The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City is about to open a new exhibit on Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration.

The exhibit will run from November 19, 2011 to August 12, 2012 and includes a “full-scale recreation of a lunar habitat,” as well as a model of a space elevator, a diorama of the Martian surface, and computer interactive exhibits.

The museum is located at Central Park West at 79th Street.

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, told a House subcommittee today that he is confident of the failure analysis conducted by Russian experts of the Progress launch failure last month. He also revealed that the agency wants Congress to grant another waiver from the restrictions on paying Russia for International Space Station (ISS)-related activities contained in the Iran-North Korea-Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA).

The hearing before the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee focused on the impact on ISS operations and lessons learned from the Russian Progress launch failure in August. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, determined that a clogged fuel line caused the third stage of the Soyuz U rocket to malfunction, dooming the Progress spacecraft that was carrying cargo to the ISS. Similarities between that version of the Soyuz rocket and the one used to launch crews to ISS delayed the next planned launch of ISS crewmembers. The current schedule calls for crew flights to resume in mid-November.

Many of the questions posed by subcommittee members concerned the level of insight that NASA had to the accident investigation and whether NASA and its safety advisory panels are comfortable with Russia’s analysis, conclusions, and plans for moving forward. In addition to Gerstenmaier, witnesses were Tom Stafford and Joe Dyer. Stafford chairs NASA’s ISS Advisory Committee. Dyer chairs NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP). All three expressed confidence in Russia’s investigation and conclusions.

Several members linked the questions about how transparent the Russians have been with their investigations to what NASA expects from commercial companies when they begin launching cargo and crews to the ISS.

Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) asked about a report in Aviation Week and Space Technology that the commercial cargo flights have fallen behind schedule. Gerstenmaier replied that the commercial companies are having “normal transients” as they develop their systems. He cited Orbital’s delays in building its launch site at Wallops Flight Facility and the Taurus II engine fire during testing this summer, and software problems being experienced by SpaceX. He stressed that these are typical of development activities and that is why NASA was so anxious to launch the final shuttle mission, STS-135, to take supplies to the ISS to assure there would be no concerns if the cargo flights were delayed well into next year. The STS-135 crew attended the hearing.

As for commercial crew, subcommittee chairman Steve Palazzo (R-MS) stated that subcommittee staff were told by NASA last week that the first mission would be in 2017, not 2015-2016 as Gerstenmaier stated in his testimony. Palazzo wanted to know why there was a discrepancy. Gerstenmaier said that it is dependent on what assumptions are made with regard to how much money NASA will have to facilitate those efforts.

NASA must rely on Russia to take crews to and from the ISS, and for ISS “lifeboat” services, until the commercial crew option is available. NASA recently negotiated a new contract with Russia for ISS crew support services that expires in 2016. To sign that agreement, and previous ISS-related agreements with Russia, NASA needed a congressional waiver from INKSNA. The law is intended to restrain Russia from proliferating certain technologies to Iran, Syria and North Korea. Originally passed as the Iran Nonproliferation Act in 2000, one section prohibits the U.S. Government from paying Russia in connection with the ISS program unless the President certifies that Russia is not proliferating those technologies.

In practice, NASA has required Russian services to support crews on the ISS. The White House has not been willing to make the necessary certification, meaning that Congress must pass waivers to the Act. It did so first in 2005 and again in 2008. In the 2008 waiver, NASA did not request permission to purchase additional cargo services from Russia on the premise that U.S. commercial cargo services would be available by 2011, when the 2005 waiver expired. NASA needs the commercial cargo companies to succeed. The only other options are Europe’s ATV or Japan’s HTV, but those are launched only about once per year.

By 2008, with the end of the space shuttle program looming and no U.S. replacement expected until at least 2014, NASA knew that it would need to purchase more Russian crew services using the Soyuz spacecraft. Congress agreed to extend the waiver for Soyuz flights until 2016.

NASA’s commercial crew effort is focused on those services becoming available by then, but at today’s hearing, Gerstenmaier revealed that NASA wants another INKSNA waiver anyway. He did not state that the agency is worried the commercial crew systems will not be operating by 2016, saying only that even if NASA does not need crew services, there would be other ISS-related services that would be needed. He did not specify what they are. He said that NASA would need Congress to act on a waiver request by late 2012 or early 2013. That will allow about three years to negotiate a new contract with Russia.

• Opening statement by Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Steve Palazzo (R-MS)
• Opening statement by Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee acting Ranking Member Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL)
• Written statement of Mr. William Gerstenmaier, NASA
• Written statement of Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford (USAF, Ret.), NASA ISS Advisory Committee
• Written statement of Vice Adm. Joseph Dyer (USN, Ret), NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Committee
• Webcast of hearing

Politico reports that the Senate will try to pass a “cluster” of three appropriations bills, including those that fund NASA, NOAA, and the FAA’s space office, in an attempt to catch up with the FY2012 appropriations process. If this approach succeeds, they could cluster other bills together.

