Category: Commercial

Space Policy Events for February 2-7, 2014

Space Policy Events for February 2-7, 2014

By Marcia Smith | Posted: February 2, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: February 2, 2014 1:59 pm ET

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

During the Week

Among the highlights this week is the FAA’s annual Commercial Space Transportation conference on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, DC.   Speakers this year include Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations; Congressman Steve Palazzo (R-MS), chair of the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee; staff from House and Senate committees with oversight of commercial space transportation issues; and an impressive set of representatives of other government agencies, traditional and entrepreneurial space companies, and academia.

The day before that conference, George Nield, FAA’s Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, will testify to Palazzo’s subcommittee on “Necessary Updates to the Commercial Space Launch Act.”  That’s the law, which, among other things, created the authority for the FAA to indemnify commercial space launch companies against certain amounts of third party claims for damages from launch accidents.  Congress extended the FAA’s indemnification authority for three more years (to December 31, 2016) as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, but Democrats on the House committee had wanted just a one-year extension to provide time for more hearings on the topic.   It wouldn’t be surprising for questions to arise on indemnification despite the extension. 

It’s always difficult to guess what Members will be interested in at any hearing, but another issue that might come up is the extent to which the FAA should regulate commercial human spaceflight.  It currently is limited by law as to how strictly it can regulate that industry until 2015.  The idea of a light handed regulatory regime is to ensure that heavy regulation doesn’t deter the emergence of a new industry.  At last year’s Commercial Space Transportation conference, Wayne Hale argued in favor of voluntary industry standards rather than government regulation.   Hale is not on the list of witnesses at the hearing, but he is scheduled to speak at the conference the next day.   In addition to Nield, the other hearing witnesses are Alicia Cackley from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Henry Hertzfeld from George Washington University.

Lots of other interesting events this week, too, as shown in the list below — everything we know about as of Sunday afternoon. 

Sunday-Thursday, February 2-6

  • American Meteorological Society 94th annual meeting, Atlanta, GA.  Town Hall meetings of particular note:
    • NASA Earth Sciences Division Town Hall meeting, Tuesday, Feb 4, 12:15-1:15 pm ET
    • Advances in Direct Broadcast Capabilities and Applications for JPSS and other Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite Systems Town Hall meeting, Tuesday, Feb 4, 12:15-1:15 pm ET
    • SMAP Mission Town Hall meeting, Tuesday, Feb 4, 6:00-7:00 pm ET
    • NASA’s Earth Science — Flight Program Investments in and Planning for the Next-Generation Earth Observatories Town Hall meeting, Wednesday, Feb 5, 12:15-1:15 pm ET

Monday, February 3

Monday-Tuesday, February 3-4

Tuesday, February 4

Tuesday-Thursday, February 4-6

Wednesday-Thursday, February 5-6

Wednesday-Friday, February 5-7

Thursday, February 6

Friday, February 7

 

Last Updated: Feb 02, 2014 1:59 pm ET
Space Policy Events for January 27-31, 2014

Space Policy Events for January 27-31, 2014

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 26, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 26, 2014 2:32 pm ET

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

During the Week

President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.  There are no rumors that the space program will figure in his speech, but anything is possible.  Tuesday is, after all, the 28th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger tragedy.

In fact, this is the week that commemorates the loss of the Apollo 1 crew on January 27, 1967; the Challenger crew on January 28, 1986; and the space shuttle Columbia crew on February 1, 2003.  NASA and the Air Force will hold a ceremony tomorrow (Monday) at Launch Complex 34 to remember the Apollo 1 crew and NASA will hold its annual Day of Remembrance for all three crews on Friday according to Florida Today (we could find no mention of these events on NASA HQ or Kennedy Space Center websites, so don’t have any other details).

Apart from that, perhaps the most notable event coming up this week is Tuesday’s hearing before two subcommittees of the  House Armed Services Committee on China’s counterspace program.  Bob Butterworth from Aries Analytics, Michael Krepon from the Stimson Center, and Ashley Tellis from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are the witnesses — 3:30 pm ET, 2118 Rayburn (and via webcast at the committee’s website).

Here’s the list of everything we know about as of Sunday afternoon.

Monday, January 27

Tuesday, January 28

Tuesday-Wednesday, January 28-29

Thursday, January 29

Last Updated: Jan 26, 2014 2:32 pm ET
President's FY2015 Budget Request to Be One Month Late

President's FY2015 Budget Request to Be One Month Late

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 23, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 23, 2014 1:20 pm ET

President Obama will submit his FY2015 budget request to Congress on March 4 — a month late — according to news reports.  

