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

During the Week

Yes, it is another week consumed with concern about whether there will be a government shutdown. The current Continuing Resolution (CR) expires on Friday at midnight and Congress has not passed anything to replace it. Some pundits are speculating that despite assertions by many members on both sides of the aisle that they would not pass still another short-term CR, that is exactly what may happen. In this case, it may be a CR for only a few days, however. One scenario has it that the House will pass a CR on Friday, but that clearly does not give the Senate time to act, and thus a few-day CR might be necessary. Difficult to tell how well the two sides are coming together on reaching agreement on budget numbers and policy riders for the “full year” CR.

All of that, of course, concerns FY2011, the fiscal year already underway. This is the time of year when the next year’s budget usually is debated, and Congress is moving forward with consideration of FY2012. The first congressional step in crafting a budget is supposed to be House and Senate passage of budget resolutions that set the top line numbers for federal spending on everything — mandatory programs like social security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as discretionary programs like DOD, NASA and the government agencies with which we are all familiar. Last year, neither the House nor the Senate was able to pass a budget resolution and House Republicans have vowed to pass one this year to demonstrate that they are more fiscally reponsible than Democrats who controlled the House last year. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan is expected to release his version of the House budget resolution on Tuesday, with comitmtee markup expected on Wednesday. although it is not yet listed on the committee’s website.

As many policy wonks point out, the stormy debate over what to do about FY2011 is really just a warm up for FY2012, where Republicans are expected to demand even deeper cuts, and not just to discretionary programs, but to Medicare and Medicaid, too. Apparently they are still debating how far to go in changing the very popular Social Security program.

Monday, April 4

• Launch of Soyuz TMA-21, 5:18 pm CDT (6:18 pm EDT), watch on NASA TV. Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the EDT launch time.

Tuesday, April 5

• AIA./Marshall Inst/STA meeting on Importance of Missile Defense to U.S. and Global Security, U.S. Capitol Visitors Center Congressional Meeting Room – South, 8:15 – 9:45 am EDT
• Release of National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Decadal Survey for Biological and Physical Sciences in Space, 11:00 am EDT
• COMSTAC STOWG. 11:00 am EDT, virtual

Tuesday-Wednesday, April 5-6

• NRC Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, NRC Keck Center, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC (April 6 is joint with the Space Studies Board). Some sessions of this meeting are closed.

Wednesday-Thursday, April 6-7

• NRC Space Studies Board, NRC Keck Center, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC (April 6 is joint with the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board). Some sessions of this meeting are closed..
• International Space Station and Mars conference, George Washington University, Washington DC

Russia will launch three new crew members to the International Space Station (ISS) at 5:18 pm CDT on Monday (6:18 pm Monday EDT; 6:18 am Tuesday at the launch site in Kazakhstan).

The launch of Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Andrey Borisenko along with NASA astronaut Ron Garan aboard Soyuz TMA-21 will be aired live on NASA TV. See NASA’s press release for details. The three will join the three ISS crew members already aboard the earth orbiting laboratory — American Catherine (Cady) Coleman, Russian Dmitry Kondratyev, and Italian Paolo Nespoli.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the EDT launch time.

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee hearing on NASA scheduled for today has been postponed to May 5 according to the committee’s website.

The news over the past several days on what progress is being made in resolving the FY2011 budget impasse has been pretty dismal. Politico, National Journal and The Hill all have been publishing stories that say, in a nutshell, that the House and Senate remain far apart on what to do about the budget and a government shutdown on April 8 seemed highly likely. Tonight, however, National Journal (subscription required) reports that Vice President Joe Biden is saying that the two sides have agreed on the dollar level of cuts, if not where they will come from or what to do about policy riders.

The government is operating on a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) that expires on April 8. Congress must pass some sort of appropriation to keep the government operating after that. Attention is currently focused on passing a “full-year” CR to fund the remaining six months of FY2011, which ends on September 30.

In essence, the unfolding story is that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate negotiators reached a tentative agreement on budget cuts, but conservative House “Tea Party” Republicans soundly rejected it and were not opposed to a government shutdown, at least for a few days, and would not compromise on their drive to make deep cuts. News reports quoting various Democratic Senate sources saying that agreement was close at hand would be quickly countered by House Republicans saying the opposite. In short, it has been quite chaotic.

Thus, a statement by the Democratic Vice President that the two sides have agreed on $73 billion in cuts from the FY2011 budget request may also fail to stand the test of time, but on a cold and rainy Washington evening, it is encouraging to read nonetheless. Still, the caveats are critically important. No agreement on where the cuts will be made, and no agreement on policy language that some House members want to include, such as defunding National Public Radio or Planned Parenthood. Those two issues alone could be deal breakers.

The House passed its version of a full year CR on February 19, cutting $61 billion from FY2010 spending (including a $601 million cut to NASA). The Senate rejected it, along with a Democratic alternative, leading to the current impasse.

One thing both sides appear to agree on is that there is no deal until there is a whole deal, so keep the champagne corked. At this point, however, any step forward, no matter how small or tentative, must be viewed as good news.