Grouping several appropriations bills together is quite common these days. When all or most of the 12 regular appropriations bills are combined it usually is called an “omnibus” or a “consolidated” bill. When fewer bills are acted upon jointly it is sometimes called a “minibus.”

According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) agreed to start with the Agriculture-FDA bill. The Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) and Transportation-HUD (T-HUD) bills would be “grafted” onto it. CJS funds NASA and NOAA, as well as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation. T-HUD funds the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including its Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

To date, the Senate has passed only one of the 12 regular appropriations bills (Military Construction/Veterans Administration). The House has passed six (Agriculture, Defense, Energy & Water, Homeland Security, Legislative Branch,and Milcon/VA). FY 2012 began on October 1. The government is currently operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) that will expire on November 18.

Politico notes that the Senate plan to merge Agriculture, CJS and T-HUD would create a $182 billion package, “big enough to stumble into what could be a minefield of amendments.” Nonetheless, the party leaders expect to bring the bill to the floor tomorrow, with passage anticipated next week.

UPDATE: The Marshall Institute et al event on Wednesday has been added and the dates for the University of Nebraska meetings clarified (Wed-Thurs, not Thurs-Fri).

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. For more information, check our calendar on the right menu or click the links below.

The House and Senate are in session this week, except for Monday, which is a federal holiday — Happy Columbus Day!

Wednesday, October 12

• Marshall Institute et al seminar on Contributions of Sensors to an Effective Missile Defense, 2212 Rayburn House Office Building, 8:30 – 10:00 am EDT
• House Small Business Committee hearing on LightSquared, 2360 Rayburn House Office Building, 1:00 pm EDT
• NASA news conference on NPP mission, NASA Headquarters auditorium, 1:00 pm EDT (watch on NASA TV)
• House SS&T subcommittee hearing on ISS: Lessons Learned from the Soyuz Rocket Failure and Return to Flight, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 2:00 pm EDT

Wednesday-Thursday, October 12-13

• University of Nebraska annual Space and Cyberlaw Symposium, Willard Hotel, Washington, DC
  • Oct. 12, Space Law, 3:00-5:00 pm
  • Oct. 13, Cyber Law, 3:00-5:00 pm

Thursday, October 13

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Planetary Sciences subcommittee meeting, telephone and WebEx, 2:00-4:00 pm EDT

Thursday-Friday, October 13-14

• Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT each day
• FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), National Housing Center, 1201 15th St., NW, Washington, DC
  • Oct. 13, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT
  • Oct. 14, 8:30 am- 4:30 pm EDT
• Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, SAFTAS Conference and Innovation Center, 1550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA — most of the meeting is closed, but it is open on October 13 from 8:45 – 9:45 am and 1:15-2:15 pm.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) today called for a NASA Inspector General (IG) investigation of the politicization of NASA.

Rep. Smith is vice chair of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. In his letter to NASA Inspector General Paul Martin, Rep. Smith cited two studies that he said were done for NASA Administrator Bolden by 4-D Systems and McKinsey. The studies were about “NASA’s management, morale, and trust in its organizational leadership,” according to Rep. Smith.

Saying that NASA had refused to provide the specific inputs to the studies from NASA’s senior career civil servants, Rep. Smith stated that two themes that emerged from the studies were that “Politicos focus on Democratic goals, not national goals,” and “Little trust (3x) from above or discussion on major Agency issues. Two groups, political and career that communicate to themselves.”

Arguing that technical agencies like NASA “need to work freely of political ideology to the greatest extent practical,” Rep. Smith called on the IG to investigate if there have been “improper decisions or efforts…to steer agency funding and contracts, circumvent the civil service hiring process, or fraud, waste, abuse or other mismanagement of agency resources to benefit ‘Democratic political goals.'”

NASA is, of course, part of the Executive Branch of government and reports to the President. The President appoints (with the advice and consent of the Senate) the Administrator and Deputy Administrator of the agency, along with many other officials who do not require Senate confirmation. The National Aeronautics and Space Act states that the Administrator shall work “[u]nder the supervision and direction of the President…”

UPDATE: A clarification was made to this article; see editor’s note at the end.

Advocates of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) got more good news yesterday. First the Nobel Prize committee awarded this year’s prize for physics to three American scientists who discovered dark energy, with the Hubble Space Telescope as one of their research instruments. Then the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it will launch a spacecraft dedicated to dark energy research in 2019.

