Category: Military

What's Happening in Space Policy September 12-16, 2016 – UPDATE

What's Happening in Space Policy September 12-16, 2016 – UPDATE

By Marcia Smith | Posted: September 11, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: September 12, 2016 8:11 am ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the week of September 12-16, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session.

During the Week

From Long Beach, California to Vienna, Austria, it’s a busy week in space policy.

Starting in Long Beach, AIAA holds its Space 2016 conference Tuesday-Thursday.  Many sessions will be livestreamed and others will be posted later. The agenda on the livestream site tells you which is which. Note that all the times are Pacific Daylight Time, so add three for Eastern Daylight Time.  NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, DOD’s Winston Beauchamp, and DFJ’s Steve Jurvetson formally kick things off on Tuesday at 8:00 am PDT/11:00 am EDT.  There are many very interesting plenary and “Forum 360” presentations throughout the conference, as well as the Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship on Thursday evening (6:30-7:30 pm PT/9:30-10:30 pm ET). The Brill Lectureship is awarded every two years by AIAA and the National Academy of Engineering.  This year’s honoree is Wanda Austin, President and CEO of the Aerospace Corporation, who will speak on Engineering Leadership.  It will be livestreamed.

Just south of Long Beach, in Irvine, the National Academies Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences (CAPS) is meeting on Wednesday-Thursday.  It will be available by WebEx and telecon.  Among the topics are updates on robotic Mars exploration, the Europa mission, efforts to ensure a reliable supply of plutonium-238 (needed to power spacecraft that travel too far from the Sun or will land somewhere that make solar power infeasible), and NASA’s astrobiology program.

Jumping 3,000 miles to the East, astrobiology will also be a topic in Washington, DC at the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center on Thursday.  The day-long symposium will discuss “The Emergence of Life:  On the Earth, in the Lab, and Elsewhere.”   It will be filmed and the video posted later on the Kluge Center’s website and YouTube.

Many other events are on tap in the Washington area.  We’ll highlight just two here.  First. the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) will meet via telecon to discuss draft legislation proposed by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) to allow the FAA to perform an enhanced version of its current payload review process to authorize companies to conduct certain operations in Earth orbit, on the Moon and elsewhere in compliance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.  The FAA did that for Moon Express recently, but it was an ad hoc process.  The legislation apparently would codify that or a similar arrangement.  Anyone may listen in on the telecon.  

Second, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) will hold a hearing on Thursday morning on long term military budget challenges. It’s a broad topic and the witnesses are the service chiefs so it is difficult to anticipate the extent to which national security space issues will arise, but it would not be surprising.  Most SASC hearings are webcast.

The House and Senate are in session this week and still discussing what to do about the FY2017 budget. They need to pass something by September 30 (probably a Continuing Resolution that lasts until mid-December, but we know the peril of trying to guess what Congress will do) and what to do about the rest of the fiscal year.  Typically they end up passing one huge “omnibus” appropriations bill incorporating all 12 regular appropriations bills, but House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly prefers several smaller “minibus” bills combining two or three at a time.  As a former chairman of the House Budget Committee, he is well versed in budget matters, but there are critical top-level issues to resolve starting with the total amount of money that Congress should approve.  The House and Senate reached agreement last fall on the total for FY2017, but very conservative Republicans did not vote in favor of it and want to more tightly constrain the amount for non-defense activities.

Moving even further East, the European Space Agency is sponsoring a “Space for Inspiration” conference at the London Science Museum on Wednesday-Thursday.  It will be webcast on ESA’s website.  ESA Director General Jan Woerner heads an impressive set of government, industry, academic and non-profit speakers from Europe, Japan, and the United States, including several current and former astronauts.

A bit further East, Euroconsult will hold its annual World Satellite Business Week in Paris Monday-Friday.  The website does not indicate if any of the sessions will be webcast.   The “week” includes the 20th Summit for Satellite Financing, the 13th Symposium on Satcom Market Forecasts, the 8th Summit on Earth Observation Business, and SMARTPlane 2016.

Vienna, Austria is the last stop on this week’s space policy journey.  The European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) will hold a two-day (Thursday-Friday) symposium on Space for Sustainable Development.

Meanwhile, we’ll be keeping an ear out for any news on SpaceX’s investigation of the on-pad explosion on September 1.   Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that it is the “most difficult and complex failure” the company has encountered.

Also, Chinese media report that the launch date for China’s second space station, Tiangong-2 is in the September 15-20 time period.  It will launch on a Long March 2F from Jiuquan.  The first launch of China’s new heavy lift Long March 5 from the new Wenchang launch site on Hainan Island is also coming up soon.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Events of Interest list.

Monday-Wednesday, September 12-14

Monday-Friday, September 12-16

  • Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week
    • 20th Summit for Satellite Financing (Sept. 12-15)
    • 13th Symposium on SATCOM Market Forecasts (Sept. 15)
    • 8th Summit on Earth Observation Business (Sept. 15-16)
    • SMARTPlane 2016 (Sept. 14)

Tuesday, September 13

Tuesday-Thursday, September 13-15

Wednesday, September 14

Wednesday-Thursday, September 14-15

Thursday, September 15

Friday, September 16

Saturday, September 17

 

Note:  this article was updated on September 12.

