Editorial Comment

The National Journal (NJ), one of the most highly respected inside-the-beltway news sources, really needs to beef up its space expertise.

In an article today (subscription required), a NJ reporter totally misunderstands what happened to the Constellation program. In the article, entitled “Spending Bill Funds NASA Mission to the Moon,” the reporter states that “Among the budget cuts that President Obama had to agree to in order to avert a government shutdown, Republicans re-gifted him one that he willingly made long ago: $3.8 billion to further NASA’s space exploration. The money will fund NASA’s Constellation Program, which was cut entirely under the president’s initial fiscal year 2011 budget proposal.”

The full year Continuing Resolution (CR) does not, of course, fund the Constellation program at all. In fact, it finally allows NASA to cancel the Constellation program, relieving the agency of constraints imposed by the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act that prevented the agency from shutting it down.

To make sure everyone is on the same page, Constellation was the George W. Bush Administration’s program to return humans to the Moon by 2020 and someday send them to Mars using an Orion capsule and the Ares I and V launch vehicles. Ares I and Orion would also have taken people back and forth to low Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station (ISS). That program is dead.

President Obama wants the commercial sector to take care of taking people back and forth to LEO and ISS, while NASA invests in technologies to enable beyond-LEO human missions, starting with a trip to an asteroid by 2025. The President does not want to send people back to the Moon’s surface because that is a “been there, done that” objective.

Congress did not agree with the President and the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue struck a compromise in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. The law permits NASA to facilitate the development of “commercial crew” for LEO as the President wanted, while leaving open the next destination for NASA’s human spaceflight program beyond LEO. It could be the Moon, an asteroid, a Lagrange Point, or Mars. As the NJ reporter later correctly states, the CR advances the Orion spacecraft and the creation of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV), but the reporter obviously does not understand that that is not the Constellation program. Orion and the HLLV are simply pieces of hardware, not a program. What the new NASA program is, other than going “beyond LEO,” remains a work in progress, but if President Obama has his way, it will not be to the surface of the Moon.

Constellation is dead, and the next destination for U.S. human spaceflight beyond LEO is completely up in the air. The CR absolutely does not fund “NASA’s Mission to the Moon” as the NJ headline states.

The Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the launch of STS-134 (Endeavour) is underway. A news conference is expected to be held no earlier than 4:00 pm EDT today. STS-134 is tentatively set for launch on April 29, but the official date will be set at this meeting. The news conference will be available via NASA TV. Check NASA’s Twitter feed for the exact time that it will start.

NASA officially set April 29 at the launch date for STS-134 (Endeavour) today. The mission, commanded by Mark Kelly, will lift off at 3:47 pm EDT if all goes as planned.

The six-person crew is nominally scheduled for a 14 day mission. Kelly and four other NASA astronauts will be joined by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Roberto Vittori. This will be Endeavour’s last space flight. It is delivering a scientific instrument, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), to the International Space Station (ISS). AMS is designed to detect cosmic rays in the hope of discovering particles of antimatter in particular.

The launch is attracting special interest not only because it is the last launch of Endeavour, but because Mark Kelly’s wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), may be able to attend the launch. She is recovering from an assassination attempt on January 8. Kelly has made clear for weeks that he hopes she will be well enough to attend, but cautions that the decision is in the hands of her doctors.

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. For more information, check our calendar on the right menu or click the links below. The House and Senate are in recess for two weeks for the Passover-Easter-Spring holidays. They will return the first week of May.

Monday-Tuesday, April 18-19

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Planetary Science Subcommittee (of the Science Committee), NASA Headquarters, Washington DC.
  • April 18, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT, room 3H46
  • April 19, 8:30 am – 4:00 pm EDT, room 5H45
  • This meeting also is accessible by telephone and WebEx. See the Federal Register notice for more information.

Thursday, April 21

• JFK and the Race to the Moon: Looking Back 50 Years, AAAS Auditorium, 1200 New York Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 4:30 pm EDT (coffee available at 4:00 pm EDT)

Thursday-Friday, April 21-22

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Science Committee, NASA Headquarters, Washington DC
  • April 21, 8:30 am – 4:00 pm EDT, room 5H45
  • April 22, 8:30 am – 2:00 pm EDT, room 5H45
  • This meeting also is accessible for telephone and WebEx. See the Federal Register notice for more information.

