UPDATE:  CSIS’s event on Friday re the defense industrial base has been added.

The following events may be of interest in the coming week.  Check our calendar on the right menu or click the links below for more information.   The House and Senate both are in session this week.

During the Week

The Senate is scheduled to resume consideration of the Department of Defense (DOD) Authorization bill, S. 1867, on Monday.  

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will send its “passbacks” to the various federal departments and agencies on Monday.  Each year, usually in September, agencies tell OMB what they want their budgets to be for subsequent years. OMB considers these proposals and then “passes them back” (hence, a “passback”) with whatever modifications OMB deems necessary.  The agencies can negotiate with OMB or even take an issue to the President if they are sufficiently determined.  The end result is the President’s budget request to Congress that is submitted on the first Monday in February of each year.  The budget request now being developed is for FY2013.  Passbacks used to be sent to agencies on Thanksgiving eve — never a pleasant holiday experience.  According to the Washington Post, current OMB Director Jack Lew decided to wait until the Monday after Thanksgiving so government officials could enjoy time with their families.

Monday-Tuesday, November 28-29

• NASA Advisory Council Planetary Protection Subcommittee, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, FLWednesday, November 30

• Senate Commerce Committee hearing on nominees for the Federal Communications Commission(LightSquared may be one of the issues that comes up), 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 2:30 pm EST

Thursday, December 1

• 6th Eilene M. Galloway Symposium on Critical Issues in Space Law, Cosmos Club, 2121 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm EST
• NASM/APL Space History and Policy Seminar Series:  Update on Russia, China and India in Space (Speaker:  Marcia Smith), Applied Physics Lab (APL), Laurel, MD, 4:00 – 5:00 pm EST (contact: Nathan Bridges, nathan.bridges@jhuapl.edu )

Friday, December 2

• CSIS seminar on Deficits, Defense and the Industrial Base — What’s Next, 1800 K Street, N.W., B1 Conference Center, Washington, DC, 10:00-11:30 am EST
• Panel on U.S. Space Exploration in the Next 50 Years, part of DuPont Summit on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy: Pressing Issues, Little Time, Carnegie Institution of Science, 1530 P Street, N.W., Washington, DC  (the summit has many panels throughout the day; this one is from 10:15 am – 12:45 pm EST)

Space Studies Board (SSB) Chair Charles Kennel believes the National Academies — the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council (NRC, of which SSB is part) — need to “adjust to the revolution in communications and the new media.”   His comments were part of a workshop held by the SSB in November 2010; a summary of the workshop has just been published.  (Editor’s note:  in the interest of full disclosure, I was the rapporteur for the workshop and have been eagerly awaiting publication of the report for quite some time as it worked its way through the lengthy, but thorough, NRC review, editing and printing process.)

The workshop, Sharing the Adventure with the Public:  The Value and Excitement of “Grand Questions” of Space Science and Exploration,” was held by the SSB to encourage interaction between the space science and engineering communities and professional communicators about how to better engage with the public about NASA activities.

In a keynote address, Miles O’Brien, formerly with CNN and now with PBS’ NewsHour, noted that few major media outlets have science correspondents today and social media tools like Twitter offer new ways for the public to learn about NASA and the space program.  He congratulated the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for pioneering the use of Twitter to portray planetary science missions in the first person as was first done by Veronica McGregor for the Mars Phoenix mission.   While some of the scientists at the workshop already were avid social media users, others were reluctant.    Christie Nicholson of Scientific American later implored everyone to at least try Twitter and Facebook to see if they could help in communicating with the public rather than rejecting them out of hand.

The remainder of the two-and-a-half day workshop consisted of six sessions in which scientists presented papers on five “Grand Questions” identified by the workshop organizers and interacted on panels with professional communicators about how to better engage with the public about NASA’s efforts to answer them.   The tables were turned for the final two sessions, where the professional communicators presented papers and then interacted on panels with scientists. NRC workshops like this are not allowed to present findings or recommendations.  Instead, the report simply describes what transpired, including the individual viewpoints of participants, which varied widely.

Kennel cited the Climategate controversy as “a dramatic lesson” of where scientists did a poor job of communicating with the public.  He said that the climate science community thought it had “discovered the key for communicating with decision-makers” through the “elaborate peer review process” of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Instead, after hackers released email exchanges among climate scientists questioning each other and a lapse in fact checking regarding snow melt in the Himalayas, there was “a profound loss of confidence in the whole process.”   That showed “how fragile the trust had been,” said Kennel, and the “weaknesses in what the scientists thought was a perfectly wonderful way to communicate.”

