Russia has had to again suspend its so-far fruitless hunt for debris from the failed launch of Progress M-12M because of bad weather. On the good news front, however, Itar-Tass reports that the mission was insured.

The robotic Progress spacecraft was lost 325 seconds after launch due to a third stage malfunction. One theory is that the spacecraft and the third stage disingegrated in the atmosphere, which is why fragments have not been found. Nevertheless, a search is being conducted in the Altai region of Siberia amid rugged and remote terrain. Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass said today that Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, flew over the area in a helicopter for a total of seven hours on Saturday and Sunday, but the search could not resume this morning because of bad weather. Itar-Tass also revealed that the spacecraft was insured for “three billion roubles (US$103 mlliion).”

Russian engineers determined last week that a gas generator on the third stage of the Soyuz U rocket failed, causing the mishap. Although the loss of the cargo that was aboard poses little problem for the International Space Station (ISS) crew, the failure is impacting ISS operations. The Soyuz U is very similar to the Soyuz FG rocket used to launch crews. Consequently, a launch of the next three ISS crew members, scheduled for this month, has been indefinitely postponed. NASA’s space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, said last week that there is a possibility that the ISS may have to be destaffed in November if the Soyuz rocket has not been fixed and recertified for launching people.

Progress is a robotic version of the Soyuz spacecraft that is used for crews. The first series of these spacecraft, then simply called Progress, was first launched beginning in 1976 to the Soviet Salyut 6 space station. A new version, Progress M, was introduced for the Soviet Mir space station in 1986, and was later revamaped again and called Progress M1. The first Progress M1 to launch to the ISS was Progress M1-3 in 2000. The spacecraft was recently upgraded again and now carries a Progress M-(number of mission)M nomenclature. The first of this series was launched in 2008. This was the 12th launch of the current version, hence the designation Progress M-12M. NASA refers to it as Progress 44 because it is the 44th Progress spacecraft to resupply the ISS.

This was the first launch failure in the long history of the Progress program, although there was a renowned docking failure between a Progress and the Mir space station in June 1997. In that case, crew error caused the Progress to impact one of the space station’s modules, Spektr. Spektr depressurized, creating an emergency situation. The crew (Russian cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexandr Lazutkin and NASA astronaut Michael Foale) was able to close off the Spektr module and continue operations. Mir operated for four more years until it was intentionally deorbited in 2001, although Spektr was uninhabitable for the rest of that time.

China’s Xinhua news agency is reporting that the launch of the Tiangong-1 docking target will be delayed until the cause of a launch failure is determined.

Tiangong-1 (“Heavenly Palace”) is a module to which the unoccupied Shenzhou 8 is intended to dock as part of China’s effort to develop a small space station. The launch was expected as early as this month, though the Chinese have not officially announced a specific launch date. They consistently have said only that it would be launched in the second half of this year.

Tiangong-1 is to be launched on a Long March II-F rocket, but a cousin, the Long March II-C, recently failed to place the SJ-11-04 satellite into orbit. Initially the Chinese said that since they were different launch vehicles, the failure would not affect Tiangong-1. They apparently have reconsidered. Xinhua quotes an unnamed spokesperson as saying “it is not clear yet” whether the malfunction of the Long March II-C could be linked to the II-F.

Coincidentally, the Chinese launch failure occurred on August 18, the same day that a Russian Proton rocket failed to successfully place a communications satellite into the proper orbit. The Russians traced that problem to a programming error and already have lifted the ban on Proton launches. Russia continues to investigate the launch failure of a Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress cargo spacecraft that was to take supplies to the International Space Station. Itar-Tass stated on Monday that the problem was related to a gas generator on the Soyuz launch vehicle’s third stage.

An international group of experts on the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEOs) met in Pasadena, CA last week to advance work on creating a Mission Planning and Operations Group (MPOG) to enable space agencies to respond if a NEO is on a collision course with Earth.

