The Air Force resolved their computer problem and the countdown has resumed. T-4 minutes and counting.

The countdown for STS-133 is down to the T-5 minute mark and holding. Minutes ago a problem developed with the Air Force’s range safety computer system display. There is very little flexibility in the launch window today, but everyone has their fingers crossed it can be resolved in time.

Space Shuttle Discovery is in its final planned hold waiting to pick up the count at T-9 minutes (9 minutes before launch). Everything was going well until moments ago when the range went red because of a problem with the range safety command system.

That’s a computer, and what all this means is the subject of considerable discussion to which one can listen on NASA TV or Spaceflightnow.com. The NASA launch director, Mike Leinbach, has decided to take the countdown all the way down to T-5 (5 minutes before launch) before deciding whether to launch today. So apparently they will pick up the count at T-9 hoping that the problem can resolved quickly.

UPDATE: The launch has been rescheduled for March 4.

ORIGINAL STORY: The launch of NASA’s Glory earth observation satellite has been postponed again, this time until March. Engineers still have not determined why the Vehicle Interface Control Console (VICC) sent a “hold-fire” command to the Taurus XL rocket 15 minutes before its intended launch early yesterday morning.

NASA reports that the VICC is located in a mobile launch support van a few miles from the launch pad. More time is needed to determine the cause of and remedy the problem. NASA now is looking at launch dates in early to mid-March.

Officials from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) outlined the key features of a solicitation for proposals for an independent, nonprofit research management organization to foster and manage the use of the International Space Station (ISS) as a National Laboratory yesterday.

Mark Uhran, ISS assistant associate administrator, explained that since 2005 when the ISS was designated by law as a national laboratory, 50 percent of the U.S. portion of the ISS has been made available for research by non-NASA entities, such as universities, private firms, and other government agencies. Based on another law, the 2010 NASA authorization act, the agency is now seeking to create an organization to manage this non-NASA research. He clarified that NASA will maintain control of the other 50 percent necessary for pursuing its own goals, which are focused on basic scientific research, biomedical human research, and technology development.

Marybeth Edeen, manager of NASA’s ISS National Laboratory Office, explained that as part of its role, the new non-profit organization will carry out the “announcement-proposal, review-selection process” for use of the national laboratory, making recommendations to NASA about which researchers to select. Uhran said the organization should be in place by the end of this fiscal year, with activities ramping up as commercial transportation systems to the ISS come on line in the next 12-18 months. With a $15 million budget for the national laboratory, the relatively small organization – 15-25 people – will be tasked with communicating with potential user communities, managing agreements, as well as overseeing the execution of approved projects.

Uhran explained that progress on using the ISS as a national lab is very important because it will fulfill the vision of a station “built not solely for NASA usage.” He said the goal is to “maximize [ISS’s] value to the American public” for their investment and that its long-term productivity will be measured both by NASA and non-NASA usage. Creation of the non-profit organization will “be an important step in ensuring that that productivity is realized,” he added.

The deadline for proposals is April 1, 2011 and selection will be made by the end of May.

UPDATE: NASA will wait till Friday, February 25, to retry the Glory launch. Launch time is 5:09 am EST.

ORIGINAL STORY: NASA postponed the launch of its Glory earth observation spacecraft this morning after an unexpected reading from the vehicle interface control console. The launch was scheduled for 2:09 am PST (5:09 am EST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. They may try again tomorrow morning at the same time if the issue can be resolved.

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 recess this week.

Monday, February 21

• Final day of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, Washington, DC, 8:30 am – 12:45 pm EST

Tuesday, February 22

• Target NEO workshop, George Washington University Space Policy Institute, Jack Morton Auditorium, 805 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC. 8:00 am – 6:00 pm
• NASA teleconference on International Space Station Non-Profit Research Organization, 11:00 am EST (listen at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio)

Tuesday- Wednesday, February 22-23

• Interagency Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), National Science Foundation headquarters, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA, Room 1235 Stafford I Building, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm EST each day

Thursday, February 24

• Scheduled launch of the STS-133 (Discovery), 4:50 pm EST. Launch dates and times are subject to change. Check NASA’s shuttle website or follow NASA on Twitter to keep up to date.

The House finally completed debate on and passed H.R. 1, the Continuing Resolution (CR) for the rest of FY2011, in the wee hours this morning (Saturday). For all the hundreds of amendments introduced and debated, as far as we can tell, only one directly affects NASA. We will double check the Friday-Saturday Congressional Record when it is issued to make sure nothing snuck in at the last moment, but for now, this is the best information we have.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) won approval to cut $298 million from NASA’s Cross-Agency Support account and use it to fund Community Oriented Police Services (COPS), a program in the Justice Department. NASA and the Justice Department are in the same section of the CR because they are both within the jursidiction of the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee. The way the rules worked for debate on this bill, if a Member wanted to add money for something, the “offset” had to be in the same part of the bill.

Rep. Weiner was apologetic about taking it from NASA. On February 15 (Congressional Record, page H 891), he said:

Now, do I like the idea we have to take it from NASA space exploration? I don’t know any of the crime statistics on Mars, and I’m interested, but it’s a bad choice. If any of you like space exploration, so do I. In a way, I’m playing the game too. I’m taking from one place to give to another. But I do believe it’s in the interest of all of us to try to set these priorities straight. … So I hope you support the Weiner amendment by taking from Mars and putting it in the streets of your district.”

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the CJS subcommittee, opposed the amendment, but it passed 228-203. The money was not taken from Mars exploration as Rep. Weiner’s comments suggested. It was taken from Cross Agency Support, which funds Center Management and Operations, Agency Management and Operations, and Institutional Investments.

The appropriations committee already had cut NASA $303 million below its FY2010 appropriated level. With the $298 million cut in the Weiner amendment, NASA would be cut $601 million from its FY2010 appropriation, giving the agency a total of $18.123 billion for FY2011. Compared with President Obama’s request of $19.000 billion for NASA in FY2011, it is a $877 million reduction.

It is important to keep the fiscal years straight in this complicated budget debate. Many press reports say that the House voted to cut in total about $60 billion from federal spending, far less than the $100 billion Tea Party Republicans promised in their campaigns. That is correct. However, it is also correct to say that it is a $100 billion cut if the baseline is the President’s request for FY2011, which is what the House Appropriations Committee says. (Added to the complexity in following the debate is that President Obama submitted his request for FY2012 on Monday; congressional hearings have begun on that request.)

Whatever number one wishes to use for the cut that is in the House-passed CR, it is unlikely that the Senate will agree. Such deep cuts when at least five months of the fiscal year will have expired by the time anything is signed into law significantly magnifies the impact, and many Senators have indicated they are not willing to go that far.

The House and Senate are in recess next week while Members and Senators return home to face their constituents and see how all of this is playing in the rest of America. When they return to Washington, they will have one week to reach a compromise or pass another temporary spending bill. Without some sort of appropriations bill passed by midnight on March 4, the government will shut down. The Congressional Research Service has a handy report on government shutdowns that is available via the Federation of American Scientists website.

During today’s plenary lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual conference in Washington, D.C., Dr. John P. Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Adviser to the President, said that “NASA has been a big challenge.”

Holdren’s speech was a status report on the Obama Administration’s progress on science, technology, and innovation policy. Though the talk focused on federal initiatives in other fields, such as energy and education policy, Holdren spoke for a few minutes about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Referencing the Bush Administration’s Moon-and-Mars focused Vision for Space Exploration (VSE), Holdren said the Obama Administration had inherited a program in disarray in an agency that was largely dispirited after “years of mismatch of resources and vision.” Because the VSE was not properly funded, NASA’s scientific activities were “gutted [to] feed [the] Constellation [Program],” referring to the program developed to implement the VSE. He described the Obama Administration’s alternative plan for NASA, unveiled and hotly debated since February of last year, which cancelled the Constellation program, extended the International Space Station, and opted to rely on the commercial sector for human space transportation to low Earth orbit. This, he said, was a “comprehensive plan to balance NASA’s programs.”

Holdren later mentioned the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, signed last year, which he described as “a compromise.” While it “reflected Congressional preference for using existing technologies [and] contracts” for building a heavy lift launch vehicle, he said he was pleased because it had “a lot of what we wanted in it.”

Carrying out the mandates of the Authorization Act, of course, requires funding. Holdren said he hoped Congress would approve a FY2012 budget, speaking to the fact that because Congress so far has failed to approve a budget for FY2011, most agencies have been operating under a continuing resolution since October when FY2011 began. He said the President’s FY2012 budget request, released last Monday, “funds every element of the Authorization,” but he admitted that its outcome is still very much uncertain.

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the February 17, 2011 hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on the federal research and development budget is now available. Dr. John Holdren, Science Adviser to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy was the witness. Our hearing summary focuses on those aspects of the hearing that concerned the space program, which was not the dominant topic.