Category: Civil

NASA's SMD Seeking Space Policy Experts – Apply by Jan 22 — CORRECTION

NASA's SMD Seeking Space Policy Experts – Apply by Jan 22 — CORRECTION

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) has two positions open for space policy experts.  One is a permanent civil service job, the other is an IPA.  Applications for the civil service position are due January 22, 2014. 

The full-time permanent civil service job is posted on USAJOBS.gov.  It is at the mid-career GS 13/14 level and open to qualified U.S. citizens. 

Information on the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment — where someone is detailed to NASA for two years with a possibility of extensions for four additional years — is as follows.

PLEASE CONTACT JENS FEELY AT NASA (contact information below) WITH ANY QUESTIONS, NOT SPACEPOLICYONLINE.COM!   WE ARE JUST HELPING SPREAD THE WORD.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Seeks Public Policy Expert

SMD’s Strategic Integration and Management Division (SIMD) is looking for a Public Policy Expert to join our staff under an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) appointment.

Under authority granted to NASA in the NASA Flexibility Act of 2004 (Pub. L. 108-201, 118 Stat. 461 (5 U.S.C. 9801 et seq.)), the initial IPA appointment will be for up to 2 years, with the possibility of reappointment up to a total of 6 years.  The Intergovernmental Personnel Act provides for the temporary assignment of personnel between the Federal Government and state and local governments, colleges and universities, Indian tribal governments, federally funded research and development centers, and other eligible organizations; all applicants must be from an IPA-eligible organization.

Ideal candidates would have an advanced degree in Public Policy or a related field, and have multiple years of experience working in public policy implementation.  All candidates must possess excellent policy analysis, writing and editing skills.  Prior experience working on space policy is desirable, but not required. SMD’s preferred start date is February 1-May 1, 2014.

The individual selected would join a 7-person team focused on providing policy support to SMD’s 95 missions that span Astrophysics, Earth Science, Heliophysics, Planetary Science, and various reimbursable projects for other agencies. In support of SMD’s policy functions, the policy team manages SMD’s relations with external groups, including Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), educational entities, and external advisory committees and boards.  In partnership with other SMD Divisions, the policy branch also supports the SMD Associate Administrator by providing integrated guidance, strategy, and focused advocacy for NASA’s science program.

The specific responsibilities of the policy branch include the following:

•                Develop and coordinate testimony, Congressional correspondence, white papers, Congressional reports, proactive legislative outreach, staff briefings, and responses to Congressional and Executive Branch review actions.

•                Monitor, support development of, and track inter-agency agreements, coordinate interagency meetings, and manage SMD’s coordination with OSTP and OMB.

•                Coordinate SMD international activities and relationships, including Agency and SMD international policy, agreements status tracking, export control, and international meetings.

•                Manage the NAC Science Committee and support the SMD Divisions in the management of the respective Science Subcommittees advisory groups; Oversee and coordinate SMD’s activities with the National Research Council.

•                Oversee and coordinate Directorate audit and review activities with the NASA Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and other auditors or reviewers.

•                Coordinate and support the development of SMD elements of the NASA strategic plan and Directorate science plan, and provide support to the Resource Management Division ‘s (RMD) activities in response to the Government Performance and Results (GPRA) Modernization Act of 2010.

Questions concerning this IPA Appointment opportunity should be directed to Dr. T. Jens Feeley at jens.feeley@nasa.gov or 202.358.1714.  

 Correction:  We misunderstood the original information we were provided and originally wrote that there were two civil service positions, but this is only one.   This article has been corrected accordingly.

Space Policy Events for the Week of January 13-18, 2014

Space Policy Events for the Week of January 13-18, 2014

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead.  The House and Senate both are in session.

During the Week

If all goes according to plan, this week Congress will pass an Omnibus Appropriations bill incorporating all 12 regular appropriations bills that will fund the government for the rest of FY2014.  The Omnibus may be introduced as early as this evening (Sunday) or perhaps not until tomorrow, but assuming that goes well, the House would vote on it on Wednesday and the Senate on Saturday (the schedule is set by certain procedural steps that must take place).

The existing Continuing Resolution (CR) that is funding the government expires on Wednesday, January 15, so Congress is expected to pass a three-day CR to extend that to midnight Saturday.  The House and Senate are scheduled to be in recess next week for the Martin Luther King holiday, giving added impetus to get this done before the recess. 