The House passed H. Con. Res. 34 on Friday setting amounts for total government revenues and spending for each of the next 10 fiscal years (FY2012-2021). Overall, it calls for cutting government spending by $6.2 trillion over the next 10 years compared to President Obama’s FY2012 budget request (or $5.8 trillion compared to current spending) and brings non-security discretionary spending to “below FY2008 levels.” NASA and NOAA are included in that category of spending.

The House and Senate are supposed to agree on a budget resolution before determining annual appropriations levels for federal agencies. As explained in a Congressional Research Service report, the budget resolution “represents an agreement between the House and Senate that establishes budget priorities and defines the parameters for all subsequent budgetary actions.” But the House and Senate do not always reach agreement, and sometimes one or both will not pass a budget resolution at all. Last year neither chamber passed a budget resolution. This budget resolution is seen as largely symbolic with no chance of being adopted by the Senate, and President Obama made a speech on April 13 outlining his own fiscal priorities, drawing sharp differences with the House. All House Democrats voted against it, along with four Republicans. The vote was 235-193. The Hill newspaper has an interesting account of the chaotic day on the House floor.

Nevertheless, the House budget resolution will be used to set “302(b)” allocation levels for each of the 12 House appropriations subcommittees establishing the top line amount of money they can spend on the agencies and programs under their jurisdiction. Budget resolutions do not identify funding by agency, but by “Function.” NASA’s space spending is part of Function 250, general science, space and technology, while funding for its aeronautics programs are in Function 400, Transportation. (NOAA is part of function 300, Natural Resources and Environment. DOD is Function 050, Defense.)

The House Budget Committee’s formal report to accompany the resolution (H. Rept. 112-58) notes that about half of the money in Function 250 is for NASA space activities. The rest is for the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science, and Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.

Regarding NASA, H. Rept. 112-58 states that the budget resolution “recognizes the vital strategic importance of the United States to remain the pre-eminent space-faring Nation.” It adds, however, that the President’s FY2012 budget request for the agency “shifted priorities away” from the 2010 NASA Authorization Act “by allocating $2 billion to commercial cargo and crew and Earth Science climate change initiatives. The budget [resolution] aligns funding in accordance with the NASA authorization and its specified spending limits to support robust space capability.”

Total budget authority (BA) for Function 250 would drop from $29 billion in FY2011 to $27 billion in FY2012 and remain there until FY2017 when it increases to $28 billion for two years, then back to $29 billion in FY2019 and FY2020, and finally $30 billion in FY2021. With NASA’s space activities being about half that total, it is clear the agency would be operating under severe constraints if this approach was adopted.

No NOAA-specific text is included in the committee’s report, but Function 300 would drop from $32 billion in FY2011 and FY2012 to $29 billion in FY2013, then down to $25 billion the next year and vary between $25 billion and $28 billion for the remainder of the 10-year period.

National defense (function 050) would increase from $561 billion in FY2011 to $583 billion in FY2012 and increase steadily to $703 billion by FY2021. Nevertheless, a report issued by the committee, The Path to Prosperity, says that the budget “reflects $178 billion in savings identified” by Secretary of Defense Gates, “reinvesting $100 billion in higher military priorities and dedicating the rest to deficit reduction.”

In testimony to a Senate Commerce subcommittee on Wednesday, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco reiterated a warning she made earlier to a House committee that a gap in polar weather satellite data is “very likely” because Congress is not providing adequate funding for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).

Responding to a question from subcommittee chairman Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), Lubchenco said that because the full-year FY2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) did not contain sufficient funding for JPSS, there will be “at least” an 18-month data gap because the launch date will slip by that many months, to September 2016 at the earliest. The gap will have “very serious consequences to our ability to do severe storm warnings, long term weather forecasts, search and rescue, and good weather forecasts for your State.” she told the Senator. Alaska benefits in particular from polar weather satellites since geostationary weather satellites, over the equator, do not have a good view of the polar regions.

When asked if there was a “Plan B,” she said that there really were no alternatives and NOAA was trying to “figure out how to miminize the damage.” She told the Senate committee, as she did the House, that for every dollar that is not spent now, the country will need to spend $3-5 in the future because contracts will have to be cancelled and restarted, and skilled workers will be let go and rehired.