NASA’s JWST is often described as the follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope. If that’s what Hubble can do, some say, just think of the science that will be done with JWST. The Baltimore Sun ran an editorial with exactly that message almost immediately after the announcement of the Nobel Prize winners. Baltimore is home to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) at Johns Hopkins University, which operates Hubble and is slated to serve the same role for JWST. One of the three winners, Adam Reiss, is an astronomer there. The others are Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California and Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University in Australia.

Dark energy is called “dark” because scientists do not know what it is. The three Nobelists discovered that the universe is expanding at a rate faster than cosmologists previously theorized. Whatever force is accelerating the expansion of the universe is thought to be some kind of energy that cannot currently be observed, hence the term “dark energy.”

The JWST program is very controversial because of sizable cost overruns. The House Appropriations Committee, in fact, voted to terminate the program when it marked up the Commerce-Justice-Science bill in July. The House has not yet voted on the measure.

By contrast, in September the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended more money ($530 million) for JWST in FY2012 than requested by the President ($374 million) so that the telescope can be launched in 2018 instead of slipping into the 2020s. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) chairs the Senate subcommittee that made the recommendation. A Baltimore native, she is an ardent advocate of STScI and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which manages the JWST program. The Senate has not yet voted on its bill either, so the debate on JWST’s future continues.

National pride in winning Nobel prizes can be a strong motivation for funding scientific research. ESA’s announcement yesterday that it selected a dedicated dark energy mission, Euclid, as one of its next two science missions may fuel support for U.S. dark energy research and thus for JWST. Americans discovered that dark energy exists; will Americans unravel its mysteries?

Euclid’s launch is planned for 2019. U.S. efforts to build a dedicated dark energy space mission have not materialized. NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) were set to collaborate on a Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) several years ago, but budgetary challenges and interagency disputes delayed approval until it was time for the National Research Council (NRC) to perform its once-a-decade task of prioritizing ground- and space-based astronomy and astrophysics missions. JDEM was thrown into the basket of missions the NRC committee was expected to prioritize. In the end, it chose a multi-purpose Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) as its top space priority, with dark energy as one, but only one, focus. Like JDEM, it would be a joint NASA-DOE mission.

Ironically, WFIRST’s fate is being deeply affected by JWST’s cost overruns. With only so much money to go around, choices must be made on what to fund. Priorities are set by the NRC studies, but JWST was the top priority of the previous Decadal Survey in 2001. It does not lose its place in astrophysics priorities even though it still has not been built or launched 10 years later. Whether it survives or not at this juncture is chiefly a budget question.

JWST advocates are making a full court press to rescue the program. STScI hosted a webinar on September 21 with scientists and NASA officials explaining the merits of the telescope. Among them was another Nobelist, John Mather, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for mapping the cosmic microwave background. Mather, the first NASA employee to win a Nobel Prize, is JWST’s senior project scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center. He won the prize for work he did with George Smoot using a much smaller and less costly NASA satellite, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).

The lineage of cosmological discoveries from COBE to Hubble is widely expected to extend to JWST. JWST is currently expected to cost $8.7 billion, a sharp increase from last year when a special independent review found pervasive management problems that NASA insists have since been rectified. That review, demanded by Senator Mikulski, concluded that the cost would be $6.5 billion, with launch in 2015. The higher $8.7 billion figure resulted from a more detailed internal review by NASA that acknowledged that the level of funding needed to meet a 2015 launch date would not be forthcoming and the date would slip another three years, increasing the costs further.

Although Mikulski’s appropriations subcommittee recommended more money for JWST in FY2012, it reduced NASA’s overall budget from a request of $18.7 billion to $17.9 billion. The source of the extra $156 million for JWST is of great concern to scientists in other disciplines.

The concern is understandable. NASA has not told Congress how it would pay for the Senate committee’s recommended increase, much to the consternation of Mikulski’s House counterpart, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who wrote a sharply worded letter to the Office of Management and Budget last week asking for that information. At the webinar, however, JWST Program Director Rick Howard said that half would come from other activities in the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and half from NASA’s institutional account (which pays for civil service salaries and infrastructure, for example).

SMD funds research in astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics (solar and space physics) and earth science. Howard said that none of the funds would come from earth science, leaving other astrophysics projects like WFIRST, planetary science and heliophysics as the only choices. The increase in FY2012 is just the beginning. To maintain a 2018 launch date, NASA will need an additional $1.067 billion in FY2013-2016 for JWST. The agency has not released its plans for absorbing that increase.

That is why the attention being focused on dark energy and space-based astrophysics is such good news for JWST. Although dark energy is not JWST’s primary focus, it is on the list of “JWST science efficiencies” identified by Mather during the webinar. And with Europe moving forward on its Euclid mission, a race to be first to explain dark energy and win a future Nobel Prize may be just the ticket to convince Congress that U.S. scientists should be in the forefront of this groundbreaking science and JWST is the necessary next step. What price will be paid in lost opportunities elsewhere at NASA, and how NASA can better manage its projects to avoid such overruns, are certain to be controversial questions, however.