The Secure World Foundation and the Association of Space Explorers organized the meeting in conjunction with the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). It is part of a series of meetings to create an international framework for dealing with the threat to Earth from asteroids and comets, collectively known as NEOs.

The August 25-26 meeting was attended by members of COPUOS’s Action Team (AT) 14 and representatives of NASA and three non-U.S. agencies: Germany’s DLR, Canada’s CSA, and France’s CNRS.

The series of meetings is aimed at producing by February 2013 a set of recommendations on which COPUOS can act. Secure World Foundation Executive Director Ray Williamson said that the most recent workshop “made substantial progress” toward an interagency plan and an international governance model to deal with the NEO threat.

Russia continues to investigate the cause of the launch failure of a Progress cargo spacecraft last week, but it was just the most recent of several launch failures that is causing at least one Russian government official to reconsider how the Russian space program is organized.

Vitaliy Davydov, deputy director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, is suggesting that “it would be beneficial to return the federal space program and the Glonass program to the framework of the state defense order,” according to the Russian news service Ria Novosti.

Glomass is Russia’s navigation satellite system, similar to the GPS system in the United States. A Glonass launch last December on a Proton rocket was expected to make the system fully operational, but the launch failed. It was followed by a failure of a different launch vehicle, Rokot, that was intended to place a geodetic satellite, GEO-IK-2, into orbit. Subsequently, the head of Roscosmos, Anatoly Perminov, was forced to resign. Another Proton failure on August 18 stranded the Express AM-4 satellite in the wrong orbit, and then a week later came the Progress M-12M launch failure on August 24. Roscosmos and NASA are still determining the impacts to International Space Station (ISS) operations in the wake of the Progress failure.

Davydov also suggested that the ISS may not be permanently occupied in the future, but staffed only periodically as the Soviet Union used to operate its Salyut space stations and the Mir space station during its early years. The French news agency AFP quotes Davydov as saying that “Perhaps in the future we will not need a constant manned presence in the lower Earth orbit.”

The comments of one Russian space official do not necessarily mean that the Russian government is seriously considering such steps, but they do underscore the significance of the Progress launch failure and the weakened position of the United States in the ISS partnership now that it is completely dependent on Russia to take crews to and from ISS. The termination of the space shuttle program with nothing to replace it means U.S. astronauts can only travel to the ISS when Russia is willing to take them and at whatever price it sets. A new U.S. crew space transportation system is not expected to be ready until at least 2015 under the most optimistic scenario.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news service is reporting that the cause of the Progress spacecraft launch failure last week has been identified.

The news service quotes Alexei Kuznetsov from Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, as saying “Members of the emergency commission have determined the cause of the failure of the Soyuz carrier rocket’s third stage engine. It is a malfunction in the engine’s gas generator.”

The Progress cargo spacecraft was launched on a Soyuz U rocket last Wednesday, but did not achieve orbit and fell into the Altai region of Siberia. Russia is still searching for the wreckage in difficult terrain and bad weather. NASA and Roscosmos are working on contingency plans for operations of the International Space Station (ISS) in light of the launch failure, which could affect launches not only of cargo, but crews, to the ISS.

An analysis by three master’s degree students at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute argues that the United States should relook at its policy for engaging with emerging space countries in South America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

Current U.S. policies focus on preventing technology transfer, but “preclude a valuable avenue for the United States to relay space sustainability norms to the increasing number of actors that are just learning to operate in the space environment,” according to the report’s authors, Megan Ansdell, Laura Delgado Lopez and Dan Hendrickson. They presented their findings at a seminar sponsored by the Secure World Foundation (SWF) on Monday. SWF was a sponsor of the project.

The three looked at the space efforts of six countries in three regions: Brazil and Venezuela in South America, Nigeria and South Africa in Africa, and India and Malaysia in the Asia-Pacific region. The countries’ attention to and views about space sustainability, especially the principles espoused in the draft European Code of Conduct, was a particular focus of the study.