Witnesses at today’s hearing by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics argued that the biggest obstacle to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) human space exploration program is policy instability. The relative priority given to either commercial- or government-developed and operated options to transition from the Space Shuttle to the next generation human space transportation system was the biggest issue of contention.

Committee members reiterated that through the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, Congress had explicitly laid out its preference for NASA to develop a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) and a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) to explore beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) and to serve as backup for commercial crew transportation services to the International Space Station if those commercial services fail to materialize. “The debate is over,” said Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chairman of the full committee.

Nevertheless, the Administration’s FY2012 budget request released in February, as well as subsequent statements from NASA officials, suggest a continuing lack of consensus on this issue. Providing an industry perspective, Mr. James Maser said that “this perilous unknown” renders the transition even riskier than the 1970’s transition from Apollo to the space shuttle. “We need that vision, that commitment, that certainty right now,” he urged, saying that industry is “ready to help any way we can but the clock is ticking.” Mr. Maser is President of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, builder of the J-2X engine that was to be used for the Constellation program, but testified today in his capacity as chairman of the Corporate Membership committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Mr. Doug Cooke, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), said that NASA is “aggressively addressing the specifics required in the Authorization Act,” having already selected reference designs for both the HLLV and MPCV. He said that NASA hopes to provide Congress with specific timelines and decisions on the development of these vehicles in the next couple of months, potentially by late June.

Even with such assurances, some remained unconvinced that NASA was moving in a clear direction forward, particularly with respect to the requirements of the HLLV. While the Act requires the HLLV to provide a 130 ton lift capability, Mr. Maser pointed to recent statements by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden about how that capability may be unnecessary in the near term. As a result, said Mr. Maser, there is widespread “industry confusion” because what industry hears from NASA is only what it “does not want or cannot do.”

Dr. Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and a former NASA official, argued that this transition is “the most immediate and critical task” of the human spaceflight program, and also elaborated on the widespread effects of the confusion and uncertainty. To a question about how Congress can make the agency adhere to the law, Dr. Pace and others suggested that this direction ought to be reflected in the appropriations legislation. Acting-ranking member of the subcommittee Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL) said he agreed that the way to ensure the agency follows through with congressional direction “is through the appropriations process,” and he urged the other members of the subcommittee to make certain that appropriators “understand that.”

As promised, NASA has released the first image of Mercury from a Mercury-orbiting spacecraft. The MESSENGER probe took the snapshot this morning.

NASA will release the first image of Mercury from an orbiting spacecraft tomorrow, and more images on Wednesday at a 2:00 pm EDT press conference. The images are from the MESSENGER spacecraft, the first to enter orbit around that planet, which is closest to the Sun.

MESSENGER attained Mercury orbit on March 17, 2011 after a six and a half year journey that included three fly-bys of the planet (plus two flybys of Venus and one of Earth) to get it into the proper position. The spacecraft already has sent back many images of Mercury, and now that it is in orbit can see previously unseen places. NASA’s Mariner 10 probe was the first to fly past Mercury in 1974-1975.

The Wednesday teleconference will be streamed live at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio. Participants are MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon and mission systems engineer Eric Finnegan.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report today warning that a key NASA computer network remains vulnerable to cyber attack almost a year after an earlier IG report identified the weaknesses and NASA vowed to fix them.

The report, “Inadequate Security Practices Expose Key NASA Network to Cyber Attack,” concludes that “six computer servers associated with IT assets that control spacecraft and contain critical data had vulnerabilities that would allow a remote attacker to take control of or render them unavailable.” The report goes on to say that once a hacker got inside the NASA network, “the attacker could use the compromised computers to exploit other weaknesses we identified, a situation that could severely degrade or cripple NASA’s operations.”

This new report notes that it had identified weaknesses in this network in a May 2010 report and “even though the Agency concurred with [our] recommendation it remained unimplemented as of February 2011. Until NASA addresses these critical deficiencies and impoves its IT security practices, the Agency is vulnerable to computer incidents that could have a severe to catastrophic effect on Agency assets, operations and personnel.”

The May 2010 report, “Review of the Information Technology Security of [a NASA Computer Network]”, is not available on the OIG website. Instead, the website to which one is directed provides a summary and states that the report contains data that is not usually released under the Freedom of Information Act. The name of the network in question is referred to in today’s report as “NASA’s Agency-wide mission network.”

Today’s report recommends that NASA “expedite implementation of our May 2010 recommendation to establish an IT security oversight program for NASA’s Agency-wide mission network.” It also recommends that NASA’s Mission Directorates identify and continuously monitor Internet-accessible computers on that network and take prompt action to mitigate identified risks. Lastly it calls on the agency to conduct a NASA-wide IT security risk assessment.

The report states that NASA concurred with its recommendations and the Chief Information Officer and Mission Directorates agreed to complete them by the end of this summer.

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. For more information, see our calendar on the right menu or click the links below. Times, dates and witnesses for congressional hearings are subject to change. Check the relevant committee’s website for up to date information.

