Today the House released its schedule for the 1st session of the 112th Congress, which will begin on January 5. The most interesting development is a new approach to scheduling adopted by the incoming House Republican leadership that will have longer work weeks in Washington, but fewer of them, and time set aside for committees to meet without being interrupted for floor votes.

Incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) explained the changes in a Dear Colleague letter. He said the new approach focuses on the quality not the quantity of legislation considered on the House floor. Noting that 70 percent of the 2,185 bills considered by the House in the 110th Congress were debated under the suspension calendar, Cantor added that more half of those bills “named a post office, congratulated an individual or team, or supported the designation of a particular day, week or month.” The Republican leadership is banning congratulatory resolutions, while votes on naming Post Offices will be held less often.

The calender intersperses “D.C. work weeks” and “constituent work weeks.” Rep. Cantor said the “guaranteed five-day constituent work weeks” at least once a month will help Members stay in touch with the concerns of their constituents. The result will mean 123 days and 32 weeks in session. The number of weeks is 11 percent less than usual for the 1st session of a Congress, which the Majority Leader-elect said would mean less travel for Members and “potential savings to Members’ Representational Allowance.”

Other key changes include:

• making legislation available three days prior to committee markup and three days prior to consideration on the floor;
• scheduling floor votes to begin no earlier than 1:00 pm and no later than 7:00 pm on the middle days of a D.C. work week, and no earlier than 6:30 pm and no later than 3:00 pm on the first and last days of a D.C. work week, so Members will have more certainty in their schedules and committees can schedule their meetings to be held at times when they will not be interrupted for votes;
• acknowledging that it has been many years since Congress adjourned in early October — the typical target date for adjournment that is set at the beginning of a session — and selecting a more realistic December 8 target adjournment date for the 1st session of the 112th Congress; and
• posting committee attendance and votes online.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) won the endorsement of the House Republican Steering Committee to chair the House Appropriations Committee in the next Congress according to The Hill newspaper. He beat Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the ranking member of the committee, for the top spot. Rep. Lewis would have needed a term-limit waiver to continue on the committee. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) also sought the job, but did not succeed.

It’s not a rallying cry for the space program, but President Obama invoked the impact that the 1957 launch of Sputnik had on the United States in a speech today about the U.S. economy and workforce.

“In 1957, just before this college opened, the Soviet Union beat us into space by launching a satellite known as Sputnik. And that was a wake-up call that caused the United States to boost our investment in innovation and education — particularly in math and science. And as a result, once we put our minds to it, once we got focused, once we got unified, not only did we surpass the Soviets, we developed new American technologies, industries, and jobs.

“So 50 years later, our generation’s Sputnik moment is back. This is our moment. If the recession has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot go back to an economy that’s driven by too much spending, too much borrowing, running up credit cards, taking out a lot of home equity loans, paper profits that are built on financial speculation. We’ve got to rebuild on a new and stronger foundation for economic growth.

“We need to do what America has always been known for: building, innovating, educating, making things. We don’t want to be a nation that simply buys and consumes products from other countries. We want to create and sell products all over the world that are stamped with three simple words: “Made In America.” That’s our goal.”

He made the speech at the Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The White House said the President chose that venue because Forsyth exemplifies “not just how America came to lead the world in the 20th Century, but how it can regain that status unambiguously,” pointing to the community college’s success in granting degrees in fields needed for 21st Century industries.

On May 25, 2011, the nation will celebrate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous 1961 speech to Congress on Urgent National Needs that included the call to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. To commemorate the anniversay of that “Moon speech,” JFK’s nephew, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), is proposing a national commitment to researching “inner space” instead of outer space.

In an interview with The Hill newspaper, outgoing Rep. Kennedy explained his reasoning. Rep. Kennedy has battled with addiction problems throughout his life and announced soon after the death of his father, Sen. Edward Kennedy, that he would not run for reelection. Instead, he wants to focus on mental health issues and told The Hill that he is discussing with his cousin, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the idea of using the anniversary of her father’s speech committing the nation to exploring the Moon to call for a similar commitment to research on mental health, or “inner space.”