Meanwhile, the American institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is holding its annual Aerospace Sciences meeting at National Harbor, MD, just outside Washington., DC.  AIAA has adopted a new model for the many conferences it holds each year, bundling them into a fewer number of co-located events.  The collection of AIAA meetings taking place at National Harbor this week is call the Science and Technology Forum & Exposition or SciTech2014.

NASA will hold a number of advisory committee meetings, as well as continuing the celebration of 10 years of Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity landed 10 years ago, and, of course, Curiosity landed in 2012).  This week, two events are scheduled for Pasadena, CA, home to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that manages those programs.  The event on January 16 will be streamed on Ustream.  (A video of the first event, at the National Air and Space Museum, is on YouTube.)

Here is the list of what we know about as of Sunday, January 12.

Monday-Friday, January 13-17

Monday-Tuesday, January 13-14

Tuesday, January 14

Thursday, January 16

Friday, January 17

Congress Hits the Ground Running in 2014

Congress Hits the Ground Running in 2014

The second session of the 113th Congress began in earnest this past week, with budget issues still at the top of the agenda.  Even so, the Senate had time to pass the bill renaming NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) after Neil Armstrong, an effort in the works since soon after he died in 2012.

That bill, H.R. 667, passed the House almost a year ago.  That actually was the second time the House approved the measure, which is sponsored by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) who represents the district that includes DFRC and is the House Majority Whip.  The bill originally passed the House on December 31, 2012 in the final days of the 112th Congress, but the clock ran out without Senate action.  Bills that are not passed by the end of a Congress die, so it had to be reintroduced in the current Congress.   The House passed it again on February 25, 2013.   Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S. 1636) in October, but on Wednesday (January 8, 2014), the Senate simply agreed to the House bill.  It now goes to the White House for signature.    It renames DFRC as the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.   While he is best known as the first man to walk on the Moon, Armstrong spent the early part of his career as a test pilot there.   The bill renames the Western Aeronautical Test Range after Dryden.   Hugh L. Dryden was director of NASA’s predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and NASA’s first deputy administrator.

On matters of national interest, Congress is working hard to finalize FY2014 appropriations.   The Bipartisan Budget Act signed into law on December 26 sets limits on how much the government may spend in FY2014 and FY2015, but does not actually give money to anyone.   That is the province of the House and Senate  appropriations committees.  They are now finalizing the 12 regular appropriations bills for FY2014.   Numerous news sources report that negotiations on at least half of those are completed, including Defense and the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NASA and NOAA.   Details are not being released while negotiations continue on the rest.   All 12 bills are expected to packaged together into a single “Omnibus Appropriations” bill for consideration by the House and Senate.

The existing Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds the government expires on Wednesday, January 15, and although appropriators reportedly are very close to agreement on everything, they are not there yet and a very short-term CR is likely to be passed as a bridge early in the coming week.  The expectation is that it will be a three-day CR, keeping the government operating through Saturday, January 18, by which time the House and Senate presumably will pass the Omnibus. 

There is little talk this time of a government shutdown.   The 16-day shutdown at the beginning of the fiscal year (October 1-16) seems to have convinced many Republicans that it is not in their best interest to do that again this time, particularly in an election year.  Still, there are many controversial issues and it may be that some are pushed off into the FY2015 budget cycle for resolution.   Strictly speaking the White House should send its FY2015 budget request to Congress on the first Monday in February, but rumors are that it will be delayed until late February or early March because the budget agreement, which affects FY2015 as well as FY2014, was not reached until late in December.

Orb-1 Mission Successfully Launched – UPDATE

Orb-1 Mission Successfully Launched – UPDATE

UPDATE, January 12, 2014:   Cygnus arrived at the ISS this morning as scheduled.  It was grappled by Canadarm 2 at 6:08 am EST and attached to the Harmony module at 8:05 am EST.

ORIGINAL STORY, January 9, 2014:  Orbital Sciences Corporation’s first operational cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) lifted off on time today from Wallops Island, VA.

The mission, called Orb-1 for Orbital’s first flight under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract, had been delayed from December so astronauts on the ISS could focus instead on repairing a coolant loop, and then by one day due to frigid weather at the launch site and another day because of “space weather” — a solar flare that increased the solar radiation level in space.