By law, the President is supposed to submit each year’s budget request on the first Monday of February.  Delays in reaching agreement on budget bills in recent years have meant consequent delays in submitting requests for the next year and FY2015 will be no exception.

The Hill and Politico are citing White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) spokesman Steve Posner as saying today that March 4 is the date for the FY2015 budget submission to Congress.  Last year, the budget was not sent to Capitol Hill until April 10, so, comparatively speaking, this is an improvement.

The Bipartisan Budget Act agreed to in December set spending caps for both FY2014 and FY2015, which may make the FY2015 appropriations process easier than it has been in recent years.   The cap for FY2015 is $1.014 trillion for discretionary (defense and non-defense) spending, compared to $1.012 trillion for FY2014. 

Last Updated: Jan 23, 2014 1:20 pm ET
Will NASA Safety Panel Assess Technical Risks of ISS Extension?

Will NASA Safety Panel Assess Technical Risks of ISS Extension?

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 22, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 22, 2014 7:31 pm ET

A SpacePolicyOnline.com Editorial

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) waded into the issue of whether the International Space Station (ISS) should be extended beyond its current 2020 deadline in its annual report issued last week.   Its questions were based on a benefit-cost rationale of whether the activities conducted aboard ISS are worth the risk to the lives of the crews that inhabit the station.   More fundamentally, however, it did not ask about the structural health of the multi-module facility for years longer than planned.

NASA announced on January 8 that it wants to extend the lifetime of the ISS to 2024, four years more than the current plan, and it has long suggested extending it to 2028 – 30 years beyond when the first modules were launched.

The ASAP report reflects work conducted in 2013 before the announcement was made, but the panel noted that NASA was considering an extension and cautioned that such a decision needed to assess the benefits against the costs and safety risks.

“As NASA assesses ISS life extension, it should also review the objectives for continued ISS use and clearly articulate them to ensure that the costs and safety risks are balanced.  Given that human space flight is inherently risky, that risk always needs to be weighed against the value to be gained by the endeavor.”

Absent from the report is any mention of concern about the structural integrity of the facility as it endures the harsh space environment.   The oldest of the ISS modules – Zarya and Unity – are already 15 years old.

In the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, Congress approved extending the ISS to 2020, five years longer than the then-expected end date of 2015.   The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed NASA’s processes for determining the space station’s structural health, among other topics, in a December 2011 report and found that the agency was “using reasonable analytical tools.” That report looked only at the extension of ISS to 2020, however, not for a longer period of time as now planned.

The ASAP did express concerns about safety risks with the commercial crew program, especially whether NASA still considers crew safety to be a key determinant in developing new crew spaceflight systems. That part of its report received substantial attention.  An op-ed by former astronaut Vance Brand in this week’s Space News drove home that point.

Similar questions might be asked about the ISS extension.   The announcement of the four-year extension, however, prompted concerns centered primarily on whether it was affordable, not whether the facility is technically viable.  Perhaps a more important question is whether enough is known about how the structure of the ISS modules and other equipment – American, Russian, European, Japanese and Canadian – can hold up under another four years or more of radiation, micrometeorite hits, and other environmental factors.

Like the Hubble Space Telescope, one advantage of the ISS is that it can be repaired.  NASA and its partners have a strategy for assessing when parts must be replaced and equipped ISS with an array of spare parts while the space shuttle was still flying.  Still, few spacecraft have orbited the Earth for 20 years or more in operational status and no others have needed to sustain human life.  Russia’s Mir space station is the closest analog.  Its core module survived 15 years in space (1986-2001) before the entire facility was deorbited into the Pacific Ocean.

Officials from NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, convey a “can-do” attitude that extending ISS is not a problem.  An independent assessment – independent of NASA, Boeing (the ISS prime contractor), and Roscosmos – could go a long way in allaying concerns that that estimation is being made by organizations that want the answer to be yes so fervently that they may unintentionally overlook less optimistic indicators.

ASAP will hold its first meeting of 2014 tomorrow at Johnson Space Center.  Perhaps that is a place to start, although it could easily be argued that a group even more distant from NASA, akin to an accident investigation board, would be more likely to detect not only technical but cultural factors that might be leading to a premature determination that the ISS can last until 2024 or even longer —  “no problem.”

