NASA today released a draft request for proposals (RFP) for commercial crew transportation to the International Space Station (ISS).

A number of companies are working with NASA today through the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program to develop launch vehicles and spacecraft to take astronauts to and from ISS. NASA has been working on its acquisition strategy for procuring services on those systems. The draft RFP released today “outlines a contract that will be awarded to multiple companies that provide a complete end-to-end design, including spacecraft, launch vehicles, launch services, ground and mission operations and recovery,” according to the space agency.

Called the Integrated Design Contract (IDC), it has a value of up to $1.61 billion for the period July 2012 to April 2014.

Simultaneously, NASA announced the addition of “optional milestones” for Boeing and Sierra Nevada’s Space Act Agreements under the CCDev2 awards announced earlier this year.

As the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) prepares to hold a hearing this week on “Sustaining GPS for National Security,” the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) are both calling for more testing to assess the extent to which LightSquared’s planned mobile broadband communications system will interfere with GPS receivers.

It is the third hearing on the LightSquared issue in the past three months. The House Science, Space and Technology (HSS&T) Committee held a hearing last week and the House Transportation and Infrastructure (HT&I) Committee held one in June.

The HASC hearing, scheduled for Thursday at 11:30 am, is the first to hear from the FCC and NTIA. The FCC regulates use of the airwaves for the private sector, while NTIA (part of the Department of Commerce) does the same for government users. It is FCC’s January 2011 decision to grant LightSquared a provisional license to operate its hybrid satellite-terrestrial network that is creating the controversy. Detractors argue that LightSquared’s system will harmfully interfere with GPS receivers throughout the government and consumer sectors.

At the HSS&T hearing last week, LightSquared’s Jeffrey Carlisle argued that his company had worked with the FCC, NTIA and the GPS industry over many years to resolve potential interference problems. The spectrum assigned to LightSquared by the FCC is adjacent to spectrum used for GPS receivers. LightSquared asserts that the recent controversy stems from new issues raised by the GPS industry just one year ago after the company had spent billions of dollars on the system. LightSquared launched its SkyTerra satellite last year and is preparing to build 40,000 terrestrial cellular towers. The system will provide mobile broadband services using terrestrial signals, satellite signals, or a combination of the two.

The June hearing by the HT&I committee portrayed LightSquard in a largely negative light. Members appeared to be clearly in the corner of the GPS industry and civil government agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in wanting to prevent LightSquared from receiving final permission from the FCC to initiate the terrestrial component of the system. The HSS&T hearing was focused on civil government GPS users for scientific purposes such as weather satellites at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and responding to natural hazards at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The tone was somewhat different, and committee Democrats issued a press release afterwards calling for finding a way for LightSquared and GPS to coexist.

The FCC’s provisional license in January required LightSquared to set up a technical working group with the GPS industry to test the amount of interference that would result if its system became operational. The tests showed significant interference the top 10 megahertz (MHz) of the 20 MHz of spectrum assigned for the system, but less in the bottom 10 MHz. LightSquared subsequently offered to initially deploy its system only in the bottom 10 MHz of the band. The company submitted a new proposal to the FCC last week which Mr. Carlisle appended to his testimony to HSS&T. In response, Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT), told HSS&T that the revised proposal requires further study.

The FCC and NTIA agree and also are calling for additional testing. Representatives of both agencies are scheduled to testify at the HASC hearing on Thursday. Also testifying will be the commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, DOD’s chief information officer (who testified at the HT&I hearing), and Mr. Russo (who testified at the HSS&T hearing).

Flights of Russia’s Soyuz rocket from France’s launch site in Kourou, French Guinea are being affected, but not delayed, by the failure of a similar rocket launching the Progress M-12M cargo spacecraft last month.

Russia’s news agency, Itar-Tass, reports that two Soyuz rockets that are being readied for launch at Kourou will have their third stages replaced. The action will not delay the launches, however, according to the report. They are scheduled for October 20 and in December of this year.

Russia and Europe reached agreement to launch the Soyuz rocket from Kourou in 2004. The idea is for Soyuz to fill the niche of a medium-class launcher in Europe’s suite of launch vehicles, joining the large Ariane 5 and small Vega launchers. Because the launch site is to close to equator (7 degrees north latitude) compared with Russia’s southernmost launch facility at Baikonur (50.7 degrees north), the rocket can take much more payload to orbit. The payload capability from Kourou is 3 metric tons compared to 1.7 metric tons from Baikonur. Initially, Soyuz flights from Baikonur were expected as early as 2006, but there has been none as yet.

A Soyuz rocket launched from Baikonur that was intended to place a Progress cargo spacecraft on a trajectory to replenish the International Space Station failed on August 24. An investigating commission determined a clogged fuel line was the cause. Flights of the Soyuz with Progress spacecraft are expected to resume from Baikonur next month, and a simlliar rocket carrying three ISS crewmembers in November.

It really did seem odd that NASA chose not to air the announcement of its agreement with ATK that will “accelerate the availability of U.S. commercial crew systems” on NASA TV as it does with so many other announcements. Now they’ve changed their minds — which is good!

