In the tradition of “If It’s Tuesday This Must be Belgium,” the Augustine panel on the future of the human space flight program will hold three straight days of public meetings in three different States at the end of July. On July 28, the panel will meet in League City, TX outside Houston; on July 29 in Huntsville, AL; and on July 30, in Cocoa Beach, FL. For more details, see NASA’s press release.

As reported earlier, Mr. Augustine will update the media on the status of his panel’s deliberations via teleconference this Friday, July 17, at 10:00 am EDT.

Norm Augustine will hold a media teleconference to provide an update on his panel’s deliberations on the future of the human spaceflight program on Friday, July 17, at 10:00 am EDT. The telecon will be streamed live on NASA’s website http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

For more information, see NASA’s press release.

The launch of the space shuttle on the STS-127 mission has again been delayed due to weather. Here’s the latest from NASA:

STS-127 Launch Scrubbed Due to Weather
Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:39:55 PM EDT

Liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-127 mission has been scrubbed once more due to weather within the launch area at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Anvil clouds and storm cells containing lightning flared up toward the end of the countdown, violating stringent launch safety rules

Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post has published an article in this morning’s paper about the future of the International Space Station.

The following events may be of interest next week. All meetings are in Washington D.C. unless otherwise noted. More details are available by clicking on the appropriate date on our calendar on the right menu or on the hyperlinks provided below. Meetings that are closed to the public are not listed here. Note that times and dates for congressional hearings, markups and floor action are subject to change. Check with the relevant committee or the websites for the House or Senate for up-to-date information.

Possible Floor Action During the Week

According to Congress Daily (subscription required), the House may take up the FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill next week, and the Senate may take up the FY2010 Department of Defense Authorization bill. The Senate has scheduled four days of debate on the latter.

Monday, July 13

Time TBD House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee markup of FY2010 DOD appropriations bill Location TBD in Washington , D.C.

11:00-12:00, 6:00-8:00 pm Open sessions of Survey/Detection Panel of the NRC Committee on Near Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies. Sante Fe Hilton, Santa Fe, NM

Tuesday-Wednesday, July 14-15

Meetings of the subcommittees of the NASA Advisory Council See the agendas for further detail

Thursday, July 16

• 8:00-4:30 NASA Advisory Council Holiday Inn Capital, 550 C St., S.W. see agenda

• 1:00 NASA Roundtable on “Apollo: History and Legacy” NASA HQ Auditorium, 300 E Street S.W.

• 2:00 House Science and Technology Subcommittee Hearing “Enhancing the Relevance of Space To Address National Needs” 2318 Rayburn (the committee’s website lists the time as 10:00; Congress Daily lists it as 2:00)

Presentations to the first meeting of the NRC Planetary Science Decadal Survey Committee, July 6-7, 2009

• Ed Weiler, NASA Associate Administrator for Science
• Jim Green and Doug McCuistion, NASA Planetary Sciences Division
  • NASA’s Perspective on Charge to the Decadal Survey Committee
  • Overview of NASA Planetary Science Program
  • Overview of NASA’s Mars Program

• Nigel Sharp, NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences
  • NSF’s Planetary Science Activities

• APL Summary of Capabilities in Spacecraft and Mission Design
• Goddard Space Flight Center Support for Planetary Decadal Activities
• JPL
  • JPL re Concept Maturity Levels
  • JPL re Technical Support for the Decadal Survey
  • JPL re Rapid Mission Architectures
  • JPL re TeamX
  • JPL re In Depth Studies

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the open sessions of the first meeting of the steering committee of the NRC’s Planetary Science Decadal Survey is now available. The Powerpoint presentations made by the various speakers are included. View the Meeting Summary here.

Dr. Johannes Loschnigg, formerly on the staff of the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, has joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) staff. Dr. Loschnigg will be working in the energy and environment division, focusing on climate policy, energy and space issues.

Dr. Loschnigg has previously been a Visiting Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as a consultant for the National Academy of Sciences Space Studies Board.

Dr. Loschnigg was formerly the Staff Director for the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics on the House of Representatives Committee on Science until early 2007, where he previously served as a Professional Staff Member. In the 109th Congress he authored numerous sections of the 2005 NASA Authorization Act (P.L. 109-155). Dr. Loschnigg first came to Capitol Hill as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) congressional science and technology policy fellow in 2002, working in the office of Senator Lieberman.

