Representatives Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Ken Calvert (R-CA) took the lead in sending a bipartisan letter to President Obama yesterday arguing for a $3 billion per year funding increase for NASA. The letter was signed by 81 Members of Congress from across the country.

The letter references the “$3 billion annual increase recommended” by the Augustine committee, but as noted in an earlier SpacePolicyOnline.com article, the Augustine committee instead recommended a $3 billion increase between FY2011 and FY2014, not $3 billion each of those years. Discovering the committee’s meaning on this issue is challenging, however, so it is not surprising that confusion continues. Many NASA advocates think that a $3 billion per year increase is the right number in any case, though the likelihood of the Obama Administration requesting such an increase appears slim.

Most members of the Texas congressional delegation sent a letter to the President in October asking him to spend up to an additional $3 billion in stimulus funding on NASA. The stimulus bill already provides $1 billion to the agency.

In a televised media conference today, the 12 crew members onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and space shuttle Atlantis answered questions from reporters around the world and described their experience together very positively. STS-129 Shuttle crew members will part today from their colleagues in preparation for undocking tomorrow, after a successful mission delivering and storing space parts on the exterior of the station, crucial for its long-term operation. Frank De Winne, the first European commander of the ISS, said that “this is just the beginning of co-habiting in space” and “there is still a lot of work to do” for future space missions that he hoped would involve utilizing the ISS for 15 or 20 years more. De Winne will depart the station on a Soyuz on November 30, handing over the command of Expedition 22 to NASA astronaut Jeff Williams.

This week is dead quiet for space policy-related events due to the Thanksgiving holiday — Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Next week, though, the pace picks up with two space hearings before subcommittees of the House Science and Technology Committee.

On Wednesday, December 2, the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee will hold a hearing on “Ensuring the Safety of Human Space Flight” at 10:00 am in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building. Witnesses are Brett Alexander of the Commercial Space Flight Federation; Joseph Fragola, Valador, Inc; Jeff Hanley, Program Manager of NASA’s Constellation Program; Bryan O’Connor, former shuttle astronaut and NASA’s Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance; and former Apollo astronaut and retired Lt. Gen. Tom Stafford. Gen. Stafford is a legend in the space business, especially on human space flight safety issues.

On Thursday, a joint hearing between the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee and the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee will be held on “Independent Audit of NASA” at 2:00 pm in 2318 Rayburn. Witnesses are Thomas Howard, NASA’s Acting Inspector General; Daniel Murrin, Ernst & Young (the company that audit’s NASA’s books); and Beth Robinson, NASA’s Chief Financial Officer (and a former staffer for the House Science and Technology Committee before going to OMB and now to NASA). The financial management challenges NASA has faced for a decade or more and its inability to get a clean financial audit have been well documented by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The just-released witness list for December 3rd’s House Science and Technology hearing on “Independent Audit of NASA” lists Acting NASA Inspector General (IG) Thomas Howard as one of the witnesses, but by then the new NASA IG should be on board — if only for a few days.

Paul Martin was confirmed by the Senate on Friday for his new post as NASA IG. The Blog of Legal Times reports that Martin said he is looking forward to the job and “has to get up to speed on all the space lingo” as he reports for duty on November 30. Martin has been deputy IG at the Justice Department.

Martin replaces Robert Cobb, whose controversial tenure included strongly negative reports about his conduct from the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency in 2007 and about his office’s lack of effectiveness from the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) in 2008. Calls for his resignation — including from influential Members of Congress— went unheeded during the George W. Bush Administration, but Cobb finally left after President Obama took office.

Pursuant to the Inspector General Act of 1978, most government departments and agencies have IGs, who are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. They are independent of the department or agency to which they are assigned, reporting to the President. President Reagan drew attention to the IGs by firing all of them on his first day in office so he could replace them, according to his press secretary, James Brady, with people he knew to be “meaner than a junkyard dog.” The sobriquet remains to this day.

The following presentations were made to the Survey Committee of the National Research Council’s Planetary Science Decadal Survey on November 16-18, 2009 in Irvine, CA. Titles are from the agenda for the meeting.

• Status of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program, James Green, NASA Headquarters
• NRC Report on Radioisotope Power Systems, Ralph McNutt, APL
• Availability of Launch Vehicles 1, Max Vozoff, SpaceX
• Status and Prospects for the DSN (Deep Space Network), Barry Geldzhaler, NASA Headquarters
• Future DSN Operations, Michael Rodrigues, JPL
• Availability of Launch Vehicles 2, George Sowers, United Launch Alliance
• Current and Future Launch Services, Bill Wrobel, NASA Headquarters

In an op-ed in the November 19 New York Times, Universities Space Research Association (USRA) scientist William S. Marshall asks why the discovery of more water than expected at the Moon’s South Pole did not get more media coverage. Saying that a similar discovery 30 years ago would have been “heralded as one of humanity’s greatest discoveries,” he wonders if “it’s a symptom of our age, that the problems that bedevil us on Earth limit our interest in other worlds — just when we need them (and the inspiration they offer) most.”

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope was honored with Popular Science magazine’s 2009 Best of What’s New Grand Award and a 2009 Breakthrough Award. Kepler’s task is detecting Earth-like planets around other stars. The magazine awarded top honors to one breakthrough in each of 10 categories; Kepler won for aviation and space.

It wasn’t the only space science mission to be honored, either. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Herschel and Planck observatories also received Breakthrough Awards.

A total of 10 programs were honored in the aviation and space category. Two other space winners were the Launch Abort System for Orion and Elon Musk’s Falcon launch vehicle.

The Survey Committee of the National Research Council’s Planetary Science Decadal Survey met at the NRC’s Beckman Center in Irvine, CA earlier this week. It was the second meeting for the Survey Committee, chaired by Steve Squyres, best known as the “father” of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

The Survey Committee is responsible for writing the decadal survey based on input from its five panels and the planetary science community at large. The output will be a consensus-based prioritized list of planetary science missions that should be undertaken in the decade 2013-2022.

Public sessions of the November Survey Committee meeting were devoted to presentations about the availability of launch services and of the Deep Space Network, as well as an update from NASA’s Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green and a summary of the NRC’s recent report on radioisotope power systems (RPS) by Ralph McNutt. Dr. McNutt co-chaired that NRC committee that produced the RPS report and also is a member of the Survey Committee. Presentations from the meeting are available under “National Research Council” on our left menu or by clicking here.

Latest word from Congress Daily (subscription required) on the status of the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill (H.R 2847).

“Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Hoyer said he expects the House will reject an expected GOP motion to recommit that would put language in the FY10 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations conference report prohibiting the transfer or release of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into the United States, including for prosecution.

“Hoyer cited as precedent the FY10 Homeland Security conference report, which the House approved last month after rejecting a similar motion, 224-193. The vote came after the House initially approved, 258-163, a similar nonbinding Republican motion to instruct conferees.

“Hoyer said that Democratic leaders are deciding when to name C-J-S conferees. Republicans have charged that Democrats are delaying naming conferees to protect their members from taking difficult votes.”

The multinational Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is holding its 6th plenary meeting in Washington, D.C. on November 17-18. Included is a public exhibition at the Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W. Eighty national governments, the European Commission, and about 60 global organizations participate in GEO. According to a NASA press release:

“The exhibition in the Reagan Building’s Atrium Hall will be open to the public on Nov. 17 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Nov. 18 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Highlighted projects featuring NASA contributions include near real-time fire detection, global agricultural monitoring, natural disaster monitoring and forecasting, and a famine early warning system.”