The authors concluded that those topics are not at the top of the list of concerns for most of the countries they studied. India is an exception in many respects since it has a very mature space program.

Delgado emphasized in her remarks that there is a need for the United States to engage with everyone, “not just the established space actors,” because everyone is impacted by the problems addressed by space sustainability. She cited space debris as a specific example.

Hendrickson said that most of the countries they studied may agree with the ideas in the Code of Conduct, but not the Code itself. He added that Nigeria, South Africa and Malaysia have made no formal statements about it, but are engaged in international forums where it is discussed. Venezuela, he said, is opposed to the fact that it is nonbinding, but accepts it as a first step towards a potential treaty.

The countries share both similarities and differences in their approaches to space activities, the authors said, and regional leadership is more of a driver than being part of the global “space club.” Regional coordination mechanisms exist in each of three regions that were studied, they said.

Building public support for investments in space activities is a challenge in some of these countries. Ansdell pointed out, for example, that “the vast majority of everyday Africans and a lot of their leadership” view space spending as “a waste of money or another corrupt government program because they don’t understand how to connect space applications to their everyday lives.”

A short version of the report is available on SWF’s website; a longer version will be posted at the Space Policy Institute website.

A routine launch of a Russian Progress spacecraft filled with cargo for the International Space Station ended in failure today.

The ITAR-TASS news agency reports that debris from the spacecraft fell in the Republic of Altai in southern Siberia. The cause of the incident is unknown at this time.

China’s space program is threatening U.S. space superiority according to a new report from the Heritage Foundation.

A 2010 Chinese test involving two ballistic missile launches that resulted in a deliberate collision, and a 2010 mission where two Chinese satellites “engaged in orbital maneuvers that appears to include ‘bumping’ into each other” that could be useful for “practicing docking maneuvers or anti-satellite operations” are examples of Chinese activities that cause concern according to the report’s author, Dean Cheng.

“The U.S. government needs to take steps to ensure that it maintains the ability to secure space superiority. Such a position of strength is necessary for the Sino-American space relationship to develop along the oft-touted lines of mutual respect and mutual benefit,” he continues.

Cheng recommends that the United States must maintain a “robust” military space capability; increase alternatives to space systems to reduce our reliance on them; and increase knowledge of Chinese space capabilities by expanding the pool of people able to analyze China’s space capabilities “in the original language.” To that latter end, interaction between U.S. and Chinese space experts is “probably both inevitable and necessary” in his view. These interactions should not be “guided by the hope that American openness will be reciprocated,” but instead “predicated on efforts at mutual, equitable interaction.” Congress therefore should specify the areas where the Department of Defense, NASA and NOAA can and cannot interact with the Chinese, he advised.

E. William “Bill” Colglazier is the new Science and Technology Adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Colglazier, a theoretical physicist by training, most recently served as Executive Officer of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council (NRC). Previously he headed the NRC’s Office of International Affairs; was a physics professor and Director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Center at the University of Tennessee; and worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. In 1976-1977, he was a AAAS Fellow working for the late Congressman George E. Brown (D-CA).

The Office of Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State was established in response to a 1999 NRC report. Norman Neureiter was the first S&T adviser to the Secretary of State from 2000-2003. He was followed by George Atkinson. Nina Federoff served in that position from August 2007 – July 2010.

The upshot of the Secure World Foundation’s (SWF’s) panel discussion yesterday on the status of the Obama National Space Policy (NSP) one year after its release was that the policy itself is just words on paper. What counts is implementation, and in many respects it is too early to judge how well that is going.

Peter Marquez, who spearheaded development of the NSP when he was on the staff of the White House’s National Security Council (NSC), compared space policy to light – it is both a point and a wave. The NSP document is a point, he said, while implementation is a wave – a continuous process where various aspects are reinterpreted and reargued despite the intense labor that was devoted to choosing each word so carefully that no doubt was left as to its intent. Or so the authors thought.