The announcement is at 3:00 pm EDT tomorrow at Kennedy Space Center, FL. Watch on NASA TV!

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD) recommended only half of the Obama Administration’s request for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

George Nield, who heads that office, defended the $26 million request in testimony to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in May. The request was 74 percent higher than what it had received for FY2010 and FY2011. That office facilitates and regulates the commercial space launch and reentry business. Nield said at the hearing that he expected a ten-fold increase in the number of commercial launches and pointed to new initiatives such as the Commercial Spaceflight Technical Center at Kennedy Space Center, FL and a “prize” program. Several members of that committee, which authorizes the office’s activities, were critical of the sharp increase.

The appropriators apparently were skeptical as well. The draft bill they approved on Thursday states that “not to exceed $13,000,000 shall be available for commercial space transportation activities.” That is less than the $15.2 million the office received for FY2010 and FY2011.

This is only the first step in the FY2012 appropriations process.

Saying that it “could accelerate the availability of U.S. commercial crew transportation capabilities,” NASA revealed today that it will make an announcement next week about an agreement with Alliant Techsystems (ATK).

The tantalizing press release states, however, that the announcement on Tuesday at 3:00 pm EDT will be made at Kennedy Space Center’s press center, but not carried on NASA TV. This is quite unusual. NASA routinely holds press conferences that air on NASA TV and media teleconferences that are carried on NASA’s newsaudio site. For unexplained reasons, only “highlights” of this announcement will be available on NASA’s TV Video File segment.

Participants are Ed Mango, NASA’s commercial crew program manager; Kent Rominger, ATK Aerospace’s vice president for strategy and business development; and John Schumacher, EADS North America’s vice president for space programs.

Steve Isakowitz, well known in Washington space policy circles even though he has been Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Department of Energy (DOE) for the past several years, is joining Virgin Galactic as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.

Isakowitz was Comptroller of NASA while Sean O’Keefe was NASA Administrator. O’Keefe was Deputy Director of OMB when he was tapped to replace Dan Goldin as Admininistrator early in the George W. Bush Presidency. Isakowitz, who was Branch Chief for Science and Space at OMB, was one of several OMB staffers who went to NASA with O’Keefe or shortly thereafter.

The O’Keefe/Isakowitz era at NASA probably will be most remembered for the heartbreak of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia tragedy, and the resulting reexamination of the rationale for human spaceflight that led to Vision for Space Exploration speech by President Bush in January 2004. Isakowtiz is credited (or blamed, depending on one’s point of view) for developing the budgetary strategy that showed that NASA could afford to send people back to the Moon by 2020 and on to Mars with the extremely small increase ($1 billion over 5 years) promised by President Bush. The strategy included ending the space shuttle and U.S. participation in the International Space Station much earlier than planned so those budget resources could be diverted to meeting the Moon goal. Isakowitz transitioned to become NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration in 2005 under Craig Steidle before leaving the agency later that year to join the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate. He moved to DOE in 2007 and served under the Bush and Obama Administrations as DOE’s CFO.

Virgin Galatic announced Isakowitz’s appointment today. He has B.A. and M.A. degrees in aerospace engineering from MIT and once worked for Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton. His son, Matt, is Associate Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), of which Virgin Galactic is a member. Steidle recently became CSF’s President. It’s a small world.

UPDATE 2: Andy Pasztor at the WSJ has published an updated story of interest.

UPDATE: Now that the word is out, Blue Origin has updated its scant website with the following information: “Three months ago, we successfully flew our second test vehicle in a short hop mission, and then last week we lost the vehicle during a developmental test at Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 45,000 feet. A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle. Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we’re signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job. We’re already working on our next development vehicle.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Blue Origin suffered a “major failure” during a recent test flight.

Blue Origin is backed by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. It won awards from NASA in both rounds of the agency’s CCDev competitions. The Blue Origin website provides little information about the company or what it is doing, but NASA’s CCDev announcement said it had awarded the company “up to $3.7 million for risk-mitigation activities related to its pusher Launch Escape System” and “to produce a composite crew module pressure vessel for structural testing.” NASA notes that Blue Origin is developing a vertical take off and landing craft, New Shepard, “inspired” the DC-X concept of the 1990s.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee has rescheduled its hearing on LightSquared for next Thursday, September 8.

The hearing had been scheduled for August 3, but the House went into recess (or, officially, pro forma session) earlier than expected once the debt limit/deficit reduction deal was reached. The new time and date are September 8 at 2:00 pm EDT. The witness list is the same:

• Mr. Anthony Russo, Director, The National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
• Ms. Mary Glackin, Deputy Under Secretary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Mr. Badri Younes, Deputy Associate Administrator, Space Communications and Navigation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Mr. Peter Appel, Administrator, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Department of Transportation
• Dr. David Applegate, Associate Director, Natural Hazards, U.S. Geological Survey
• Dr. Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University

Elon Musk, the man behind SpaceX, will be interviewed on National Public Radio’s Science Friday program today.

The program airs on NPR stations and on the web from 2:00-4:00 pm EDT. According to the show’s program listing, Musk will be the final interview at the end of the second hour.