passes a law providing that money.

NASA’s shutdown plan ensures that operating spacecraft — including the International Space Station — are unaffected.  Just about everything else is, however.  NASA Headquarters directed its Center Directors to “narrowly construe” who should be exempted from the furlough.  Exceptions include space launch hardware processing activities necessary to prevent harm to life or property, for example,  but “generally” work will halt on missions that have not yet been launched.

Action to avert a shutdown is in the House’s court today.   At 6:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), the House appeared poised to pass a bill that extends government funding to December 15, but requires a one-year delay to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and repeal of an associated tax on medical devices.  A separate bill would allow military personnel to be paid during a shutdown (apparently as opposed to paying them retroactively).  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made clear this afternoon that the Senate would not agree to a bill that delays Obamacare, making a shutdown appear more likely, but it is still too early to make useful predictions about how this will turn out.

Sunday is shaping up to be a busy day in the space business with two significant launches — one U.S., one Russian — and a commercial cargo demonstration on tap.  All are subject to change, of course, but here’s the line-up at the moment. 

Fortunately for the U.S. missions, Sunday is still FY2013 so they will not be affected by the gridlock over FY2014 funding.

Orbital’s Cygnus.  At 7:15 am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft will make a second try to berth to the International Space Station (ISS).  The first attempt last Sunday, September 22, was aborted because of a data mismatch between Cygnus and ISS, but a software patch has been uploaded and tested and Orbital and NASA are ready to give it another go.  This is Orbital’s demonstration mission as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

• 3:30 am EDT — Cygnus begins approach to ISS
• 4:30 am EDT — NASA TV coverage begins
• 5:10 am EDT — Cygnus will be about 250 meters from ISS
• 6:12 am EDT — In the Washington, DC area, if the weather cooperates ISS and Cygnus will be visible for four minutes beginning at 6:12 am EDT at 45 degrees elevation travelling from northwest to east northeast (visit NASA’s SpotTheStation website to find out when ISS can be seen elsewhere)
• 7:15 am EDT — Cygnus to be grappled by ISS astronauts using Canadarm2
• 9:00 am EDT — Cygnus installed onto ISS docking port (time approximate)

Space X’s Falcon 9 v1.1.  At 12:00 noon EDT (9:00 am local time at the launch site), the window opens for launch of SpaceX’s new version of the Falcon 9 rocket — Falcon 9 v1.1 — from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.  This launch was supposed to take place September 15, but was postponed for additional engine tests.  It is SpaceX’s first launch from Vandenberg and will place a Canadian scientific satellite, Cassiope, and five smaller satellites into orbit.

• 12:00 noon EDT (9:00 am Pacific) — two hour launch window opens
• Check SpaceX’s website for live coverage

ILS Proton M.   Russia’s Proton M rocket will make its return-to-flight carrying a commercial communications satellite, SES’s Astra-2E.  This is the first Proton M flight since a catastrophic accident 17 seconds after liftoff in July that destroyed three Russian government GLONASS navigation satellites.  No one was hurt.  International Launch Services (ILS) markets the Proton and confirmed today that the launch is scheduled for Sunday afternoon EDT (early Monday morning at the launch site in Kazakhstan).  This flight also had been scheduled for September 15, but was postponed for technical reasons.

• 5:38 pm EDT — launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it will be 3:38 am Monday, September 30 
• ILS says live coverage will be webcast at http://astra2e.imgondemand.com/; Bob Christy at zarya.info provides a second website for viewing  http://www.tsenki.com/en/broadcast/

 

UPDATE, September 27, 1:30 pm:   NASA’s plans in the event of a shutdown are now posted on the agency’s budget website.

ORIGINAL STORY, September 27: With just four days to go before the fiscal year changes from 2013 to 2014, the question of whether Congress will be able to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operating is as up in the air as ever.

Government workers are to be told by the end of today whether they are “essential” or “non-essential” for shutdown purposes.  Essential employees must report for duty even though they may never be paid; non-essential employees are not allowed to work even if they want to.   Personnel who operate space-based systems — including the International Space Station — seem likely to make the grade as essential, and the shutdown does not affect Members of Congress or political appointees, but who else will be showing up for work on Tuesday morning absent a CR is still to be determined.

Even seasoned political pundits are hedging their bets on how this will turn out.  The Senate is expected to vote today on its version of CR that will delete a House-passed provision to defund the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  It may also fund the government at a higher level than the House-passed version and is likely to last only through November 15 rather than December 15.  

What the House will do with the Senate bill is the question.   The battle is being fought within the Republican party.  Many House Republicans including their leadership (Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eic Cantor) do not want a shutdown for fear it will hurt their chances to retain Republican control of the House in next year’s elections.  They have been trying to convince a small but key group of Tea Party Republicans who want to defund Obamacare to wage that fight on an upcoming debate over the debt limit rather than on this government funding bill, but so far without success.  