Overall, though, he gave good marks on the progress of implementing many of the NSP’s provisions. He praised the cadre of government specialists who are diligently working on follow up activities, including his successor at the NSC, Chirag Parikh. Parikh not only is leading implementation of the NSP, but is working with Damon Wells at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on updating the more focused space transportation policy according to Marquez.

He was critical of implementation in some areas, however, especially space situational awareness (SSA). He accused the Department of Defense (DOD) of hypocrisy because while it says that SSA is a top priority, the funding is not there. “An unfunded requirement isn’t a requirement,” he chided.

Andrew Palowitch, Director of the Air Force/National Reconnaissance Office Space Protection Program, was less enthusiastic, arguing that nothing that has happened in the past year or anything that will happen in the next year is due to the NSP. Pointing out that space activities take years to plan, he believes it will be 18-24 months before the NSP will have much effect. He also stressed that policy is much more than a single document emanating from the White House. It is a combination of White House policy documents, presidential pronouncements, legislation (including funding), and international agreements such as treaties that are adopted by the United States. Inaction is also a part of policy, he added.

Marquez disagreed that “nothing” has changed. He asserted that while programs may not have changed yet, as a political and international initative, the policy has changed the situation dramatically. Referring to the completed document, he called it a “decent” policy and its implementation is moving in the right direction. “See where we are in two, three, four years, we’ll invite ourselves back,” he cheerfully suggested.

SWF’s Ben Baseley-Walker also disagreed with Palowitch. Internationally, what is important is the message not the details in his view. “This has changed where the U.S. stands in the world,” he said, adding that the first page of the NSP “is the most important.” He believes the NSP laid the foundation “for effective U.S. leadership.” He particularly praised the efforts of DOD’s Greg Schulte and the State Department’s Frank Rose who have taken the NSP around the world to explain and engage in dialog about it with other nations.

A recurring discussion point was the plan by a company called Lightsquared to build a hybrid satellite-terrestrial mobile broadband communications system that some experts contend will harmfully interfere with Global Positioning System (GPS) signals. Marquez said that the issue is consuming a lot of time at the White House and DOD and that if Lightsquared is allowed to proceed it “doesn’t matter what the rest of the [national space] policy says.” The NSP reaffirms the U.S. commitment to GPS services and international cooperation and interference mitigation for space-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems like GPS.

He and Palowitch decried the waning technical expertise in the government, particularly at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which, they feel, should have been able to determine whether or not interference will be a problem. Instead, it gave the company a provisional license in January, directing the company to work with the GPS industry to do testing to determine the interference potential. The company is not allowed to initiate commercial operations of its terrestrial network until the GPS issues are resolved. The company was supposed to report back to the FCC earlier this week, but requested and was granted a two week extension. Its report now is due July 1. Separately, the government’s National Space-Based PNT Systems Engineering Forum (NPEF) conducted its own review and reportedly concluded that the FCC should rescind the license. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on this issue on June 23. Marquez is a member of NPEF’s parent National Space-Based PNT Executive Committee.

Another controversial topic raised at the SWF forum was whether the United States should sign the Code of Conduct developed by the European Union (EU). Palowitch criticized it because it is the “EU” code of conduct and it should be a document that is developed by all the space-faring countries. He thinks that what is needed is “collective assurance,” a code of conduct for the international community. Baseley-Walker replied that actually it is the European proposal for an international code of conduct, but he stopped short of recommending that the United States sign onto it now. Emerging space countries want “equity” in whatever document is crafted, he said. Marquez argued that signing the document would not put the United States in a leadership position and worried about the “law of unintended consequences.”

In the end, is having a national space policy written down on paper important? Marquez said that from an academic standpoint, the answer is no – only the actions count. Palowitch, who downplayed the impact of the policy so far, conceded that “international engagement has been energized.” Baseley-Walker went further, saying that the policy “changed the tone internationally” and “getting out early and loudly was great” from an international perspective.