During the Week

Members of the House and Senate return to Washington this week, with negotiations on the FY2011 budget still at the top of their to-do list. The current Continuing Resolution (CR) expires on April 8. Democrats and Republicans both complain about using short-term CRs to fund the government, but reports vary as to how well they are progressing in the negotiations for a “full year” CR to fund the rest of FY2011. “Full year” is a misnomer since even in the best of circumstances, it will fund only six months: April-September. Whatever cuts are made will have to be absorbed over that short time period instead of over a full year. President Obama’s decision to enforce the U.N. no-fly zone resolution will complicate the negotiations not only because it means that the Department of Defense needs more money to execute that additional mission, but members on both sides of the aisle are peeved that the President did not consult with Congress before involving the country in this military action. Meanwhile, many hearings are scheduled on the FY2012 budget request,

Tuesday, March 29

• Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. European Command, 9:30 am EDT, G-50 Dirksen

Tuesday-Wednesday, March 29-30

• National Research Council Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board Committee on Review of NASA Technology Roadmaps
  • Panel on Instruments and Computing, Irvine, CA
  • Panel on Robotics, Communications and Navigation, Washington, DC

Wednesday, March 30

• House Science, Space and Technology Commiittee’s Space and Aeronautics subcommittee Hearing on NASA’s Exploration Program in Transition, 10:00 am EDT, 2318 Rayburn
• Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on the FY2012 Air Force budget request, 10:30 am EDT, 192 Dirksen

Wednesday-Thursday, March 30-31

• American Astronautical Society Goddard Memorial Symposium, Greenbelt Marriott, Greenbelt, MD

Thursday, March 31

• CSIS on Future of the Air Force, 8:00 – 9:30 am EDT, 1800 K Street, NW, Washington DC
• House Appropriations CJS Subcommittee hearing on FY2012 OSTP budget request, 10:00 am EDT, H-309 Capitol
• House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on FY2012 Air Force Budget Request, 10:00 am EDT, H-140 Capitol
• Senate Appropriations CJS Subcommittee hearing on FY2012 NASA budget request, 10:30 am EDT, 192 Dirksen
• USRA and Space Policy Institute on U.S. Export Controls and Space Science, 1:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Grand Hyatt Conference Theater, 1000 H Street, NW, Washington DC

Friday, April 1

• House Appropriations CJS Subcommittee hearing on FY2012 NOAA budget request, 10:00 am EDT, H-309 Capitol
• National Space Club Goddard Dinner, 6:30 – 11:30 pm EDT, Hilton Washington, 1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington DC

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told a Space Transportation Association luncheon on Capitol Hill today that he does not want to build the heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) specified in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act (P.L. 111-267).

In response to a question from NASAWatch editor Keith Cowing, Mr. Bolden explained that he does not think that the 130 metric ton lift capability prescribed in the law is necessary today and is not sure the agency can do it. He wants to build an “evolvable” launch vehicle, working in “small incremental steps [to] demonstrate that we can keep to cost and schedule and then people will begin to have confidence that we know what we’re talking about…. There are things I do not know. … I don’t know what my 2011 budget is … and that plays a critical role in what I can do.”

The law reflects a compromise reached last year between Congress and the Administration on the future of the human spaceflight program. The President wants NASA to provide funding to companies to build a “commercial crew” capability to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station in low Earth orbit (LEO) instead of NASA. NASA would purchase crew launch services from those companies. In the President’s plan, NASA meanwhile would focus on developing technologies to enable astronauts to someday go beyond LEO, to asteroids or Mars, for example.

Congress, however, is skeptical that the commercial sector is ready to take on that responsibility, and wants the United States to have a bold program of human exploration that includes missions beyond LEO sooner, not later. The 2010 NASA Authorization Act took a middle ground, approving some funding for NASA to facilitate commercial crew, but also directing NASA to build its own Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). They would serve as a backup to the commercial companies for LEO access and also provide the beyond LEO capabilities Congress wants.

Although it is unusual for Congress to dictate detailed technical parameters in law, in this case it did, telling NASA that the new SLS (also known as a heavy lift launch vehicle – HLLV) must have an initial launch capability of 70-100 metric tons, increasing to at least 130 metric tons with the addition of an integrated upper stage. The law authorized funding levels for the SLS, MPCV, and commercial crew.

President Obama’s FY2012 budget request for NASA has been sharply criticized by House and Senate authorizers because they feel it contravenes the law, however. It requests more money than authorized for commercial crew, and less money than authorized for SLS and MPCV. NASA’s official position is that it is doing the best it can under current budget constraints and complying with the major elements of the law.

Mr. Bolden’s frank comment therefore could be considered controversial. Mr. Cowing gave the Administrator an opportunity to clarify his remark, but Mr. Bolden stated again that he does not want to build the launch vehicle directed in the Act. Conflicts between Congress and the President over how to spend taxpayer dollars are not unusual, but the Constitution gives Congress the “power of the purse” to decide how to spend government funds. That is done through authorization and appropriations acts. The former give permission for a program to begin and recommends funding levels; appropriations bills actually provide the money. Congress, however, so far has been unable to reach agreement on FY2011 funding for NASA or any other government department or agency making the situation extremely complex.