From 1998-2002, Dr. Loschnigg was affiliated with the University of Hawaii, where he initially worked as post-doctoral fellow and later became a visiting researcher, concentrating on coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling of the Indian and Pacific oceans, as well as the impacts of climate variability on disease and human health. In addition, he has held positions as graduate research and scientific assistant at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the NASA Ames Research Center, the Department of Physics at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Loschnigg holds a B.A. in both Physics and International Relations from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and both a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical, Planetary and Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

During the second day of the NRC’s Planetary Science Decadal Survey steering committee meeting, White House and Congressional staff gave the committee somewhat conflicting messages. The committee is kicking off its two-year consensus-making exercise to recommend priorities for research in planetary science at NASA and NSF for the decade 2013-2023.

While Day 1 of the meeting focused on briefings from the study’s sponsors, NASA and NSF, Day 2 brought in viewpoints from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as well Congress. All emphasized the importance the White House and Congress attach to recommendations in the NRC’s Decadal Surveys, calling the Surveys “touchstones” and “key reference points” for their own deliberations.

OMB’s Amy Kaminski and OSTP’s Damon Wells strongly advised the committee to keep its recommended program within the bounds of the FY2010 budget now under consideration by Congress and its “outyear” projections. They stressed they were not trying to forecast the future, but in light of country’s economic situation, they view budget increases for NASA as unlikely.

Their message was in contrast to what the committee heard from NASA’s Jim Green the previous day. Dr. Green urged the committee to wait for the FY2011 budget that will be released next February, which he believes will better reflect Obama Administration priorities. The OMB/OSTP message also was in contrast to remarks by Dick Obermann and Ed Feddeman of the House Science and Technology Committee staff who reminded the group that it is Congress that ultimately decides budgets. Representing the Democratic and Republican viewpoints respectively, both advised the committee to focus their deliberations on the top scientific priorities, not the budget. While acknowledging that there are no blank checks, they stressed that if the science is sufficiently compelling, Congress could make additional funds available.

Following those presentations, the committee heard from representatives of the Applied Physics Lab, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on how those institutions believe they can support the work of the Decadal Survey committee. The committee is required by law (the 2008 NASA Authorization Act) to obtain independent cost estimates of projects they recommend. Cost uncertainty is directly related to the maturity of the mission concept and it is expected that the committee will receive proposals in a variety of stages of maturity. The committee is seeking help from APL, Goddard and JPL on how to normalize the proposals so they can undergo a useful independent cost estimate. The presentations from APL and Goddard were not immediately available. JPL made the following four presentations:

JPL re Technical Support for the Decadal Survey

JPL re Rapid Mission Architectures

JPL re TeamX

JPL re In Depth Studies

The committee will meet in closed session tomorrow. To keep up on committee activities and future meetings, visit the NRC’s planetary science decadal survey website.

Charlie Bolden and Lori Garver sailed through their confirmation hearing this afternoon. The hearing was somewhat delayed by Senate business and a committee markup, but when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee was finally able to turn its attention to nominations, Gen. Bolden and Ms. Garver were first up. Other time pressures shortened the question and answer period, but committee chair Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) posed what is probably the most fundamental question facing the agency. He told the nominees that he felt that NASA was drifting and did not have the compelling sense of purpose that it did in the past. He asked the duo if they agreed, and if so, what did they intend to do about it.

Gen. Bolden called for a reinvigoration of research and development (R&D) at NASA that could inspire young people to come and work at the agency. He later added that the government could not fund everything that people want NASA to accomplish, and championed the role that commercial space, especially entrepreneurs, need to play. Ms. Garver said that she shared the Senator’s concern, and advocated an enhanced effort by NASA to better communicate with the public about the space program’s relevance to the challenges facing the country. In that respect, her answer echoed the theme of the National Research Council report released yesterday — America’s Future in Space: Aligning the Civil Space Program with National Needs.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) argued that only the President could “unleash the ingenuity of these engineers” and restore the “magic” of NASA’s past. He said that if the President embraced a bold mission for NASA, Gen. Bolden and Ms. Garver were the team that could implement it. He stressed that the President needs to lead and “not let the Office of Management and Budget run NASA.” He asserted that that was the case not only in the Bush Administration, but the Clinton Administration as well, so that it is a bipartisan issue.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) asked about the future of the International Space Station (ISS) as a national laboratory. Both nominees noted that the ISS has had its full complement of six crew members for only a few weeks so the ISS’ potential was just about to be tapped. Gen. Bolden said ISS would “pave the way” to Mars and Mr. Garver called it a “toehold to the universe.” Both also cited the need for space transportation systems to get to ISS more economically and efficiently.

Senator Rockefeller closed this part of the hearing by commenting that he expected the nominees to be confirmed easily.