The NASA Advisory Council (NAC) is scheduled to hold its next meeting tomorrow and Friday and NASA has now posted the full agenda for the meeting and the names of the members of the various NAC committees. The Science Committee has several subcommittees although it is not clear if the list of subcommittee members is current.
UPDATE 2: Highlights of the conversation:
The President said that his commitment to NASA is “unwavering” and that he was excited about spending more research dollars on transformational technologies to allow space travel of longer duration that also ensures astronaut safety. The President seemed to enjoy serving as the moderator for the questions asked by students from several states that spanned the gamut from what kind of research the astronauts are conducting (answer: combustion studies, cellular studies, materials research, and butterflies) to what natural or man-made objects can be seen from space (answer: it’s a great view, especially with the new Cupola; the Grand Canyon and the lights of the world at night are especially wonderful) and whether they could observe weather phenomena like the snowstorm that hit Washington DC last week (answer: yes to weather generally). And, of course, the usual “how did you become an astronaut” and “why do we explore space” types of questions.
UPDATE: NASA just said the President was running 9 minutes late.
ORIGINAL STORY: President Obama, congressional leaders and middle school students will call the ISS and shutle astronauts at 5:15 pm EST today. The event will be carried on NASA TV.
Many op-ed pieces have been written in favor of or against NASA’s new plan. The White House and NASA have chosen to respond to the one written by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on February 12 wherein he concluded that the President’s plan was “closing the new frontier.”
In a letter to the editor published in today’s Post, White House Science Adviser John Holdren and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden criticize Krauthammer, calling him “badly off target.” They defend their new NASA plan as “right for the agency, for the times and for continuing U.S. leadership in space.” Holdren is scheduled to testify to the House Science and Technology Committee on February 24 about the federal R&D budget request; Bolden on February 25 on the NASA budget request. See our calendar on the right menu for details.
Politifact has updated some of its ratings on whether President Obama is living up to his campaign promises about the space program. Of the 19 space program-related campaign promises it tracks on its “Obameter,” it now rates Obama as having broken one — the promise to return humans to the Moon by 2020 — and kept five others. Added to its previous ratings, the tally now stands at:
Politifact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times. Of all the Obama campaign promises it tracks, the President is rated as keeping 96, compromising on 33, breaking 15, and stalling on 84, with 273 more “in the works” and two “not yet rated.”
The House Science and Technology Committee has rescheduled the hearing with Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren that was postponed last week by the snowstorms in Washington. The new date is Wednesday, February 24. The hearing is on the federal R&D budget overall, but it would be surprising if NASA’s change of course on human space flight and request for substantially increased funding for technology development didn’t come up. The next day, the committee will hold a hearing specifically on NASA’s FY2011 budget request with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. Check the committee’s website or our calendar on the right menu for more details.
As reported earlier, cold weather in Florida has delayed processing of the Discovery orbiter for the STS-131 mission. NASA announced today that the launch date will slip from March 18 to April 5. Only four more shuttle launches remain. All are supposed to be completed by September 30, the end of fiscal year 2010, but the NASA FY2011 budget request includes funding for three more months of shuttle operations if needed. The current schedule is:
Several media outlets and websites have reported on the letter sent to NASA Administrator Bolden by 27 Members of Congress that has been characterized as alleging that NASA is not complying with the law. The letter actually stops a bit short of that, but does state that NASA’s decision to cancel a solicitation for a contract related to the Constellation program and other actions the agency is taking to begin terminating the program may violate the Impoundment Control Act and the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3288, P.L. 111-119). The latter includes language prohibiting NASA from spending any funds to terminate any aspect of Constellation or initiate a new program. Whether or not NASA is violating the law will have to be settled by lawyers. However, while any letter from Members of Congress is important, what may be most notable about this letter is who did NOT sign it.
The signatures are from 20 Republicans and seven Democrats, largely from Alabama, Florida and Texas where much of the work on Constellation was planned or is ongoing. Some of the signers are members of the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee who would have been involved in writing the NASA portion of the appropriations bill. However, the chairman and ranking member of that subcommittee, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) and Frank Wolf (R-VA) are not among the signers. Nor are the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), and the chairwoman of that committee’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Their Republican counterparts (Rep. Ralph Hall and Rep. Pete Olson, both from Texas) did sign it.
The letter “reminds” NASA that its actions “may” violate the law, and asks or urges NASA to take certain actions and cease others. If Congress wanted to press the case that an agency was violating an appropriations act, one would expect not only House but Senate members to voice such a complaint. A letter from the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations CJS subcommittees — or the full committees — would garner much more attention than a letter signed by any number of other members. Also, the letter likely would be addressed to the Comptroller General, head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), who is responsible for issuing legal opinions on appropriations laws.
The Tranquility Module and its “bay window” — or Cupola — have been successfully attached to the International Space Station (ISS) by space shuttle Endeavour (STS-130) and ISS crews. Repositioning of the Cupola to its final location was achieved in the early hours (EST) of February 15. It now points down towards Earth, providing an impressive window on the world. Endeavour is scheduled to return to Earth on February 21. Meanwhile, the next shuttle launch may be delayed.
Currently scheduled for March 18, Discovery’s STS-131 launch may slip to early April according to NASASpaceflight.com. It remains unusually chilly in the Kennedy Space Center area, slowing the move of Discovery into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) because the temperatures in the VAB are too cold for some shuttle systems. That means a slip to the launch date, which must be interleaved with the next Soyuz launch to ISS. Hence the shuttle may slip to the first week of April, according to the website.
The following events may be of interest this week. The House and Senate are both in recess for the President’s Day district work period. Both will meet next on February 22. The meeting of the NRC’s Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences shown on our calendar for Feb. 15-17 is closed in its entirety and therefore is not listed below. For further information, see our calendar on the right menu or click the links below.
Thursday-Friday, February 18-19, Washington, DC
Thursday-Saturday, February 18-20, Boulder, CO
Finding the DOD and NASA budget requests is relatively easy, but not so much for space programs in other government agencies like NOAA, DOE, USGS and DOT. FY2011 Budget Documentation: Where to Find Agency Budgets is a SpacePolicyOnline.com fact sheet that provides links to the right spot on those agencies’ websites.
The White House Office of Management and Budget has the granddaddy budget website of them all for the entire federal government. OMB’s volume on Historical Tables is particularly valuable for those who want to see what percentage of the federal budget has been allocated to NASA over time, for example.