Today’s liftoff was on time at 1:07 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the coast of Virginia.  It is taking 2,780 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments to the ISS.   Arrival at and berthing to the ISS is expected on Sunday morning EST.  Grapple by the ISS robotic arm is scheduled for 6:02 am EST and installation onto the Harmony module at about 7:00 am EST.

State Department Wants Space Exploration to be "Shared Global Priority"

State Department Wants Space Exploration to be "Shared Global Priority"

At the opening session of the International Space Exploration Forum (ISEF) this morning, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns called for countries “to make space exploration a shared global priority, to unlock the mysteries of the universe, and to accelerate human progress here on Earth.”   As for the United States, he said our commitment to space exploration is growing stronger despite pressures and challenges at home and abroad.

Burns began by noting that this is an “unprecedented time for space exploration” with China’s landing of Chang’-e on the Moon last month, NASA’s Voyager 1 becoming the first manmade object to leave the solar system, the15th anniversary of the International Space Station (ISS), and other discoveries and breakthroughs in the past year “that transformed our understanding of outer space and our way of life here on Earth.”   That is why, he continued, “despite the many pressures, challenges and urgent priorities facing the United States at home and abroad, our commitment to space exploration is only growing stronger.”

Burns laid out three areas for increased collaboration in space:  more countries participating in the ISS; encouraging “entrepreneurial ventures” and supporting “the kind of robust and competitive commercial space sector that is vital to the next era of space exploration”; and increased focus on defending Earth from Near Earth Objects (asteroids and comets) and space debris. 

Most of the one-day meeting being held at the State Department is closed to the public, but media were allowed in for the first hour to hear opening statements by representatives of the United States, Italy, the European Commission (EC) and Japan.   ISEF builds on a process begun in 2011 at an event hosted by the European Union, European Space Agency and Government of Italy, according to the State Department.  Japan will host a second ISEF two years from now.

Burns was joined by White House Science Adviser John Holdren to offer the U.S. viewpoint.   Burns noted that the “Man and the Expanding Universe” statue outside the conference room in which the meeting was taking place was put there 50 years ago to celebrate space exploration and “reminds us that space exploration is not just the preoccupation of scientists and astronauts but a vital undertaking for all those who wish to advance the cause of global peace and prosperity.”

ISEF is billed as “the first-ever ministerial-level meeting to build support for global cooperation in space exploration,” but Burns was there instead of Secretary of State John Kerry; the President of the Italian Space Agency, Enrico Saggese, stood in for Italy’s Minister of Education, Research and Industries (H.E. Maria Chaira Carrozza); and the EC representative, Paul Weissenberg, is the Deputy Director-General of Enterprise and Industry.  Japan, however, was represented by its Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Hakubun Shimomura.

Holdren was scheduled to speak later in the day, but ISEF moderator Jonathan Margolis explained that Holdren’s White House duties required him to speak earlier and, therefore, the speech took place during the part of the program open to the press.   Holdren touted the four-year extension of ISS operations announced yesterday and the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) proposed by the Obama Administration a year ago.   Congress has had a mixed reaction to ARM and its decision on whether to allow NASA to proceed presumably will be known when FY2014 appropriations are finalized, hopefully later this month.  Today, however, Holdren made clear his enthusiasm for the mission and said that he knew NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden would be happy to hear from any countries that would like to be involved.

Obama Administration Approves Extending ISS to 2024 – UPDATE

Obama Administration Approves Extending ISS to 2024 – UPDATE

UPDATE, January 9, 2014:  This update adds links to the joint Holdren/Bolden blog post and other reactions to the decision, along with additional information.

ORIGINAL STORY, January 8, 2014:  NASA announced today (January 8) that the Obama Administration has approved extending the International Space Station (ISS) to at least 2024, four years beyond the current deadline.

During a hastily arranged media teleconference at 12:30 pm ET, NASA Associate Administrator for Communications David Weaver said that NASA began notifying Congress of the decision yesterday and so far the reaction is positive.  NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said that the international partners still need time to consider whether they want to continue participating, but NASA is prepared to proceed even if not all of them agree.   He does not expect a decision from them for several years.

Gerstenmaier said there would be no budgetary impacts through 2020, since this decision affects only the years beyond that.  Funding that NASA was holding aside for potentially deorbiting the ISS (if it was discontinued in 2020) will instead be applied to operations.