Marcia Smith, Editor

Last Updated: Jan 22, 2014 7:31 pm ET
Space Policy Events for January 20-24, 2014

Space Policy Events for January 20-24, 2014

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 19, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 19, 2014 3:26 pm ET

The following space policy events may be of interest in the week ahead.  The House and Senate are in recess this week.

During the Week

This week is a welcome break from the hustle and bustle that greeted the New Year. 

After an exceptionally busy start to the second session of the 113th Congress, the House and Senate are in recess (Monday is a federal holiday — Martin Luther King day), having passed the appropriations bill that funds the government for rest of the fiscal year.  The frenetic pace in Congress was matched by major American Astronomical Society (AAS) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conferences just outside Washington at National Harbor, MD during the past two weeks, plus the State Department-led International Space Exploration Forum and the International Academy of Astronautics’ (IAA’s) Space Exploration Conference and Heads of Agencies meetings.   Not to mention several significant launches.   It’s been quite a busy couple of weeks!

This week signals a return to a more normal pace.  Here are the meetings we know about as of Sunday afternoon.

Wednesday, January 22

Wednesday-Thursday, January 22-23

Thursday, January 23

Last Updated: Jan 19, 2014 3:26 pm ET
Congress Resolves Three Space-Related Issues in First 10 Days

Congress Resolves Three Space-Related Issues in First 10 Days

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 16, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 16, 2014 10:21 pm ET

The second session of the 103rd Congress settled three space-related issues in its first 10 days.  The one with the most impact is passage of the Omnibus Appropriations bill funding space programs for the rest of FY2014.  It also extended third party liability indemnification for commercial space launch companies and renamed the Dryden Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong.

As we reported earlier, Congress has a plate full of space policy issues this year.   Resolving one major and two more narrowly-focused issues in 10 days isn’t bad. Here’s the list:

Of course, that still leaves plenty of items on the space policy “to do” list and now that the FY2014 appropriations are completed, it’s time to start work on FY2015.  The President is supposed to submit his budget request on the first Monday of February each year, but rumors are it will be delayed because Congress did not reach agreement on the Bipartisan Budget Act — which sets limits on total government spending for FY2014 and FY2015 — until late December.

The second session officially began on January 6, 2014.

Last Updated: Jan 16, 2014 10:21 pm ET
Omnibus Appropriatons Bill Clears Congress, Also Extends Third Party Indemnification

Omnibus Appropriatons Bill Clears Congress, Also Extends Third Party Indemnification

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 16, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 16, 2014 8:05 pm ET

Exceeding expectations, the Senate joined the House in passing the FY2014 Omnibus Appropriations bill today.  The next stop is the White House and the President is expected to sign it.  In addition to funding the government for the rest of FY2014, it extends launch liability indemnification for three more years.

The House and Senate earlier passed a three-day extension to the Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operating through Saturday with the expectation that it would take that long for the Senate to pass the Omnibus.  The House passed the Omnibus yesterday (359-67) and sent it to the Senate where action proceeded more quickly than expected.  It passed with a vote of 72-26.

The bill (H.R. 3547 as amended) also extends the FAA’s authority to indemnify commercial launch services companies from certain amounts of liability from third party claims in the event of a launch accident.  In fact, H.R. 3547 originally was the bill that passed the House to extend indemnification for one year.   The Senate amended that bill to extend indemnification for three years instead and sent it back to the House.  There, it was used as the legislative vehicle (a term used to describe a bill originally intended for one purpose, but amended to address different and/or additional issues) for the Omnibus.   In this case, extending indemnification was incorporated into the bill, adopting the Senate position of a 3-year extension — through December 31, 2016.

The bill is commonly called “the Omnibus,” but officially its title is the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014.  It provides a total of $1.012 trillion for discretionary (defense and non-defense) spending in FY2014.

NASA fared pretty well all things considered, receiving $17.65 billion compared to its $17.72 billion request, although the devil is in the details and some programs did better than others.  Congress did not approve the Obama Administration’s proposed reorganization of government STEM education programs, which would have had a significant impact on NASA’s education and public outreach activities, and said NASA had more work to do before Congress would agree to the Asteroid Redirect Mission.

Most satellite programs at NOAA also fared well, except for Jason-3 and Polar Free Flyer.