Last Updated: Sep 12, 2016 8:11 am ET
DOT Tells Congress It Can Handle Releasing SSA Data to CFEs if Authorized and Funded

DOT Tells Congress It Can Handle Releasing SSA Data to CFEs if Authorized and Funded

By Marcia Smith | Posted: September 8, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: September 8, 2016 6:31 pm ET

A new report to Congress from the Department of Transportation (DOT) concludes that it is feasible for a civil agency like DOT to take over responsibility from DOD for providing space situational awareness (SSA) data to commercial and foreign entities (CFEs).  Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) has been advocating for such a change to enable DOD to focus its SSA efforts on meeting military requirements while someone else, like DOT, handles non-military users.

Bridenstine was the chief House sponsor of the 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA).  Sec. 110 of that Act required DOT to study the feasibility of  processing and releasing safety-related SSA data and information “to any entity consistent with national security interests and public safety obligations of the United States.”   Today’s report satisfies that statutory obligation.

The report, written by DOT with concurrence from the Department of Defense (DOD) and in consultation with NASA, the Departments of Commerce and State, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Director of National Intelligence, summarizes past and present SSA arrangements, including the current “SSA Sharing Strategy.”   That strategy, adopted in 2014, established three categories of SSA information users:  the public, SSA Sharing Agreement Holders (commercial, government, and intergovernmental satellite owners and operators that have signed a formal sharing agreement with U.S. Strategic Command), and U.S. national security partners.

Today, DOD’s Joint Space Operations Center (JSPoC, part of U.S. Strategic Command) continuously collects data about the location of the18,000 objects in Earth orbit.  The report says that only 7 percent of those objects are operational satellites.  The rest are debris — everything from intact, but non-functional, satellites to expended rocket stages to paint chips to remnants of damaged or destroyed spacecraft.

Global concerns about the debris created by in-space events were sparked by the 2009 accidental collision of an active U.S. Iridium communications satellite with a defunct Russian communications satellite and China’s 2007 intentional destruction of one of its own satellites as an antisatellite test.  Both created a lot of debris and with more and more satellites being launched, especially hundreds of tiny “cubesats,” SSA is increasingly vital to a growing number of users of the space environment. JSPoC calculates “conjunction analyses” to warn satellite owners/operators if objects pose a collision risk and issues alerts.

A civil agency like DOT, through the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), could assume responsibility for releasing safety-related SSA data on tracked space objects to non-military users under certain conditions, today’s report concludes.  The conditions include:

  • interagency collaboration, especially a strong DOT-DOD relationship;
  • passage of legislation specifically authorizing DOT to take on this role and providing the same immunity from lawsuits as in 10 U.S.C. Section 2274 for DOD’s SSA activities; and
  • providing additional resources for FAA/AST (a rough estimate of $20 million is provided in the report as an initial investment, with additional recurring costs for more personnel).

Bridenstine welcomed the report in a statement provided to SpacePolicyOnline.com:

“This report shows that this Administration, including the Department of Defense, agrees with what I have been advocating for a long time: that FAA/AST is an appropriate agency to maintain space situational awareness and provide information and services to civil, commercial, and foreign actors. This will empower STRATCOM and JFCC Space to focus on fighting and winning wars, while a civil agency does routine conjunction analysis and reporting. I look forward to working with the DOD, FAA, and Congressional stakeholders to begin implementing such a framework.”

Bridenstine is also the primary sponsor of pending legislation, the American Space Renaissance Act (ASRA), which would go even further and take the first steps towards designating a civilian agency, like FAA, to be responsible for Space Traffic Management (STM) under which a satellite owner/operator could be compelled to take action to avoid a collision.   Currently, JSPoC issues conjunction analyses, but it is up to the satellite operator to decide what to do, if indeed the satellite is capable of moving.  ASRA is very broad and Bridenstine makes clear he does not expect it to pass in its entirety.  Instead, it is a repository of provisions that could be incorporated into other legislation over time.

Last Updated: Sep 08, 2016 6:31 pm ET
NASA-Goddard's Hartman, Gilbert Among 2016 WIA Award Winners

NASA-Goddard's Hartman, Gilbert Among 2016 WIA Award Winners

By Marcia Smith | Posted: September 4, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: September 4, 2016 10:22 pm ET

Women in Aerospace (WIA) has announced the winners of its 2016 awards.  Among the six women being honored are Colleen Hartman and Holly Gilbert from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.  WIA will present all of its awards on October 13, 2016 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, VA.

Hartman currently is Director of Goddard’s Sciences & Exploration Directorate and has worked at Goddard and NASA headquarters since 1994.  She is receiving the 2016 WIA Leadership Award for “30 years of exemplary leadership at the highest levels of government and for inspiring the next tier of scientists, engineers and managers.”