The idea for the workshop predated Climategate, and climate was only one topic discussed.  The five “Grand Questions” were:  

• Understanding the universe-how did it begin and how it is evolving?
• Are we alone?
• Understanding the solar system-how did it begin and how is it evolving?
• The Earth:  Will it remain a hospitable home for humanity in the future?
• What could the future hold for humans in space?

Joan Johnson-Freese, a political scientist and professor at the Naval War College, and an SSB member, asked a key question — what are scientists really seeking to do in sharing the adventure with the public?   Linda Billings, a research professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University who works with NASA’s astrobiology program stressed that there “is no monolithic public.”   She disagreed with those who believe that better communications might translate into more public support for NASA.  “Public information, public education, public interest, public engagement, public understanding, and public support are all different social processes and phenomena, and one does not necessarily lead to another,” she said.  Billings advocates including the public in decision-making about NASA including “community consultations, citizen advisory boards, and policy dialogues,” while acknowledging that it would be “complicated and time-consuming” and require “power sharing.”

As for the human exploration program at NASA, Marc Kaufman of the Washington Post said he could not imagine a worse scenario than what has transpired over the past 10 years, starting with the Columbia tragedy.  He said that President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, though endorsed by Congress, was not adequately funded, which implies the government was not serious about it.  When the Obama Administration determined there was not enough money it “understandably decided to blow up the whole process,” he said.   SSB member Joan Vernikos added that actions speak louder than words and if they are disparate the result is “disastrous,” which was her assessment of the situation.  Some participants were excited about the prospect of commercial crew and believe that it will help engage the public’s interest; others bemoaned the confusion and discord that followed the Obama Administration’s abrupt cancellation of the Constellation program.

As many of the scientists criticized themselves and their colleagues for poor communications with the public — not only about Climategate, but in other areas, such as why Pluto no longer is a planet — some of the non-scientists gave them a break.   Johnson-Freese said the scientists “have been way, way too hard on themselves….I think you’ve been doing a heck of a job, but we can always get better.”

In his remarks at the end of the workshop, Kennel said that over the last 20 years there has been a revolution in communications, which he believes “has the potential, combined with science, … to produce a second Enlightenment” in this century.  Hence his clarion call to the National Academies to embrace new communications technologies and “adjust to the revolution in communications and the new media” or risk the fate of institutions that “did not react to this revolution and have failed….”

UPDATE 2:  Step two — done:  The Centaur upper stage successfully completed its two firings and separated from the spacecraft.  Mars Curiosity is now on its way to Mars with arrival in August 2012. The “Sky Crane” landing is the next big excitement.  

UPDATE:  On-time launch of the Atlas V-Centaur with Mars Curiosity.  The first step of this long journey is a success.

ORIGINAL STORY:  NASA plans to launch its Mars probe Curiosity in less than an hour, at 10:02 am EST.  Launch preparations are AOK for now.

The launch window this morning is open for 1 hour and 43 minutes.   Clouds come and go over the launch site at Cape Canaveral, FL, but forecasters expect the weather to be within specs at 10:02 for launch of the Atlas V-Centaur.

Follow us on Twitter for frequent updates: @SpcPlcyOnline

NASA is hoping for better luck than Russia tomorrow when it launches the next U.S. Mars probe — Curiosity.  But for this mission, launch may be the easy part.

While Russia continues to try and ascertain what went wrong with its Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, NASA plans to launch the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, Saturday at 10:02 am EST.   The launch window that day is open for 1 hour and 43 minutes.   Overall, the launch window for this mission remains open through December 18.   It will be launched on an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral, FL.

Curiosity is a rover, but much larger than its immediate predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, and is dedicated to studying the “habitability” of Mars — could the Martian environment, now or in the past, support life.   Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004, were designed to investigate Mars’s geology.   Spirit ended its mission last year; Opportunity continues to operate.  Both were designed to work for only 90 days.   Curiosity is designed for a one-year mission lifetime — that’s one Martian year (687 Earth days).  

From a series of Mariner probes in the 1960s and early 1970s, to Viking 1 and 2 (the first Mars landers) that landed in 1976, to Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Pathfinder, Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix, and Spirit and Opportunity, data from NASA Mars orbiters and landers literally have rewritten the textbooks about the Red Planet.   Scientists hope Curiosity will follow suit.

The United States has had its share of failed Mars missions, too, however — Mariner 3, Mariner 8, Mars Observer, Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander.   Russia has had only one partial success (Phobos 2) in the more than a dozen missions it has launched to Mars since the 1960s.  If Phobos-Grunt fails, it will also count as a failure for China, whose first Mars probe (an orbiter, Yinghuo-1) is aboard.

