The following events may be of interest. See our calendar on the right menu for more details, or click on the links below. Wednesday is Veterans Day and Congress will be in recess for most of the week. The Senate is only scheduled to be in session on Monday and Tuesday. The House schedule for Monday and Tuesday is yet to be announced.

Monday-Thursday: NRC Committee on Assessment of NASA Laboratory Facilities (some sessions may be closed)

• Site Visit to JPL, Nov. 9-10
• Site Visit to NASA/Ames, Nov. 9-10
• Committee Meeting, NRC Beckman Center, Irvine, CA, Nov .11-12

Monday-Friday: NRC Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space: Panel Meetings (some sessions may be closed)

• Panel on Fundamental Physical Sciences, NRC Beckman Center, Irvine, CA, Nov. 9-10
• Panel on Translation to Space Exploration Systems, Keck Center, Washington, DC, Nov. 11-13

Thursday-Friday

• Second Global Space Development Summit, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1800 K Street, N.W., Washington, DC. Registration fee: $500.

The Senate passed the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill on Thursday. The bill funds NASA, NOAA, and NSF among other agencies. A compromise now must be negotiated with the House. One major difference between the House and Senate is funding for NASA’s Constellation program to return humans to the Moon by 2020. The House held that program to its FY2009 funding level, a cut of more than $500 million from the FY2010 request, pending the results of the Augustine committee. The Senate fully funded the Constellation program. Although the Augustine committee has completed its report presenting options for the future of the U.S. human space flight program, the White House has not made a public statement about which of the options it will adopt, or if it will take yet a different route. Whether or not the lack of a clear decision from the White House will affect congressional negotiations remains to be seen.

NASA has published the newest edition of the classic Spinoffs book that “shows how NASA technology is being put to use in everyday life here on Earth…” The report is available online and in print.

Senate Majority Leader Reid got the 60 votes he needed today to invoke cloture on the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill. The Senate is now considering amendments that are germane to the bill and could complete action today. The Vitter-Bennett census amendment previously had been ruled non-germane, so will not be considered.

NASA announced new members and additional committees for the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) today.

The four new committees and their chairs are:

• Commercial Space, Brett Alexander
• Education and Public Outreach, Miles O’Brien
• Technology and Innovation, Esther Dyson
• Information Technology and Infrastructure, to be announced

The Primitive Bodies Panel of the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Planetary Science Decadal Survey met on October 28-30, 2009 at the NRC’s Beckman Center in Irvine, CA. Most of the meeting was closed, but on October 28-29, the following presentations were made in open session. Titles are from the agenda for the meeting.

• The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, Zeljko Ivezic, Univ. of Washington
• Pan-STARRS4, Jim Heasley, IFA [presentation is too large to upload]
• Planetary Ices, Will Grundy, Lowell Observatory
• Planetary Ices, Murthy Gudipati, JPL
• Cryogenic Sample Return from Comets, Hal Weaver, Johns Hopkins
• Triton Science, Candice Hansen, JPL

The following events next week may be of interest. Check our calendar on the right menu for more details or follow the links below. Congressional activities are always subject to change.

During the week:

• The Senate may consider the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) appropriations bill (H.R. 2847). It did not bring up the bill last week as some had anticipated.
• Conferees may meet on the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill (H.R. 3326), but it is not clear that the conference report will be brought to the floor this week.

Monday-Wednesday, November 2-4, Omaha, Nebraska

• Strategic Space Symposium

Monday, November 2, Washington, DC

• AIAA Symposium: “Does the Final Frontier Have a Future: Debate Over the Next Steps in Human Space Flight, ” 1:00-4:30 p.m. Room 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Tuesday-Wednesday, November 3-4, 2009, Irvine, CA

• NRC Space Studies Board

Wednesday-Friday, November 4-6, 2009, Pasadena, CA

• NRC Planetary Science Decadal Survey: Mars Panel. At California Institute of Technology.

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission could suffer additional cost increases due to concerns over the integrity of the titanium used in the structure of the spacecraft, Spaceflightnow.com reported last week.

The website reported that NASA officials told the Planetary Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council that there was a need to check the integrity of the metal used in the spacecraft due to concerns over “counterfeit” titanium – meaning it has not been subjected to the appropriate rigorous testing – a process that could add more cost to the already over-budget mission. The subcommittee met on October 16.

The MSL spacecraft is mostly built with titanium components, which makes it even harder to determine the amount and exact location of what Doug McCuistion, Director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, called the “improperly treated non-conforming titanium” according to Spaceflightnow.com. Dr. McCuistion was further quoted as saying that the process of identification will take officials between one and two months: “we have to do some testing to determine what the risk of this material not being conforming is, whether it can still handle the pressures and the temperatures, whether it has the lifetime characteristics, whether it has the strength.” If found to be unsuitable to the mission requirements, replacement parts would need to be ordered, further delaying and increasing the costs of the mission.

The titanium reportedly was provided by Western Titanium Inc., a San Diego-based company that was indicted last December on fraud charges that include issuing false certifications on the quality of the titanium provided.

This incident recalls an issue raised earlier this year at a House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics hearing by then acting NASA Administrator Christopher Scolese. When asked about the sources of cost overruns in NASA missions, Scolese mentioned a variety of reasons, including that spacecraft sometimes contain counterfeit parts: “you find out about it when you’re in tests, or you find out about it when you’re sitting on top of the rocket, or worse, you find about it when you’re in space. And all of those have cost implications.” (minute 45:28 of the hearing webcast)

Media reports are noting two anomalies with the Ares I-X test launch on Wednesday. The two minute powered flight prior to separation of the two stages is judged to be a success. After the first stage separated from the dummy second stage, however, the latter went into a flat spin instead of continuing on an upward course before ultimately falling into the ocean. That stage was not powered and not intended to be recovered. The first stage was recovered and showed signs of damage because it hit the water too hard. One of the three parachutes deflated, resulting in the harder than expected impact. Spaceflightnow.com has good pictures of the dent in the tank.

A New York Times editorial this morning praises NASA’s Swift satellite for finding the “afterglow” of the explosion that ended the life of star GRB 090423 13.1 billion light-years away.

“It’s one thing to explore such remote recesses of time in theory. It’s something else again to witness their afterglow. And GRB 090423 is an invitation for all of us to unfetter our imaginations. We imagine looking outward from that distant point knowing that our own exploration still lies some 13 billion years in the future.”