Last Updated: Jan 16, 2014 8:05 pm ET
JPSS and GOES-R Fare Well in FY2014 Omnibus, But Not All NOAA Satellite Programs

JPSS and GOES-R Fare Well in FY2014 Omnibus, But Not All NOAA Satellite Programs

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 14, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 14, 2014 7:44 pm ET

Most NOAA satellite programs fared pretty well in the FY2014 Omnibus Appropriations bill released yesterday by House and Senate appropriators, but two weren’t so lucky — Jason-3 and Polar Free Flyer.

NOAA’s two main weather satellite programs — Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series (GOES-R) and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) received their full requests of.$954.8 million and $824 million respectively.   The report on the bill noted the warning issued by an Independent Review Team (IRT) headed by Tom Young that favorably reviewed NOAA’s response to earlier recommendations on how to fix the GOES-R and JPSS programs, but raised warning flags about the future.  The Young report warned that JPSS is fragile and needs to be made more robust, and that a gap in JPSS data in the latter part of this decade is a strong possibility.  Appropriators directed NOAA to present a strategy on how to deal with those issues along with its FY2015 budget request: “Such a strategy shall examine the proposed polar free flyer mission, which the [Omnibus] agreement does not fund due to fiscal constraints.”

GOES-R and JPSS are follow-ons to the existing GOES-N and Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) series, which are funded slightly under their requested levels.. 

NOAA has several other satellite programs as well:  Jason-3 for ocean altimetry (joint with Europe); DSCOVR for space weather (joint with NASA and the Air Force); COSMIC 2, a proposed constellation of small satellites using GPS radio occultation for atmospheric and ionospheric observations (joint with Taiwan, NASA and the Air Force); and a Polar Free Flyer that originally was part of the JPSS program.

The House Appropriations Committee recommended zero funding for these programs when it marked up the CJS bill earlier this year, saying only that they were focusing scare resources on GOES-R and JPSS.  The Senate Appropriations Committee recommended the full request of $37 million for Jason-3, the full $23.7 million for DSCOVR, $24.6 million instead of the $62 million requested for the Polar Free Flyer, and an addition of $4 million for COSMIC-2, for which NOAA requested no funding in FY2014.

In the final compromise reflected in the Omnibus Appropriations bill,  DSCOVR is funded at its requested level of $23.7 million and COSMIC-2 received $2 million. 

Jason-3 was one of the two NOAA satellite programs that did not fare well.   It received $18.5 million, essentially half of its request, a middle ground between the two committees and essentially level-funded with FY2013.   Jason-3 is a joint mission between NOAA, Europe’s EUMETSAT organization, and the French space agency CNES.  CNES and Eumetsat are providing the spacecraft, altimeter, precision orbit components, ground system and operations.   NOAA is providing other instruments and launch (acquired through NASA).  NOAA said in its budget request that the increase was needed “to meet its international obligation for this mission and reduce the strain on the international partnership.”   The first two Jason spacecraft were research satellites funded jointly by NASA and CNES.  Jason-1 was itself a follow-on to the NASA-CNES Topex-Poseidon mission launched in 1992.

Still, Jason-3 fared better than the Polar Free Flyer, which received no funding in the Omnibus, with the Senate yielding to the House position.  No explanation was provided other than fiscal constraints.   NOAA separated the Polar Free Flyer from the rest of JPSS to reduce program costs.  The agency was heavily criticized for cost growth in JPSS especially after the problems encountered with its predecessor program the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS).  As cost estimates for JPSS grew, Congress became concerned that it was headed into the same thicket.   NOAA’s response was to restructure the program so not all program costs now are in the JPSS budget line and to shift responsibility for some of the sensors to NASA.  While that reduced the cost for what is now designated as JPSS, it did not reduce the cost for the capabilities needed.  The question now is how to get the money for the Polar Free Flyer, not to mention other capabilities strongly recommended by Tom Young’s IRT.  As the report accompanying the Omnibus states, it wants NOAA to present a strategy to deal with these issues as part of its FY2015 budget request.

Last Updated: Jan 14, 2014 7:44 pm ET
Space Policy Events for the Week of January 13-18, 2014

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

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 12, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 12, 2014 7:27 pm ET

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

Last Updated: Jan 12, 2014 7:27 pm ET
Congress Hits the Ground Running in 2014

Congress Hits the Ground Running in 2014

By Marcia Smith | Posted: January 11, 2014 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: January 11, 2014 10:02 pm ET

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.

Last Updated: Jan 11, 2014 10:02 pm ET

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