Orbital Sciences Corporation announced today that July 11 is the new launch date for its second operational cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS), Orb-2.  The launch has been delayed several times for a variety of reasons.

The launch is scheduled for 1:40 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the coast of Virginia.  Orbital’s Antares rocket will send a Cygnus cargo spacecraft to ISS packed with 3,000 pounds of science experiments, supplies and a number of nanosatellites that will be deployed from the ISS.

If the launch takes place on time, Cygnus will arrive at the ISS on Tuesday, July 15.  ISS crew members Steve Swanson (NASA) and Alexander Gerst (ESA) will grapple the spacecraft using Canada’s robotic Canadarm2 at approximately 7:24 am EDT.  It then will be installed onto the ISS Harmony module at about 9:30 am ET.

NASA TV will cover all of the events live, as well as two pre-launch press conferences on July 10: a science briefing at 4:00 pm EDT and a mission status briefing at 5:00 pm EDT.

The Orb-2 launch was originally delayed in May because SpaceX had to postpone the launch of its competing Falcon 9/Dragon system.  The two companies more-or-less alternate in sending their cargo ships to ISS.   Orb-2 encountered additional delays after an AJ26 rocket engine failed during a test at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.  Antares is powered by Russian AJ26 engines and while the one that failed is for a launch in 2015, since they are the same design, the company needed to be sure the problem did not affect the engine on this rocket.

The new National Research Council (NRC) report on the future of human space exploration received a warm reception today at a House committee hearing, but partisan tensions among committee members were evident even if they were not directly aimed at NASA.

The NRC study is fairly well aligned with the views of many members of Congress in terms of the long term goal for human exploration (landing people on Mars), a lack of enthusiasm for President Obama’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), and the need for the United States to be the global leader in human space exploration with significant international partnerships.

That long term goal has broad support, including from the Obama Administration.  The seemingly endless debate is about the steps for getting there.  In the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, Congress directed NASA to contract with the NRC for this study to get closer to resolving those steps.   Today’s hearing before the House Science, Space, and Technology (SS&T) Committee was the first opportunity for Congress to hear the results of the study formally.

The NRC report advocates a stepping-stone approach to achieving the “horizon goal” of humans on Mars.  It assessed three potential “pathways,” but did not choose among them.  Instead it focused on where each of the pathways needed new technologies and whether those technologies were “dead ends” or would build upon each other to achieve the goal.

House SS&T committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) is a strong proponent of the Mars Flyby 2021 concept, which is at odds with NRC’s approach.  Smith did not mention that concept either in his opening statement or during questions to the witnesses today.  The concept envisions launching a small crew on a one-and-a-half-year journey to flyby (not orbit or land on) Mars in 2021 on the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft.   Critics argue it is too risky and has little reward since it is a one-time event, not part of a procession of missions that ultimately leads to humans on the surface of Mars.

Smith and other Republicans used the hearing to once again criticize the Obama Administration’s ARM as, at best, a diversion from the Mars goal. They also complained that NASA spends too much on climate research and not enough on human exploration.   NASA’s annual earth science budget is about $1.8 billion.  The budget for SLS and Orion is approximately $4 billion a year.  If funding for the International Space Station – critical to achieving the goal of sending humans to Mars according to NASA – is added, the total for NASA’s human spaceflight program is on the order of $7 billion a year.

Smith lambasted the Administration for requesting a FY2015 budget for NASA that is $1.8 billion less than its budget during the last year of the George W. Bush Administration, saying that demonstrates that NASA is not an Administration priority.  The budget request is $17.5 billion.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the top Democrat on the committee, said that she found Smith’s comments “almost comical” considering the “struggle” the committee had last year over NASA’s authorization bill.   At that time, on a party-line vote, Republicans approved a $16.9 billion budget for NASA, while Democrats were fighting for $18.1 billion.  That bill was replaced this year by one (H.R. 4412) that represents bipartisan agreement on policy issues, but bypasses funding issues by authorizing funds only for FY2014, which is already underway.

The two parties have been locked in bruising debates on this committee in the past several weeks over reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act, the Department of Energy’s research and development programs, and what Republicans call the Environmental Protection Agency’s “secret science” regulatory process.  This year’s agreement on H.R. 4412, which passed the House earlier this month, was a bright spot in committee bipartisanship.

Today, committee Democrats did not defend the President’s ARM project and while they did not directly criticize it, their disenchantment was clear.   Johnson said she hopes the NRC report is “a first step in achieving a revitalized, focused exploration program for America”  and called the NRC report a “wake-up call” that “we are not going to have a human space exploration program worthy of a great nation if we continue down the current path.”

The only witnesses were the co-chairs of the NRC study: Jonathan Lunine, a renowned space scientist at Cornell University, and Mitch Daniels, President of Purdue University and former Republican governor of Indiana.

Daniels and Lunine were frank in explaining the rationale for sending people to Mars at all and the challenges that lie ahead, both technical and political.