White House Science Adviser John Holdren and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden issued a joint blog post later in the day about the decision this is posted on the NASA and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy websites.  The Democratic leadership of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and its Space Subcommittee, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) emailed a press release supporting the decision that is not yet posted on the Democratic website of the committee.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation and the Space Foundation also issued statements of support.

The announcement came one day before a State Department-sponsored International Space Exploration Forum on January 9 that is bringing together leaders of space activities in approximately 30 countries, and two days before a “Heads of Agencies” meeting with the heads of the space agencies of more than 30 countries.  (The State Department meeting was billed as a ministerial level meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts, but the United States instead will be represented by Holdren and Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and representation by many of the other countries will be by their space agency heads rather than ministers.) 

The Orlando Sentinel broke the story about the decision late in the evening of January 7.

During the January 8 media teleconference, Gerstenmaier cited a number of benefits of announcing now that the ISS will continue to operate for at least 10 more years, including providing more business certainty to private sector partners in the commercial cargo and commercial crew programs, to researchers who need years to get experiments ready, and to NASA itself which, he said, needs to use ISS to learn more about human adaptation to weightlessness and test technologies needed for space exploration beyond low Earth orbit (LEO).

Orbital Scrubs Today's Antares Launch – UPDATED WITH NEW LAUNCH INFO

Orbital Scrubs Today's Antares Launch – UPDATED WITH NEW LAUNCH INFO

UPDATE, January 8, 2014, 9:55 pm ET:   Orbital now plans to launch tomorrow, Thursday, January 9, at 1:07 pm ET.  NASA TV coverage will begin at 12:45 pm ET and a post-launch press conference is schedule for approximately 2:30 pm ET.

ORIGINAL STORY, January 8, 2014, 8:24 am ET:  Orbital Sciences Corporation has scrubbed today’s planned launch of its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station because of solar radiation.

The company said in a statement the scrub was “due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded by a considerable margin the constraints imposed on the mission to ensure the rocket’s electronic systems are not impacted by a harsh radiation environment.”

The radiation levels will continue to be monitored and if the launch occurs tomorrow, January 9, it will be at 1:10 pm ET.

The launch from Wallops Island, VA had been expected at 1:32 pm ET today.

GAO Still Worried About JWST

GAO Still Worried About JWST

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its most recent report on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) today.  Though it found that the program is “generally” conforming to the revised baseline plan announced in September 2011, the congressional watchdog agency warns about difficult times ahead.

Today’s report found that although data from prime contractor Northrop Grumman indicated that the program is proceeding on the cost and schedule outlined in the 2011 revision, “monthly performance declined in fiscal year 2013.”    While the project has “a significant amount of cost reserves,” GAO said, “low levels of near-term cost reserves could limit [NASA’s] ability to continue to meet future cost and schedule commitments.”  GAO added that its analysis of the schedules for three subsystems “determined that the reliability of the project’s integrated master schedule … is questionable.”

JWST has experienced substantial cost growth and schedule slippage since it began.  There are several different accounts of the original cost estimate, with some reports that it was $1 billion, but in any case, by 2005, NASA’s estimate was $4.5 billion with launch in 2013.   In 2010, an independent review led to a new baseline for the program.  In 2011, Congress emplaced a cost cap of $8 billion for development with launch in October 2018.  The life cycle cost estimate, including operations, was set at $8.8 billion.  Congress directed GAO to keep track of the program.

GAO recommended in today’s report that NASA perform an “updated integrated cost/schedule risk analysis” and “address issues related to low cost reserves and perform schedule risk analyses” on the three subsystems GAO studied.  NASA concurred with those recommendations according to GAO.

 

Orb-1 Mission Ready for Launch Tomorrow, Ants and Antibiotic Experiment Aboard

Orb-1 Mission Ready for Launch Tomorrow, Ants and Antibiotic Experiment Aboard

After a one-day launch delay because of frigid temperatures at the launch site, Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Orb-1 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is ready for launch tomorrow, January 8, 2014.  The 5-minute launch window opens at 1:32 pm ET and, weather permitting, should be visible along much of the East Coast.

Orb-1 is Orbital’s first operational launch of its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft to ISS under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.  The company successfully completed a demonstration flight in September-October 2013.   Tomorrow’s flight will take 2,780 pounds of supplies to the ISS, including science experiments.  If the launch takes place on schedule, it will arrive at the ISS on Sunday where it will be grappled by the space station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, at 6:02 am EST and installed onto the Harmony module around 7:00 am EST.  Both events will be broadcast on NASA TV.