“It’s a scientific endeavor of equal significance, if not greater, and of equal if not greater complexity,” Rep. Kennedy is quoted as saying.

The folllowing events may of interest in the coming week. For more details, see our calendar on the right menu or click the links below.

During the Week

Congress passed a second Continuing Resolution (CR) last week to keep the government operating until December 18, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reportedly has said that his plan is for the Senate to adjourn by December 17. In these last remaining two weeks of the 111th Congress, it will either pass an omnibus funding bill to keep government agencies operating for the rest of FY2011 or kick the can down the road again with another CR. It is anyone’s guess as to which path it will be, as Congress wrangles with associated issues such as extending unemployment benefits and the “Bush era” tax cuts. Anything can happen in the crazy days at the end of a Congress, especially when the party in power of one of the chambers is about to change. We will try to keep you apprised of any actions that would affect space activities.

Meanwhile, we can all hope that the commercial sector will move a step forward this week with a successful launch of Falcon 9 and the Dragon spacecraft on Tuesday as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

Monday, December 6

• NASA pre-launch teleconference for the Falcon 9 COTS launch, 1:30 pm EST, NASA TV

Tuesday, December 7

• Scheduled launch of Falcon 9: window is open from 9:03 am to 12:22 pm EST. NASA TV will cover the launch from the T-5 minute hold.

Wednesday, December 8

• Space Transportation Association breakfast with NASA Associate Administrator Chris Scolese, 8:00 am EST, 2325 Rayburn House Office Building (contact rich@spacetransportation.us to register)
• FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) meeting via teleconference, 11:00 am EST

Space shuttle Discovery’s final launch will not take place until at least February 3, 2011, NASA announced today. Engineers still need more time to assess cracks in two stringers on the External Tank that were discovered after the STS-133 launch was delayed a month ago because of a different problem. That problem — a gas leak — was fixed fairly easily, but the cracks are proving tougher.

If the STS-133 launch gets the final go ahead for February 3, the scheduled time is 1:34 am EST. That would in turn slip the next launch, STS-134, to April 1.

STS-134 is the last scheduled mission for Endeavour and for the space shuttle program as a whole, but the 2010 NASA Authorization Act calls for one more launch, STS-135, as long as it is safe. STS-135 is also referred to as the “Launch-on-Need” mission. At a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, a NASA official and the President’s Science Adviser assured the subcommittee that they intend to fly STS-135 as long as it is safe and Congress does not make drastic cuts to the agency’s FY2011 budget request on which congressional action is pending.

President Obama’s deficit commission voted 11-7 in favor of the panel’s recommendations according to The Hill newspaper, but the vote was a failure under the commission’s bylaws. For the report to be forwarded to Congress for action, 14 of the 18 commissioners needed to vote in favor of the report. Commission co-chairman Erkine Bowles remains optimistic that major portions of it will factor into congressional debate over the FY2012 budget, however, according to the National Journal (subscription required).

The publication quotes Bowles as saying that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) “said that 85 percent of what we proposed is going to be in his budget; it doesn’t get any better than that.” Ryan is expected to chair the House Budget Committee next year and is a member of the commission, but did not support the report.

The commission’s recommendations were released on Wednesday. They do not directly affect NASA or NOAA space programs, but could have a profound indirect effect since the commission calls for significant cuts to discretionary spending. NASA and NOAA both are encompassed in that part of the federal budget.

At a press conference today, NASA astrobiology research fellow Felisa Wolfe-Simon announced the discovery of an organism unlike any other on Earth: “a microbe that can substitute arsenic for phosphorus.” The finding questions the assumption of life’s basic components and opens the door for new hypotheses of what life may look like not only on Earth, but on other planets.

Wolfe-Simon, who led the research team, described herself as “always interested in exceptions to the rule,” an outlook that prompted her to find out if there was a living organism that could substitute one of the building blocks of life – phosphorous – with a toxic, yet chemically similar element, arsenic. This question led the team to the harsh conditions of Mono Lake in Northern California, which, despite having high levels of arsenic and three times the salt of seawater, is teeming with life. There they found a microbe, dubbed GFAJ-1. The team took samples of mud at the lake, and, back in the laboratory, created almost identical conditions – except for the elimination of phosphorous and the introduction of high doses of arsenic. The result was extraordinary: “not only did [the microbe] cope,” said Wolfe-Simon, “but it grew and it thrived; and that was amazing.” When the researchers measured the arsenic concentration in the organism, they found it was behaving like phosphorous would within the cell – as the backbone of the DNA.

Putting the role of phosphorous in context, Arizona State University Professor James Elser, explained that life, as is traditionally conceived, relies on phosphorous. Its scarcity on Earth and the concern that it may be running out has prompted many to look for solutions. The research discussed today, of what he described as a “clever organism” capable of evolving to do without the crucial element, may yield new ideas. Elser suggested that practical applications may be explored, like waste water treatment, and bio-energy that does not require phosphorous-based fertilizer. But first in line is the reconsideration of the basic assumption, which Elser has used repeatedly in his teaching, that life needs phosphorous to survive. “I have to thank you and blame you [Felisa] for making our lives more difficult,” he joked.

While still considering the research significant, Steven Benner, Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, was wary of jumping to conclusions. Benner described himself as the chemist brought in to dampen the excitement as he explained why chemists would see this as an “exceptional result” requiring “exceptional evidence.” While questions remain to prove this “exceptional claim,” he said that the organism would be there for further testing. Benner pointed to a 2007 National Academy of Science’s report, The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems — the “weird life” report — to suggest that the conditions that make arsenic too unstable on Earth may be useful in radically different environments, like the cold environment of Titan.

In this respect, the discovery will impact NASA’s search for life, particularly with respect to defining “habitability” outside of Earth, explained Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We still don’t know what might make a habitable environment,” she explained. This research suggests that where arsenic may have been thought of as life-prohibiting and toxic, it may be found to be, if not essential for habitability, at least tolerable for some organisms. Conrad said the impact the discovery would have on NASA programs would be to challenge scientists to “think more broadly about environments one might characterize as habitable.”

According to Wolfe-Simon, the implications are broad. She said that the discovery was “not about arsenic or Mono Lake but thinking about life in a planetary context” and its potential for questioning what was previously thought was possible for life. This microbe shows a “different way to do business” and “it has solved the challenge of being a life in a very different way than we knew of.” The questions arising out of this discovery will open the door for new areas of research and “it will take an army of scientists” to explore, she said.

According to a questioner, the news that NASA would make a significant announcement related to the search for life was met with some disappointment from members of the public when the researchers did not pull an “ET out of a hat.” Mary Voytek, Director of the Astrobiology Program at NASA Headquarters, said that she was sorry about this disappointment but explained that, “from our perspective, this is a phenomenal finding.” She added that it “will fundamentally change how we define life [and] what we look for in life.”

According to the NASA press release, the research team was made up of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University in Tempe, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Duquesne University, and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. The findings will be published in today’s edition of Science Express (subscription required).

Yesterday’s hearing before the Senate Commerce subcommittee chaired by Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) left no doubt that Senators on both sides of the aisle remain deeply skeptical of the Administration’s intent to implement the 2010 NASA Authorization Act.

Congress passed and the President signed the Act into law several weeks ago, but Congress has yet to appropriate funds for FY2011 to carry it out. Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren and NASA Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Beth Robinson repeatedly assured the Senators that the Administration likes the Act and intends to carry it out as long as Congress gives them the resources to do so.

The government is currently operating on a Continuing Resolution (CR) at last year’s funding levels. For NASA, that is $18.7 billion, not much less than the $19 billion requested for the agency in FY2011. Senator Nelson hinted that the agency might end up flat funded for FY2011, but got agreement from Holdren and Robinson that $18.7 billion is enough to implement the Act. For their part, the Administration witnesses cautioned that if the funding is dramatically lower, they do not know how the agency will cope. Some Republicans are arguing for all agencies to be cut back to their FY2008 funding levels. For NASA, that would be $17.4 billion. Robinson pointed out that since the first quarter of FY2011 already has passed with the agency spending at the $18.7 billion level, if the agency had to absorb a cut of that magnitude, it would be a “drastic situation.”