Editor’s note: This article was modified to clarify that choices and decisions on what NASA astrophysics programs to fund are made by many players, not just the astrophysics division. They involve input from the science community, various levels within the agency, at the White House and in Congress.

UPDATE: Adm. Joe Dyer (Ret.), chairman of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, has been added as a witness.

The Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee has scheduled a hearing for next week on lessons learned from Russia’s Soyuz launch failure in August and its impact on operations of the International Space Station (ISS).

The hearing will be on October 12, 2011 at 2:00 pm in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building. Three witnesses have been announced so far and more may be added later. NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, Lt. Gen. Tom Stafford (Ret.), and Adm. Joe Dyer (Ret.) are confirmed. Stafford chairs the NASA Advisory Council Task Force on ISS Operational Readiness. Dyer chairs NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

The Soyuz launch failure on August 24 doomed a Russian Progress spacecraft that was intended to take cargo to the ISS. Because the rocket is similar to that used to launch crews to the ISS, Russia delayed future crew launches until the rocket could be recertified for human space travel. Russia’s plan is to launch two Soyuz rockets with robotic spacecraft to demonstrate that the rocket is functioning correctly. The first of those successfully launched a Russian navigation satellite on Sunday. The second is scheduled for October 30 with another Progress spacecraft. If that is successful, a launch with three ISS crewmembers is scheduled for November 14.

The launch failure highlighted U.S. dependence on Russia for operations of the ISS. Now that the space shuttle program is terminated, the Soyuz rocket with its Soyuz crew spacecraft is the only way to transport crews to and from the ISS. The Soyuz spacecraft also is used as a lifeboat for the ISS crews, so that even if the shuttle were still operating, crews would only be able to remain aboard the ISS for as long as the shuttle was docked (about two weeks).

Today the House passed the Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government through November 18.

The measure passed the Senate last week and now is ready for signature by President Obama. The House was only in pro forma session last week and able to pass a CR just for four days (October 1-4). The House resumed regular business this week and passed the CR with little fanfare by a bipartisan vote of 352-66. Government agencies like NASA. NOAA and DOD are funded at 1.5 percent less than their FY2011 levels.

Launch of NASA’s NPP earth observing satellite has slipped to October 27 from October 25.

NASA’s Expendable Launch Vehicle report cites two issues with the Delta 2 rocket as the reason for the delay. A “small crack in a hydraulic tube” caused a leak that has already been repaired and retested. A “flexible fabric collar” also had to be replaced that connects two engine exhaust ducts. That work is underway.

NPP was designed to test new technologies for the since-cancelled National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Its official name is the NPOESS Preparatory Project, but that has been overtaken by events. With the dissolution of the NPOESS project, NPP now will have to serve as an operational weather satellite in NOAA’s polar-orbiting constellation. NOAA’s next polar-orbiting satellite, the first of the new Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), is not expected to be launched until 2016 or 2017. NOAA has repeatedly warned Congress of a potential gap in polar-orbiting weather satellite coverage if sufficient funds are not provide for the JPSS program. The last of NOAA’s legacy polar-orbiting satellites, NOAA-19, was launched in 2009.

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

During the Week

On Monday, the House is scheduled to consider S. Con. Res. 29 to grant permission for the Capitol Rotunda to be used on November 16, 2011 as a venue to present the Congressional Gold Medal to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and John Glenn. Congress actually granted them the Congressional Gold Medal in August 2009 (P.L. 111-44) in connection with the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon (Glenn was not part of that mission, but was the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 and served many years as a U.S. Senator thereafter). This resolution, to “present” the medal to them, was introduced by Senator Bill Nelson on September 23 and passed that body the same day by unanimous consent.

On Tuesday, the House is expected to vote on a Continuing Resolution (CR) passed by the Senate last week to fund the government through November 18. Like the CR that both Houses passed last week that covers October 1-4, it cuts funding for government agencies by 1.5 percent from their FY2011 funding levels. The House must pass some sort of legislation to keep the government operating after midnight on Tuesday, so we are back on “government shutdown” alert once more.

Coincidentally, Tuesday, October 4, is the 54th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union, which began the Space Age. The United Nations celebrates that achievement and the space program generally every year with World Space Week, October 4-10.

Monday-Friday, October 3-7

• 62nd International Astronautical Congress, Cape Town, South Africa

Tuesday, October 4

• Hosted Payload Summit, Grand Hyatt Washington, 1000 H Street, Washington, DC, 7:30 am – 5:00 pm, followed by reception
• Women in Aerospace National Security Space Luncheon featuring Under Secretary of the Air Force Erin Conaton, L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington, DC, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm