It may not be space policy, but it is the first A in NASA — aeronautics. The Space and Aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a hearing next week on the impact of volcanic ash on aviation. The hearing follows the havoc wreaked on aviation by ash from the Icelandic volcano. Witnesses include the head of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, Jaiwon Shin; Jack Kaye from NASA’s Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate; Vicki Cox, Senior Vice President of the FAA for NextGen and Operations Planning Air Traffic Organization; and Roger Dinius, Flight Safety Director with GE Aviation. The hearing is May 5, 2010 at 10:00 am in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building. (Since it isn’t space policy it’s not listed on our calendar, but sounds really interesting.)

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) continues his criticism of President Obama’s new plan for NASA in an op-ed in today’s Space News (subscription required to access some content). Rep. Wolf is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee, which funds NASA. He also represents the congressional district that is home to Orbital Sciences Corp., which could benefit from the new plan if it decides to pursue the “commercial crew” option. Orbital is one of the two COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) companies already developing a system to take cargo to the International Space Station; SpaceX is the other.

Rep. Wolf was sharply critical of the Obama plan to cancel the Constellation program and turn crew transport over to the private sector at a recent subcommittee hearing and has published on his website a number of letters from space program luminaries opposing the plan. In his op-ed piece, “Don’t Forsake U.S. Leadership in Space,” he highlights comments by Chinese and Russian officials boasting of their plans for human spaceflight in contrast to what he sees as the U.S. abandoning its leadership position.

“Manned spaceflight and exploration are one of the last remaining fields in which the United States maintains an undeniable competitive advantage over other nations. To walk away is shortsighted and irresponsible.”

Space News itself editorializes that the somewhat revised version of the plan announced by President Obama on April 15 “still falls short.” While praising the President for retaining the Orion spacecraft even if in a reduced capacity, the newspaper argues that there is no need to wait until 2015 to decide on a design for a new heavy lift launch vehicle and spend billions instead on research.

“Rocket science has proved remarkably static in the last 50 years in spite of untold billions of dollars of investment. A far more likely prospect is that the money will be spread across a host of propulsion concerns that at best yield marginal improvements to current capabilities.”

UPDATE: Adds two meetings on Friday, April 30

ORIGINAL STORY: The following events may be of interest in the coming week. For further information, check our calendar on the right menu or click the links below. Meetings of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and its committees (in preparation for the NAC meeting at Johnson Space Center in Houston TX on April 28-29) headline the agenda so are grouped together rather than listing them by date.

NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and its committees

• NAC Education and Public Outreach Committee, April 26, via WebEx
• NAC Commercial Space Committee, April 26, Houston, TX
• NAC Exploration Committee, April 26-27, Houston, TX
• NAC Audit and Finance Committee, April 27, Houston, TX
• NAC, April 28-29, Houston, TX

Other Meetings

Tuesday, April 27

• National Research Council Planetary Science Decadal Survey, Primitive Bodies panel, open session, 1:00-3:15 pm, Knoxville, TN (the rest of the April 26-28 meeting is closed)

Tuesday-Wednesday, April 27-28

• Military Satellites Summit, Tysons Corner, VA

Tuesday-Friday, April 27-30

• Space Weather Workshop, Boulder, CO

Friday, April 30

• Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), National Security and Commercial Space: Rollout of Draft Report, 10:00-11:30 am, 1800 K Street, NW, Washington DC
• NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) public meeting, 12:30-2:30 pm, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC

Not many people really expected the remaining shuttle flights to be completed by the end of FY2010, a short five months away, but the extension into FY2011 reportedly is certain now that a scientific instrument due to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) will not be ready on time. The New York Times reported yesterday that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) will undergo a change-out of its magnet before launch and will not reach Kennedy Space Center at least until August. It was due for launch in July. NASA is still deciding when the launch will take place.

A $1.5 billion scientific instrument to search for antimatter, dark matter and missing matter in the universe, the AMS was conceived by Nobel prizewinner Sam Ting many years ago. Working outside the traditional National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Survey process for initiating astrophysics missions, Ting put together an international consortium to fund and construct the instrument. Ting worked through the Department of Energy (DOE), which sponsors high energy physics research, rather than NASA. DOE provided only a nominal amount of funding; the bulk came from an international consortium of institutes. It was built at CERN in Switzerland. NASA’s only involvement was a promise to launch the instrument to the ISS when it was built.

An initial version of the AMS flew on the space shuttle in 1998. The ISS version was supposed to carry a superconducting magnet, cooled by liquid helium, five times stronger than the magnet flown on the shuttle, according to the newspaper. However, the coolant was only sufficient for three years of operations. Ting was quoted by the New York Times as saying that he had decided that since the ISS will operate until 2020 instead of 2015, he would rather use the less capable magnet that does not require cooling so that it can operate for many more years. However, the Orlando Sentinel reported in March that a potential design flaw in the magnet had been identified that could mean the instrument would not work as expected.

The AMS has been controversial for many reasons — not the least of which is that it did not undergo peer review by the Decadal Survey process. Its position on the space shuttle manifest often seemed vulnerable and decisions made to truncate the ISS program and reduce the number of space shuttle missions following President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration initiative nearly doomed it. Dr. Ting’s relentless lobbying for the mission prevailed, however. In the 2008 NASA Authorization Act (section 611(c)), Congress directed NASA to add a shuttle mission to launch the instrument as long as it was safe to do so and did not significantly increase NASA’s costs compared with earlier estimates. AMS supporters argued that not only was the scientific research valuable, but the United States should not renege on its commitment to the international consortium that paid for the instrument.

One week after President Obama’s speech at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), it remains difficult to see who in Congress will take the lead in getting his new plan for the country’s human spaceflight program enacted into law. On the surface, at least, little has changed.

Congressional reaction immediately after the speech was generally negative. Most of those commenting clearly were not converted into supporters. Events in Congress this week – at the Senate Budget Committee markup and the Senate appropriations hearing — underscore that the White House still has a lot of work to do.

The much anticipated Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee hearing yesterday did little to clarify where Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) stands. As chair of the Senate subcommittee that funds NASA, she is a key player in NASA’s future. She had not shown her hand prior to the speech and many expected that the hearing would be her platform for revealing her position. Instead, she said that she needed to learn more, a clear indication that the KSC speech did not meet its goal of clarifying the President’s program and building support for it.

Senator Mikulski was the only Democrat at the hearing. The Republican Senators were just as critical as ever. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the subcommittee, was particularly harsh in his criticism of the proposal and of NASA Administrator Bolden, telling Gen. Bolden that “your destructive actions towards the Constellation program will only ensure that Members cannot trust you.” He added that “you are creating an atmosphere where you and your leadership team have become a major impediment to moving forward.” Sen. Shelby was pretty harsh last year, too, with regard to the notion that commercial companies could take over transporting NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station instead of building the Ares rockets whose development is underway in Alabama. It’s obvious that his position is unchanged.

Anyone who reads the news knows that the Senate as a whole is a highly partisan environment these days, but the space program has been a bipartisan topic throughout the years. It still may be bipartisan, but in opposition to – or at least not supportive of – the President. There are months to go in the congressional appropriations process and plenty of time for the President to put on a full court press to win support at least from members of his own party.

Still, Senator Mikulski and Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) are bellweathers of Democratic views on NASA. Even Senator Nelson, credited as the architect of the President’s appearance in Florida, does not yet seem completely sold on it himself. On Wednesday he persuaded the Senate Budget Committee to recommend more funding for NASA in FY2011 in part to enable the agency to continue testing the Ares 1 rocket that the President is determined to cancel.

Other key congressional space leaders have not publicly reacted to the speech, including Senator Mikulski’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), or the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, Rep . Bart Gordon (D-TN) or the chair of its space and aeronautics subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Gordon raised a number of reservations about the proposal during a hearing in February and Giffords has been openly antagonistic to the idea of terminating the Constellation program at several hearings.

If nothing else, the speech did lay to rest any reservations about whether the President himself is committed to the new plan. Whether he would have staved off some of the critics by giving the speech initially instead of revealing this profound proposed change in the U.S. human spaceflight program as part of the FY2011 budget request is unknown.

The President sought to convince the aerospace community that he personally is committed to NASA and to human spaceflight. He presented destinations and timelines in response to criticism that the original announcement was too vague. But it is clear that he will have to do more to win converts in Congress, at least, to his proposal. Stay tuned.

Senator Barbara Mikulski, chair of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, told a standing room only hearing this morning that “My position on this budget [for human spaceflight] is very simple. I need to know more, Congress needs to know more, taxpayers need to know more and astronauts need to know more.”

She continued that “I want to know if this is a program that the President, Congress and the American people can support and if this is a program that will be sustainable from one administration to the next. We cannot reinvent NASA every four years. … We are here to get the facts. It’s not about finger pointing — it’s about pin pointing.” She specifically cites the Constellation program as one topic needing clarification: “Is the President talking about cancelling Constellation or restructuring Constellation?” That’s a key issue in her view. She reiterated her priorities and principles as spelled out in a letter to Senator Bill Nelson weeks ago.

She also said that Congress must focus on other aspects of NASA, such as earth science and space science. “But it’s not all doom and gloom. We have to note successes. The goals of NASA’s space science are amazing.”

The hearing is ongoing. Check back later for more news.

The Senate Budget Committee today recommended increasing the amount of funds available to NASA for FY2011 to $19.7 billion, $1 billion more than the agency’s FY2010 appropriations or $726 million above the President’s request for FY2011. Reading the summary of the committee’s intent and listening to a colloquy between the committee’s chairman, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), suggests that the motivation is to support terrestrial military requirements at least as much as space program goals, however.

The committee marked up the FY2011 budget resolution today. The budget resolution does not provide funding to agencies, but sets the amount of money that each of the 12 appropriations subcommittees may spend. (Not sure what a markup is? See our “What’s a Markup” Fact Sheet.)

An overview of the “chairman’s mark” – the recommendation of Chairman Conrad — explains that it provides funds to continue flying the space shuttle into FY2011 if needed to complete the remaining scheduled missions. The President’s FY2011 budget request contains funds for shuttle flights in the first quarter of FY2011 only. The overview also states that “it remains the policy of the United States to possess the capability of continuous access to space” and the chairman’s mark supports efforts to reduce the gap between the end of the shuttle program and the availability of a new system whether developed by the commercial sector or the government. It goes on to endorse continued testing of technologies and vehicles for the purpose of developing a new heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV).

That latter point, in particular, was the subject of a colloquy between Senator Conrad and Senator Nelson. Senator Nelson is an avid supporter of human spaceflight, but the discussion suggests that on a broader level, the committee’s interest is supporting the military’s need for solid rocket motors, not just NASA’s human space flight aspirations. A webcast available on C-SPAN (this colloquy starts at minute 01:08:41) shows Senator Nelson linking the Department of Defense (DOD’s) need for solid rocket motors “that protect this country’s national security in our submarines and silos” and interest in continued testing of Ares-1X and developing a new HLLV for NASA. Senator Conrad soberly notes that there are classified matters that could not be discussed in that forum, but it is “absolutely essential for the national security that this [provision] go forward.” He adds that he hopes it will be retained, but “we are going to have to fight for this.”

The House and Senate Budget Committees set the total amount of funding that is available for each of the 12 subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to spend. Each chamber is supposed to pass a budget resolution and ultimately compromise on a single budget resolution for both. In some years, however, compromise cannot be reached on a joint resolution.

Jim Oberg has an interesting take on MSNBC today on why commercial space taxis may be easier to build than many people think. He points out that with the decision to use Orion technology to build a Crew Return Vehicle, for example, the commercial taxis will not have to be designed with an on-orbit dwell time of six months as do Russia’s Soyuz. spacecraft. They have a relatively simple and straightfoward mission and, he argues, the spacecraft could be “spartan” from a comfort perspective — like food.

Surely not everyone will agree with Oberg. He suggests that the spacecraft would only have to be capable of independent flight for 24 hours, with a maximum emergency flight time of 48 hours. One can certainly imagine contingencies that would take more time than that to resolve. Perhaps Oberg’s most provocative suggestion is that sometimes failure might indeed be an option: “There should be no compromise when it comes to reducing the risk of crew injury or death. But the risks of mission failure should most definitely be re-evaluated under these new circumstances. Failure may sometimes be an option.”

NASA is targeting 7:34 am EDT Tuesday for landing Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-131) according to NASA‘s space shuttle website. Landing was postponed on Monday due to bad weather at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), FL. A second opportunity for landing at KSC would be 9:08 am EDT. Three other landing opportunities are avaiilable at Edwards Air Force Base, CA if bad weather in Florida persists.

UPDATE 2: The shuttle landed safe and sound.

UPDATE: The weather improved and the shuttle was given the “go” to land at KSC at 9:08 am EDT this morning.

ORIGINAL STORY: SHUTTLE STILL TRYING TO GET HOME. NASA managers had to delay Discovery’s landing once more this morning because of bad weather at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). They passed on the first landing opportunity, but hope STS-131 will be able to land at KSC at the second landing opportunity at 9:08 am EDT. The deorbit burn would take place at 7:56 am. Otherwise, the shuttle will land at Edwards Air Force Base. Follow the shuttle’s progress at NASA’s space shuttle website.