Among the questions raised at the hearing was whether NASA would indeed launch the extra shuttle flight authorized in the Act – the so-called “Launch on Need” mission or STS-135. Robinson insisted that NASA wants to fly the mission, but must wait to see how the appropriations process turns out before making a final commitment. Holdren agreed that the mission would be flown unless NASA’s funding level is distinctly lower than the request.

Senators pressed Robinson to explain the status of implementing the programs in the Act. The situation is complicated because the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act prohibits NASA from cancelling the Constellation program or initiating a replacement program until Congress passes another appropriations act allowing them to do so. Robinson replied that NASA therefore is getting rulings from its General Counsel’s office and advice from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on how to proceed on specific elements of the program. General Counsel rulings have been issued to allow three programs to proceed (commercial crew, space technology, and setting up an organization to manage research on the International Space Station), but not yet for moving forward immediately with a new NASA-developed heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) and a NASA-developed crew exploration vehicle. Senators Nelson and Vitter (R-LA) wondered why the rulings are for programs the President had requested, not for the HLLV and crew vehicle programs that were directed by Congress. She explained that the decisions were driven by which programs needed clarification first.

Relieving NASA of the restrictions in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act would make NASA’s implementation of the authorization act easier. Senator Vitter asked Holdren and Robinson whether the Administration has conveyed to congressional appropriators that it wants the restrictions lifted as a priority matter and said he would view that as a test of the President’s commitment to implement the authorization act.

Holdren and Robinson’s repeated assurances throughout the hearing that the Administration would indeed implement the authorization act did not seem to quell the Senators’ discomfort. Nelson said that when the House was considering the authorization act some people in the Administration – but not at the highest levels, he said – were working against it. He was not specific about who they were.

The recently released independent review of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) program by a team headed by John Casani also was discussed. Senator Nelson asked Holdren, Robinson, and GAO’s Cristina Chaplain, another witness, about their reactions to the report, which revealed that JWST will cost $6.5 billion instead of $5 billion and slip another year to 2015. Each expressed deep dismay about the discovery of these problems, especially so late in the program. Holdren said he was “very disappointed,” while Robinson said that “we were heartened” to see that the program is meeting its technical milestones, but that it was “somewhat shocking” that the program had not followed normal NASA budgeting and planning procedures. Chaplain added that GAO was “very disappointed” and she would have to “rebaseline my thinking” about the improvements GAO thought NASA had been making in program management.

Robinson told the subcommittee that the Casani report was not the final word on JWST. She said that review group looked at the quickest route to complete the telescope, but it was not clear the agency could find the required funds to do that in the near term. A “bottoms up analysis” is underway to get a more detailed cost estimate, she said, and NASA would provide more details in the FY2012 budget request.

The House passed a new short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) today to keep the government operating through December 18. The current CR expires on Friday. The legislation (H. J. Res. 101) is short, simply changing the expiration date of the current CR. Its future in the Senate is unclear, however.

All 42 Republican Senators have vowed to filibuster any legislation until the government is funded and the Bush-era tax cuts are extended for everyone. The latter is a major source of contention with the President, who wants to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, but not the wealthy.

Another wrinkle may be Senator David Vitter’s (R-LA) comment today at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing that he wants language in the next CR relieving NASA of a prohibition in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act against terminating the Constellation program or initiating a replacement. The current language is complicating NASA’s ability to implement the 2010 NASA Authorization Act signed into law in October.

Senator Vitter wanted to know if the Administrationn has conveyed to congressional appropriators that getting the prohibition lifted is a high priority for the President. He added that he would view it as a test of the President’s commitment to implementing the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. Insisting on adding such language could complicate passage of the new CR, however.

The hearing revealed that key Senators on both sides of the aisle remain skeptical about the Obama Administration’s commitment to following the Act. Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren and NASA Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson repeatedly assured the Senators that they are very happy with the law and intend to follow it as long as Congress provides them with a FY2011 budget that is close to the President’s request of $19 billion. If Congress were to roll the agency back to its FY2008 funding level of $17.4 billion, however, it is not clear how NASA would cope. Some Republicans are calling for all federal agencies to be cut back to their FY2008 levels in order to reduce the deficit.