The government is expected to hit the debt limit in a few weeks and while emergency measures can prevent a default for a few more weeks, Congress must take action soon to raise or suspend the debt limit in order for the government to pay its bills.  The House leadership reportedly proposed a bill to suspend the debt limit in exchange for defunding Obamacare and other Republican priorities to its own Republican members yesterday, but it didn’t fly.

The Senate is expected to go home today after it passes its version of the CR leaving the House to work through the issues over the weekend and, presumably, send a bill back to the Senate on Monday, the last day of FY2013.    Among the options are that the bill could be a short term “clean” bill that simply keeps the government operating for a week or two while the debate continues, that it calls for a delay in implementing Obamacare instead of defunding it (with the defunding battle to be fought later),  that it restores the language the Senate is about to remove to defund Obamacare, or that there is no bill.   In either of the last two cases, a government shutdown is almost certain.

Although almost everyone refers to it as “a government shutdown,” it actually is a “partial” government shutdown.  As noted, some people are exempt and others will be deemed essential and expected to work without pay.  In the past, Congress has voted to pay those individuals retroactively, but there is no guarantee of that happening this time.

Fiscal Year 2014 begins exactly a week from today and there is still no end game in sight for the political wrangling to keep the government open.  The situation is unchanged from a day ago, or even a week ago, except that the deadline is closing in.

To keep the government operating after midnight September 30, the House and Senate must agree on a funding measure that President Obama is willing to sign into law.  All three must accept it.

The House passed a version of a FY2014 Continuing Resolution (CR) that includes a provision – defunding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — that it knew the Senate would not accept and the President would not sign.  Senate Democrats and enough Senate Republicans do not want a government shutdown and plan to pass a “clean” version of a CR that simply keeps the government operating at current levels.  The Senate bill reportedly will fund the government through November 15, not December 15 like the House bill because the Senate remains hopeful that the 12 regular appropriations bills can clear Congress and be signed into law before then.

A small faction of Senate Republicans — notably Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) — however, are determined to fight.   This afternoon Cruz began what is expected to be a marathon floor speech that seems a lot like a filibuster, though it is not a filibuster since it is not preventing the Senate from proceeding with legislative business.  Democrats reportedly have enough Republican votes to end a real filibuster if one were to materialize, which is considered highly unlikely.

At the moment, the Senate is expected to vote on a clean CR tomorrow afternoon, but the timing is subject to change.  The bill then must go back to the House where its fate is very uncertain.  Although the House Republican Leadership — Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — both also do not want a government shutdown, they are struggling to maintain control of a sizable group of Republican members who are not concerned about shutting down the government, believing that they were elected to get rid of Obamacare.  (Defunding it does not repeal the law, however, it only keeps government agencies from spending money to implement it.)  The leadership reportedly is trying to convince them that the funding bill is not the place to wage that battle.

Threats of a government shutdown have become so common that it can be difficult to take any of this political drama seriously, but trying to guess what Congress will do is a perilous business.  For agencies like NASA, NOAA and DOD, it means trying to manage complex, long-term programs amidst continuing uncertainty.

The following events may be of interest during the week.  The House and Senate will be in session part of the week.

During the Week

It’s crunch time in Washington as FY2013 comes to an end next Monday and there is no law in place to fund the government thereafter.  The House was scheduled to be in recess this week, but the House Republican leadership changed its mind and ordered the House to return on Wednesday.  The Senate will be in session beginning Monday, but no votes are scheduled until Tuesday when it will take up the FY2014 Continuing Resolution (CR) that the House passed on Friday.   It would fund the government through mid-December, but deny any funds for implementing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).   The Senate is expected to reject that bill and pass a “clean” CR that only funds the government.  What happens after that is anyone’s guess.  The House Republican leadership and many Republican Senators do not want a government shutdown, but there are enough House Republicans who are happy to shut down the government temporarily in order to make political points about their views on Obamacare that the end game is far from clear.  It’s a high stakes political battle.

With many in the space community over in Beijing for the International Astronautical Congress — the annual conference of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and International Institute of Space Law (IISL) — there are relatively few space policy events coming up, but those we know of are listed below.

Monday-Friday, September 23-27

• International Astronautical Congress, Beijing, China

Tuesday, September 24

• Cygnus Spacecraft Arrival at the International Space Station (delayed from Sunday), time TBA
• FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), telecon, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Wednesday, September 25

• Launch and Docking of Soyuz TMA-10M with Three ISS Crewmembers, launch 4:58 pm ET, docking 10:47 pm ET