Europe also has sent a spacecraft to Mars.  Launched on a Russian launch vehicle in 2003, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Mars Express is a success; it has been orbiting Mars since 2004.   However, a small lander from the United Kingdom that it carried, Beagle 2, was lost.   Japan attempted to send a probe, Nozomi, to Mars, but it failed.

The significant number of Mars mission failures has given rise to the legend of a “Galactic Ghoul” that devours spacecraft headed there.

Assuming Curiosity survives launch and the Galactic Ghoul, it still faces a big challenge in landing on Mars.   It is too massive to use previous landing methods such as airbags, so NASA devised an innovative “sky crane,” which is better viewed than described in words.  The launch of Curiosity was delayed by two years while engineers worked to remedy unexpected problems and conduct additional tests.    If the launch goes tomorrow, Curiosity will arrive at Mars in August 2012 and the nail-biting will begin in earnest.

As politicians from both parties blame each other for the collapse of the supercommittee deliberations yesterday, most people are wondering what comes next.

No easy answers are apparent.

By law – the Budget Control Act of 2011 to be specific – the failure of the supercommittee triggers automatic across-the-board spending cuts beginning in 2013, half from “defense” and half from “non-defense” discretionary spending.  The non-defense spending reduction includes up to a 2 percent cut in Medicare payments to providers; Social Security and Medicaid are exempt from cuts.  The remainder of the amount to be cut from non-defense spending would come from agencies like NASA, EPA, the Departments of Interior, Labor, Commerce (including NOAA), Education and so forth.

Of the $1.2 trillion sought, $216 billion is estimated to come from interest savings (since the debt will be lower, the government can pay less interest on that debt).  That leaves about $1 trillion to come from spending cuts: $500 billion from defense and $500 billion from non-defense.  The cuts are spread over 10 years (FY2013-2021).

What “defense” means in this context is being debated.  Some argue the Budget Control Act makes clear it means only the Pentagon, but others insist that other national security spending is included.  However it is defined, considerable attention is being focused on undoing those automatic cuts.  So far no one appears to be objecting to the automatic cuts to non-defense spending.

It is impossible to determine at this stage what such cuts would mean to particular agencies or programs, but New Scientist, citing an expert from AAAS, estimates it at about 8 percent.  The cut would be applied “across-the-board,” meaning that each activity would be cut by the same amount.  This “meat-axe” approach, compared to a “scalpel” where cuts could be made based on merit or other determinants, is part of what has everyone up in arms.   This draconian penalty for supercommittee failure was deliberately included in the Act as an incentive for them to reach agreement.   It obviously did not work.   President Obama has stated that he will veto any attempt to change the automatic cuts.

The automatic cuts will not take place until January 2013, presumably after Congress has acted on the President’s FY2013 budget request that will be submitted in February 2012.  The cuts are for FY2013 through FY2021 and complicated formulas are applied that make the entire situation quite confusing.

Kicking the deficit reduction can down the road into the maelstrom of an election year, as congressional Democrats and Republicans now have done, is an interesting choice.  Politicians have spent the last day not only pointing fingers, but offering their assessments of which party is now in a better bargaining position.

Gauging the potential impact on federally funded science and technology programs in general, or the space program in particular, is a fool’s errand at this point other than recognizing the obvious – budgets will be even more constrained.   How the Administration crafts the FY2013 budget request and how Congress acts on it will be critical since the cuts will apply to the amounts in the FY2013 appropriations bills.  Determining priorities clearly will be a key factor.

In an exchange during a Senate hearing last week, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) revealed that at a September meeting between Senators Hutchison and Bill Nelson (D-FL), Bolden, and Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew, agreement was reached that NASA’s top three priorities are the Space Launch System and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, enhancements to the International Space Station including commercial crew, and the James Webb Space Telescope.  In an across-the board cut situation, each of those would be cut by the same amount, along with each other NASA activity.  Whether the Administration and Congress craft the budget to protect those priorities at the expense of other NASA activities may become apparent in February when the budget is submitted to Congress.

Although NASA is one of the lucky agencies whose FY2012 budgets has been enacted, the long-term stability of that budget is just as ambiguous as ever.  The only certainty seems to be that NASA’s budget woes are far from over.

The hatches closed between the International Space Station (ISS) and Soyuz TMA-02M at 2:41 pm EST today, and three ISS crew members now are awaiting undocking at 6:00 pm EST and landing in Kazakhstan at 9:25 pm EST tonight.

NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa have been aboard the ISS since June 9.  They have spent the last several days handing over operations to the Soyuz TMA-22 crew that docked with the ISS early Wednesday morning EST.  Those three crew members — Dan Burbank, Anatoly Ivinishin, and Anton Shkaplerov — will be joined by three more astronauts just before Christmas, once again returning the ISS crew to full strength. Ordinarily, six crew are aboard the ISS at one time, but the crew rotation schedule was disrupted by a Russian launch failure in August.

NASA TV is providing live coverage of the undocking and landing.

The congressional “supercommittee” tasked with reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years made it official this afternoon – they failed.

In a joint statement, the co-chairs of the supercommittee said:  “After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.”  Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) are the co-chairs.

The deadline set by the Budget Control Act of 2011 is November 23, but the supercommittee was supposed to make its recommendations available to the public — and their fellow members of Congress — two days in advance, which is today.

What happens next is murky.  Under the Act, the supercommittee’s failure triggers automatic spending cuts totalling $1.2 trillion beginning in 2013.  Half are supposed to come from “defense” discretionary funding and the other half from non-defense discretionary funding and Medicare reforms.  The Medicare reforms are limited to 2 percent.  Social Security and Medicaid are exempt.   The definition of “defense” — whether that means the Department of Defense (DOD) or a broader category of spending that might include the Department of Homeland Security, for example — is open to debate.

It is not only the amount of the cuts, but the fact that they would be applied across-the-board without factoring in the merits of particular programs or activities that is troublesome.  Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been warningsince he took office this summer about the cataclysmic impact of across-the-board cuts of that size and nature on the military.

Panetta’s allies in Congress agree.   Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is planning to introduce legislation to undo the cuts — officially called “sequestration.”    In a statement, he asserted:  “I will be introducing legislation in the coming days to prevent cuts that will do catastrophic damage to our men and women in uniform and our national security. Our military has already contributed nearly half a trillion to deficit reduction. Those who have given us so much, have nothing more to give. Secretary Panetta has said he doesn’t want to be the Secretary who hollows out defense. Likewise, I will not be the armed services chairman who presides over crippling our military. I will not let these sequestration cuts stand.”

While many are focused on the half of the cuts that would come from “defense” — whatever it means — the cuts to the rest of government spending could be equally catastrophic.   Of the $1.2 trillion in savings, $216 billion would be saved by not having to pay interest on that much debt.  According to a Congressional Research Service report, the bottom line is that the annual amount that must be cut from discretionary spending is $109.3 billion, of which half — $54.7 billion — would come from non-defense discretionary spending like NASA and NOAA.

What that level of cuts would mean to NASA’s human spaceflight, science and aeronautics programs, and NOAA’s satellite programs is worrying.   Prioritization within the Administration and Congress will be key, and space advocates undoubtedly hope that programs that promote high-tech jobs and U.S. preeminence in science and technology will be at the top of the list, but in today’s climate, determining who wins and who loses is an unenviable task.

UPDATE:  Three International Space Station (ISS) crew members returned to terra firma in Kazakhstan at 9:26 pm EST (8:26 am local time November 22 in Kazakhstan).

NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa were launched on June 7 and docked with the ISS on June 9.

Wind chill at the landing site is minus 20 Fahrenheit for this pre-dawn landing (local time in Kazakhstan).

The Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft has successfully undocked from the International Space Station.

Landing will take place at 9:25 pm EST, or 8:25 am tomorrow (November 22) local time at the landing site near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.  That is 33 minutes before sunrise there and NASA TV says the temperature will be in the single digits Fahrenheit.  Brrrrrr.

They still have three days left — and rabbits have been pulled out of hats in less time than that — but members of the congressional supercommittee sounded pessimistic today.

A number of news roundups of the Sunday talk shows paint a discouraging picture of the supercommittee’s deliberations as the November 23 deadline looms.   The 12 Members of Congress — six Democrats and six Republicans, six from the House and six from the Senate — are tasked by the Budget Control Act of 2011 to find a way to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years.   The sides split on party lines on the question of using tax increases as part of the formula to whittle down the deficit — the Democrats want them, the Republicans insist no.

The blame game was underway today on the talk shows, which either means that it’s all over but the shouting, or this is a last ditch negotiating tactic.  The answer will be known soon.

If they do not reach agreement, or if they do but the rest of Congress and the President do not agree, an automatic cut of $1.2 trillion in spending will be triggered unless Congress changes the law — with the President’s agreement.   President Obama has indicated that he does not want to change the law, but advocates of defense spending are making it known that they will not stand by and watch it be cut by up to $600 billion, especially since the cuts are taken across-the-board without regard to the merit of particular programs or activities.   “Defense” is supposed to shoulder half the cuts, but there is debate as to whether that means just the Department of Defense, or other agencies involved in national security, such as the Department of Homeland Security.