Lunine pointed out that there are many “myths that surround both public opinion and proven benefits” from human space exploration.   The NRC study found that the public pays little attention to it and was not enamored of the Apollo program while it was underway.  Today Apollo is “viewed as a source of inspiration and great pride by many if not most Americans,” Lunine said, but that was not true at the time.  Instead, “it has been political leadership that determines” if new ventures are pursued and the public supports it retrospectively.   Daniels remarked that if there was some “secret sauce to ignite public excitement” it would have been applied long ago.

He and Lunine repeatedly stressed the need for a “steadfast commitment” and a “disciplined, sustained approach” if Americans ever are to land on Mars, and that includes increasing the budget for human space exploration on the order of 2-3 percent above inflation.   Committee members pressed the witnesses for precise cost estimates, but they demurred.  Daniels, who was Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from 2001-2003, said the NRC committee did not want to “commit the sin of false precision” and instead provided only a range of costs – hundreds of billions of dollars over decades.   He commented that the human spaceflight budget is in the “tenths of a percent of the federal budget” and increases would be no more than “rounding errors.”

The NRC concluded that current law that prohibits NASA from bilateral cooperation with China is not in the nation’s best interest.  The issue of NASA-China cooperation is a hot button issue that could have been a heated point of contention today, but it was not.  Some committee members raised it, but the witnesses generally deflected the questions and the members chose not to press them on it.  Daniels said that the NRC committee was asking only that everyone remain open to such cooperation and pointed out that geopolitical relationships change over time and sending people to Mars is a multi-decade endeavor.   Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a staunch critic of the Chinese government and supporter of the current law, even joked that considering how much money the United States borrows from China “if we don’t make them our partner we’re going to borrow it from them anyway.”

One criticism of the NRC report has been that it did not incorporate the potential importance of commercial partnerships, but Daniels parried that was not accurate.  He said the committee met with leaders of the commercial space community and there are “a lot of possibilities there.”

Johnson summed up the situation by saying that “As Members of Congress, the ball is now is our court, and we have choices to make.  We can choose to continue to argue about which President or who in Congress is to blame for the current state of our human space exploration program, but I earnestly hope that we won’t.  We are where we are, and we can’t change the past.  Our focus needs to be on how we proceed from this point forward.”

UPDATE:  This story was updated on June 26, 2014 reflecting denials from a Sea Launch official and the head of the Ukrainian Space Agency.

Geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia could mean a hiatus in launches of the Sea Launch consortium until relationships improve according to a report in the Russian media.   Sea Launch today is primarily a Russian company, but Boeing is still involved and the home port is Long Beach, CA.

Sea Launch uses Ukrainian Zenit-3SL rockets with a Russian upper stage to place satellites into geostationary orbit above the equator.  Launches take place from a platform, Odyssey, that is a converted mobile ocean oil rig.  Odyssey and its Sea Launch Commander command ship travel from Long Beach to the equator for the launch.  The first launch was in 1999, but the company suffered several total or partial failures, including a spectacular failure at liftoff in 2007, and filed for bankruptcy in 2009.  Originally, the company was owned 40 percent by Boeing, 25 percent by Russia’s Energiya RSC, 20 percent by Norway’s Kvaerner (which converted the oil rig) and 15 percent by Ukraine’s Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye.   It emerged from bankruptcy in 2010 with 95 percent ownership by Energiya and the Zenit-3SL return to flight in September 2011.  Another failure occurred in February 2013, but Sea Launch returned to flight again on May 26, 2014 with the successful launch of EUTELSAT 3B.

The question is what the future holds for this multinational enterprise.   Russia’s RIA Novosti reported on June 24 that there are questions about whether the Zenit rockets can be built in Ukraine under current circumstances.   It quoted an unnamed source in the space industry as suggesting that a decision may be made soon to mothball the platform:  “He [the industry source] said if Russia, the United States and Ukraine fail to stabilize their relations, a decision may be made soon to mothball the Sea Launch until at least 2016.”   RIA Novosti continues that the source added that it would not mean additional launches could not take place, but that it would take longer to get the launch complex ready.

The Sea Launch website does not provide a launch manifest showing upcoming launches so it is not easy to discern whether a hiatus through 2016 would have much impact on the company’s business.   Spaceflightnow.com has a list of upcoming world-wide launches through March 2015; none are by Sea Launch.  The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation’s most recent launch forecast volume (from May 2013) includes launches through all of 2015; none in 2015 are Sea Launch, although three are to-be-determined.   RIA Novosti said only that four Sea Launch Zenits are in various stages of construction at Yuzhnoye.

Peter Stier, deputy head of sales and marketing at Sea Launch, subsequently denied to the Moscow Times that the company is currently planning to mothball Odyssey or Sea Launch Commander, although is it “exploring contingency plans” in case such a step is needed.   The head of the Ukrainian Space Agency, Yuri Alexeyev, told Interfax that the supply of Zenit rockets for Sea Launch is not in jeopardy.