NASA’s FY2011 initial operating plan and explanation.

NASA is inviting members of the public to nominate themselves or others to serve on one of NASA’s federal advisory committees.

The Federal Register notice sets a deadline of September 20, 2011 for submitting nominations to fill “intermittent vacancies” that occur throughout the year. NASA selects people based on their expertise, knowledge and contribution to the relevant subject area. Procedures for nominating yourself or someone else are in the notice. NASA’s federal advisory committees, as listed in the notice, are the following:

• NASA Advisory Council
• Aerospace Safety Advisory Council
• International Space Station Advisory Committee
• International Space Station National Laboratory Advisory Committee
• National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board

The tough budget environment that lies ahead for agencies like NASA, NOAA and DOD that are part of the government’s discretionary spending became clear in the annual budget guidance put out by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Wednesday.

OMB issues guidance to all the federal departments and agencies about this time each year as they prepare to submit their funding requests to OMB for review. The federal government’s fiscal year (FY) is from October 1 – September 30. FY2011 is coming to a close and Congress is debating the request for FY2012. The President’s budget request for FY2013 should be submitted to Congress on the first Monday of February 2012.

Between now and then, the departments and agencies must submit and defend their budget requests through the OMB, which determines how much will be contained in the President’s request to Congress. High level issues that cannot be resolved at the OMB level are sent to the President. Typically, agencies submit their budget requests to OMB in late August or early September, OMB replies by issuing its “pass back” around Thanksgiving, and the two negotiate over the final numbers between then and when the budget goes to Congress.

Telling agencies to submit requests that are less than what they previously expected is also fairly standard procedure in recent years unless they are given an exemption. Typically they are told to request five percent less than a certain amount and to also show what the impact would be of a 10 percent cut. That is true this year as well. The key is what base year is used.

Last year, the OMB guidance for FY2012 budget requests was to cut five percent from what OMB projected for FY2012 in the FY2011 request. In NASA’s case, for example, in the FY2011 budget request OMB projected $19.45 billion for NASA, so the OMB guidance required the agency to submit a request five percent less than that. Whatever NASA requested is not public, but the end result was a President’s request to Congress of $18.72 billion, the same as what the agency received in FY2010 and an increase of $27 million above what Congress provided for FY2011 ($18.45 billion)

This year’s guidance, however, tells agencies to submit requests that are five percent less than what they received for FY2011. For NASA, that means five percent less than $18.45 billion, or $17.52 billion. In its FY2012 request, the agency assumed a level budget of $18.72 billion per year for the next five years. Agencies must also show the impact of a 10 percent cut from the FY2011 enacted level, which in NASA’s case would be $16.6 billion.

The OMB guidance is just that, guidance, and the beginning not the end of the negotiating process within the administration for what will be included in the President’s FY2013 budget request to Congress. It is indicative, however, of the extremely constrained budgetary environment that all discretionary agencies are facing as Congress and the Administration strive to reduce the deficit. Knowing at least in general terms how much money will be available in future years is especially important for agencies like NASA, NOAA and DOD that are involved in projects that take many years to execute like building and launching satellites.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) called on NASA to release the independent cost analysis of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) choice, which she says the agency was scheduled to receive today.

“I expect this independent assessment will confirm what myself and the NASA technical staff have known for many months — that the SLS plan is financially and technically sound, and that NASA should move forward immediately,” she said.

Hutchison is the top Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee and a key figure in passage of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act that directed NASA to build a new heavy lift launch vehicle, called the SLS in the law. In her statement today, she said Commerce committee staff had been briefed by Booz Allen, which is performing the independent cost analysis, and NASA “has committed to deliver the report to Congress later today.”

Expressing continued concern about the delay in initiating the SLS program, her statement includes a timeline from June 2010 to today that summarizes NASA’s activities on the SLS and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) crew capsule that it is intended to launch. The purpose is to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. President Obama wants the first destination to be an asteroid by 2025, but the debate over the destination is ongoing.

NASA will announce on Monday the winners in the agency’s Technology Demonstration Mission program.

NASA’s Office of Chief Technologist is selecting proposals for crosscutting technology demonstrations with the potential to infuse high-impact capabilities into NASA’s future space operations missions.

The media teleconference, on August 22, 2011 at 2:00 pm EDT, will be streamed live at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta yesterday in warning about the impact on national security if the “congressional supercommittee” does not reach agreement.

Panetta, a former congressman and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as well as former Director of Central Intelligence, made his views clear two weeks ago. He and Clinton, a former Senator, are concerned about the poison pill that was included in the debt limit/deficit reduction deal reached earlier this month. The two spoke at National Defense University yesterday.

The deal implemented approximately $1 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years immediately and directed that a 12-person congressional panel — three Democratic Senators and three Democratic Representatives plus three Republican Senators and three Republican Representatives — be established to find another $1.2-1.5 trillion in spending cuts by Thanksgiving. The panel has been dubbed a “supercommittee” in the media. Congress is then supposed to have an up or down vote (i.e., no amendments would be permitted) on the supercommittee’s recommendations by Christmas.

As an incentive for the group to reach agreement, draconian cuts to discretionary spending would automatically take effect if it does not or if Congress fails to pass whatever it recommends. DOD already is shouldering $350 billion of the initial $1 trillion in cuts. It would have to absorb another $500 billion over 10 years if the supercommittee process fails. The remaining cuts would come from other departments and agencies categorized as discretionary spending, including the State Department — and NASA and NOAA.

The two cabinet secretaries emphasized the need for the supercommittee to look at all government spending, including entitlement programs, as well as tax increases, rather than cutting only discretionary spending.

The 12 members of the supercommittee have been named. Political observers in Washington are split on whether those 12 individuals are likely to be able to reach a compromise or not, but many express concern about the tight time schedule they must meet. Legislative committees are due to give their recommendations to the supercommittee by October 14. The supercommittee then must make its recommendations by November 23, with voting completed in the House and Senate by December 23.

Five Senators from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana wrote a letter to President Obama on Monday complaining about how NASA is using its FY2011 funding for the Space Launch System (SLS).

The Hunstville Times published the letter, which takes issue with how NASA plans to spend FY2011 funds and for not providing a report required by section 309 of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. NASA submitted a preliminary version of that “section 309” report in January, but has repeatedly delayed sending the final version. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told a House committee in July that it may be fall before NASA is ready to officially announce its plans for the new heavy lift launch vehicle required by Congress.

The SLS is meant to be paired with a crew capsule — the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) — to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit and to serve as a backup to commercial crew systems that NASA is helping the private sector develop to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is expected to be the lead NASA center working on the SLS.

The letter complains that NASA’s FY2011 operating plan shows the agency moving forward with MPCV and commercial crew, but not expeditiously working on the SLS. Saying that the “misallocation” of SLS funds suggests that the Administration “has no intention of properly using appropriated funds,” the Senators “insist” that the section 309 report be submitted immediately.

The crew of the final space shuttle mission, STS-135, will be on the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report tonight at 11:30 pm EDT.

The show’s star, Stephen Colbert, is a fan of the space program, but mostly a comedian. He mounted a write-in campaign to have the last U.S. space station module named after him when NASA had a naming contest. He won, but NASA overrode the vote and named it Tranquillity. Instead, they named a piece of exercise equipment on the space station after him, the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT).

At last week’s NASA Future Forum, better and clearer communication about agency activities and policies was the order of the day.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) scientific and technological research, and its contributions not only to its missions, but to the U.S. economy and the lives of its citizens, was the focus of the NASA Future Forum, held at the University of Maryland, College Park. Participants, audience members and online viewers interacting via Twitter, engaged in discussions about how best to involve companies and universities in NASA-funded research, how to take successful technologies and integrate them into the market as spinoffs, and how to measure the value of investments, among other things.

Yet one theme that underlined many of the day’s discussions centered on the agency’s efforts to communicate with the public about these activities. Officials also attempted to “correct” what perceptions may have been created from the policy battles being waged just a few miles away in the nation’s capital.

One of these latter points was taken up by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. When he asked the audience who believed it would take years to know when a U.S. vehicle would be arriving at the International Space Station (ISS), the majority shot up their hands. Bolden said that, in fact, it would take less time for American vehicles to fly to the ISS than it took for the post-Columbia disaster recovery (about two-and-a-half years). In response to the audience’s reaction, he explained that he and NASA had failed to send out the right message and that it could be as early as next year for a U.S. company to be delivering cargo (but not crew) to the ISS.

Dr. Laurie Leshin, Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration at NASA Headquarters, alluded to another policy battle when she began her remarks by stating that “reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated.” Leshin spoke with enthusiasm about what she described as “the next phase of human exploration” and the scientific endeavors that would take the human spaceflight program to new destinations. Once again she aimed to correct an incorrect message; “there is a great program,” she declared, speaking to those who, according to her, are saying that the agency no longer has a space exploration program. Leshin recently announced that she would be leaving NASA for the Rennselaer Institute of Technology.

Policy debates aside, perhaps the biggest issue was the question of whether the day’s overall message – NASA’s direct and indirect contribution to society through science and technology – was reaching its audience at all. Bolden said that at NASA, “we take science fiction and turn it into science fact.” Still, his lamentation that so few young people were in attendance begged the question of just how many of them are aware or interested in this side of the agency’s activities.

Dr. Raymond Sedwick, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland, posed this very question. During the NASA panel, which included Dr. Robert Braun, NASA Chief Technologist, and Dr. Waleed Abdalati, NASA’s Chief Scientist, Sedwick asked whether they were not really “preaching to the choir.” Sedwick argued that the audience was made up of people who were already informed and excited about NASA’s activities and that the agency’s problem was one of public relations. He challenged NASA to be more creative in how it delivers its messages, arguing that it should seek to excite not just children and students, but the adult public as well.

Braun, who in his comments had argued that NASA was “improving life everyday here on Earth,” admitted that before being part of the agency, he did not know about NASA activities in this area. As a member of the public, the message just never reached him. Braun said though that in his current role he had assumed the task of communicating more about spinoffs and that his office, which produces an annual spinoff report, would emphasize societal benefits in the near future, because “NASA has a great story to tell.”

Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD), who offered some brief remarks later in the morning, agreed: “We have to tell those stories.” Edwards argued that the space community’s challenge is making the result of NASA’s investments in science and technology better known to the general public.

“A nation is only as strong as its investments in technology in the future,” said Edwards, adding that “the core” of those activities was the work done at NASA. If these discussions are any indication, though, it seems that NASA’s science and technology investments need to be paired with a better strategy for communicating the policies that guide them and what they mean for the community outside of the agency’s walls.

NASA will hold a press briefing on Thursday concerning new information about space weather.

The briefing is scheduled for 2:00 pm EDT at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. The information is from the agency’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory — STEREO — and other NASA probes.

Space weather is a term used to describe the effects on Earth of events on the Sun like solar flares. NASA’s Heliophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate is in charge of studying these solar-terrestrial interactions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Weather Service issues space weather predictions and warnings as it does for terrestrial weather since storms on the Sun can have dramatic effects on everything from satellites orbiting the Earth (including GPS and communications satellites on which people are increasingly dependent) to terrestrial electric power grids.

Speakers from NASA, NOAA, the Southwest Research Institute and Boston College will participate in the press conference. It will be broadcast on NASA TV.