At the very end of the hearing, Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) wanted to know what was driving NOAA’s budget increase of 41 percent compared to its FY2008 level. Lubchenco said that she had not done a comparison with FY2008, but said satellites are the driver of current budget request increases. Defending the satellite program, Lubchenco said “a lot of people” ask “why do I need your satellites [when] I have the Weather Channel, but that’s where we get 98 percent of the information that goes into our weather forecasts…Satellites do a wide variety of things that are very important to saving lives and property and enabling commerce in our country.”

A webcast of the hearing before the subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard is available on the Senate Commerce committee’s website. The discussion of NOAA satellites was a very small part of the hearing, which focused on fisheries issues.

The House and Senate have each passed the full-year Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds the government for the rest of FY2011.

The bill, H.R. 1473, passed the House by a vote of 260-167 and the Senate by a vote of 81-19. It funds NASA at $18.485 billion, The President is expected to sign the bill into law quickly.

NASA Administrator Bolden issued a statement saying that he appreciates the work of Congress and the agency is committed to “living within our means” as well as “carrying out our ambitious new plans for exploration and discovery.”

We have updated our fact sheet on the status of NASA’s FY2011 appropriations. The update reflects the compromise agreement reached by President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and House Speaker Boehner last Friday (April 8) and the details determined by appropriators and released on Tuesday (April 12).

The bill incorporpating the agreement, H.R. 1473, is scheduled for a vote in the House tomorrow. The House and Senate must pass and the President must sign the bill before the current short-term Continuing Resolution (CR), P.L. 112-8, expires on Friday. Otherwise, another short-term CR will be needed to keep the government operating.

Under the compromise reflected in H.R. 1473, NASA will get $18.485 billion for FY2011. That is $241 million less than its FY2010 appropriations (the level at which it is currently operating), and $515 million less than the President’s request for FY2011. Congress authorized the same level as the President’s request in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act (P.L. 111-267), so the difference between the appropriation and the authorization also is $515 million. (For an explanation of the difference between an authorization and an appropriation, see our What’s a Markup? fact sheet.)

The bill also would relieve NASA of a number of constraints that were included in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 111-117) that are still in effect because Congress has not passed an appropriations bill to countermand them. Many limited NASA’s flexibility in shifting money from one program to another. One prevented NASA from terminating the Constellation program or initiating a replacement program until Congress passed a subsequent appropriations act permitting it to do so. That restriction also is eliminated by H.R. 1473.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will announce today where the agency will send the four remaining space shuttle orbiters as they are retired. The announcement will be made as part of a commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the first flight of the space shuttle at Kennedy Space Center, FL beginning at 1:00 pm EDT. The event will air live on NASA TV, and a media teleconference will be held at 3:00 pm EDT. The teleconference will be streamed live at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

Six orbiters were built. Two were destroyed in accidents that claimed the lives of their crews: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. One was built as an atmospheric test flight vehicle and was not designed for space flight. That orbiter, Enterprise, has been on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center for several years, but many expect that the museum would prefer to display one that has flown in space, so is in the running for one of the other three. Those three — Discovery, Endeavour, and Atlantis — are prizes that many museums and NASA centers across the country are anxious to claim.

The suspense will be over this afternoon.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) formally submitted a presentation to Congress today in which it generally agreed with the methods NASA is using to determine if the International Space Station (ISS) can last until 2020, including the need for spares.

With regard to the spares needed to continue operations, GAO compared NASA’s plans with those of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for supporting Antarctic operations and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administraiton’s (NOAA’s) operations of the Aquarius Undersea Laboratory.

“NASA’s assessment of the essential spares necessary … appears to be supported by sufficient, accurate and relevant underlying data,” GAO said. It added, however, that NASA’s estimates are “senstive” to assumptions about the reliability of Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs).

As for NASA’s assessments of the long term viability of ISS primary structures — the modules and trusses to which solar panels are attached — GAO found that those assessments are ongoing and all the results are not yet available. It noted that NASA is not assessing the viability of modules provided by international partners, other than those that are owned by NASA. For example, Russia built the Zarya (FGB) module, but NASA paid for it, thus it is owned by NASA even though it was provided by a partner.

The report was required by the 2010 NASA Authorization Act.