The launch was originally scheduled for December, but NASA delayed it to allow ISS astronauts to focus on repairing a coolant loop problem.  It initially was rescheduled for today (January 7), but then delayed because of an extremely cold Arctic blast affecting much of the United States, including Wallops Island, VA, home to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), the launch site for this mission.

Sarah Daughtery, Wallops flight director for the launch, said today that the forecast for tomorrow is excellent, with a 95 percent chance of favorable weather.  Maps showing locations along the East Coast where the launch may be visible are on Orbital’s website.

It is unusual for U.S. launches to be delayed by cold weather since the main launch sites are in Florida and California and rarely experience sub-freezing temperatures.  Today’s high temperature at Wallops was 20 degrees Fahrenheit (F) after dropping to 12 degrees F overnight, and that is without wind chill.   How cold weather affects Antares was a major question at a press conference today.  Two Orbital representatives, Frank Culbertson,  Executive Vice President and General Manager of Advanced Programs Group, and Mike Pinkston, Antares program manager, explained that it is a combination of ensuring that rocket hardware is within the temperature range for which it was designed and tested and that ground crews could perform their tasks without undue exposure.  Pinkston said that the threshold is 20 degrees F ambient air temperature for some of the rocket’s components. 

This is the first of three missions this year for Orbital under the CRS contract.  The next two will take place in May and October.   SpaceX also will be launching two or three CRS missions this year — their next launch of the Dragon capsule to ISS is scheduled for February 22.   NASA’s Deputy ISS program manager Dan Hartman said today that “we are hitting our stride” with these commercial cargo missions, with a total of five or six planned this year.

Among the science experiments being transported to the ISS on Cygnus are a number sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), a non-profit organization created and supported by NASA to find non-NASA users for the U.S. National Laboratory portion of the ISS.   Congress declared the U.S. research facilities aboard the ISS to be a National Laboratory in the 2005 NASA Authorization Act in the hope of attracting other government agencies, universities, and the private sector to utilize its unique microgravity environment for research.    

At a science briefing today, ISS associate program scientist Tara Ruttley said that Cygnus will be carrying the largest set of experiments from CASIS to date, and CASIS Communications Manager Patrick O’Neill called it an “historic time for CASIS.”  Funding for the CASIS-sponsored research comes from a variety of sources, he said, including some of the $15 million per year seed money from NASA. 

Luis Zea, a Ph. D. student at the University of Colorado-Boulder, described two experiments developed by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA-funded center at the university, that are aboard this mission.  One is an experiment to determine the effectiveness of antibiotics in microgravity.  The experiment involves 128 test tubes of a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli to which different concentrations of antibiotics will be introduced.  The test tubes will be returned to Earth later this year, split on two different SpaceX Dragon spacecraft (because of space constraints).   Zea also discussed an “ants in space” experiment, an educational project for K-12 students.   Ants from North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia will be taken to space and their foraging behavior in microgravity will be videotaped.  Students around the country can view the videotapes and compare them to ant colonies in their classrooms that will serve as control groups.  More information on the experiments and how teachers can participate is on the CU-Boulder website.

AAS to Tell Congress the "State of the Universe" on Thursday

AAS to Tell Congress the "State of the Universe" on Thursday

The President may brief Congress on the State of the Union every January, but this week the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has an even grander goal — a briefing on the State of the Universe.

Granted, the AAS briefing is not to a joint session of Congress, but it will be held on Capitol Hill and co-hosted by the top members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee:  Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX).   The briefing is on Thursday, January 9, from 12:00-1:00 pm ET in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building.

Speakers include Meg Urry from Yale University and David Helfand of Columbia and Quest Universities.   Helfand is the current AAS President and Urry is the incoming President.  Other speakers are Ari Buchalter from MediaMath, Blake Bullock from Northrop Grumann, and Peggy Piper from NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program.

The AAS is holding its annual winter meeting this week at National Harbor, just outside Washington, D.C., where astrophysicists from around the world are reporting on recent discoveries from ground- and space-based observations.   Many press conferences are scheduled.  NASA has a list of those related to NASA research.

(And if you’re interested, President Obama’s State of the Union address is scheduled for January 28 at 9:00 pm ET.)