Gilbert is Deputy Director of the Heliophysics Science Division within Goddard’s Sciences & Exploration directorate.  She is being recognized with the 2016 Aerospace Awareness Award for “outstanding leadership in bringing heliophysics science to the public.”   NASA’s heliophysics discipline incorporates the study of the Sun and solar-terrestrial interactions (the field is sometimes referred to as solar and space physics).

WIA is also honoring four other women, one of them posthumously.

WIA’s 2016 Achievement Award will be presented to Celia Blum of Lockheed Martin for “leading the team that reduced the mass of the Orion Crew Module pressure vessel and delivered it to Kennedy Space Center for Exploration Mission 1 integration.”   Orion is part of NASA’s new human space transportation system intended to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo lunar missions.  Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) will be the first flight of Orion aboard the Space Launch System (SLS), a large rocket NASA is building for that purpose.  The EM-1 mission will not carry a crew.  It is a test launch scheduled for 2018.

Mary Bowden of the University of Maryland, College Park, is receiving the 2016 Aerospace Educator Award for “motivating interest in space systems, being an inspiring role model and promoting the success of students at all levels.”

Lt. Amanda Lippert, Naval Air Systems Command, is the winner of the 2016 Initiative, Inspiration, Impact Award for “her multiple achievements and contributions to the field of aerospace science and industry within the past twenty-four months.”

The 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented posthumously to Molly Macauley, who was murdered in July.  Macauley was one of the few economists who specialized in the economic aspects of the space program.

The WIA Awards Dinner is October 13, 2016 at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City in Arlington, VA.   WIA will also honor the late Patti Grace Smith, who died of cancer earlier this year.  She will be recognized for “her tremendous impact not only for women in the aerospace community, but for her influence on the aerospace industry as a whole.”

Last Updated: Sep 04, 2016 10:22 pm ET
What's Happening in Space Policy September 5-9, 2016

What's Happening in Space Policy September 5-9, 2016

By Marcia Smith | Posted: September 4, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: September 4, 2016 2:39 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the week of September 5-9, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate return to work on Tuesday.

During the Week

Monday is a U.S. Federal holiday, Labor Day.  Congress returns to work on Tuesday.  As we reported last week, its essential task is to pass appropriations legislation to keep the government operating past September 30 when FY2016 ends. They have a lot of work to do in the next four weeks.  None of the 12 regular appropriations bills has passed yet (see our table of where the 12 appropriations bills stand at this point). 

The House plans to go into recess again on October 1 and the Senate will follow suit before October 10 (the exact date is TBD).  They won’t return until after the November 8 elections.   Whether they return at all in 2016 for a “lame duck” session or wait until the new 115th Congress begins in January 2017 is being debated.  This is a standard debate in election years.  Some argue that those who lost their elections should not continue to legislate and any issue not resolved before the pre-election recess should wait until the new Congress is in place.   Others insist that the nation’s work must be done and that time is needed to pass critical legislation.  Congress is virtually certain to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the first part of FY2017, so whether or not there will be a lame duck session makes a big difference in how long the CR lasts.  Many in Congress want a short term CR that carries the government through to mid-December, meaning that Congress must still be meeting at that time to pass either another CR or, hopefully, final FY2017 appropriations. The most conservative House Republicans, however, reportedly want to push final FY2017 funding decisions into next year.  We’ll see what happens, but if what’s past is prologue, there will indeed be a lame duck session.

Labor Day marks the end of “summer” and signals a resumption of the usually busy schedule of space policy events in Washington, far too many to highlight here (see full list below).   One of special interest is Wednesday’s hearing before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on “Commercial Remote Sensing; Facilitating Innovation and Leadership.” Witnesses include the former chair of NOAA’s Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing (ACCRES), Kevin O’Connell; the Executive Director of the Center for Spatial and Law Policy, Kevin Pomfrel; the President of Sunesis Nexis, LLC, Michele Weslander; University of North Dakota Assistant Professor of Space Studies Michael Dodge; and University of Mississippi School of Law Professor Emerita Joanne Gabrynowicz.  The committee is dissatisfied with NOAA’s regulatory oversight of the industry (taking too much time to decide on company requests, for example), although there are no NOAA witnesses on the list.  NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce and the committee’s Republican leaders recently wrote a letter to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker asking for a statutorily required report that is overdue by more than 3 months.  It is the fourth letter they have written to her about commercial remote sensing issues since February.

Congress’s return is certainly important news, but Thursday’s launch of the robotic asteroid sample return mission OSIRIS-REx surely will take the spotlight.  NASA has scheduled pre-launch briefings over two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) and will provide live coverage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V launch on Thursday evening.  The 2-hour launch window opens at 7:05 pm ET.  NASA TV coverage begins at 4:30 pm ET and a post-launch press conference will begin about 2 hours after launch.  The weather forecast as of today (Sunday) is 80 percent go.  (As we’ve said before, it’s important not to confuse OSIRIS-REx with the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which also will return an asteroid sample to Earth, but is part of NASA’s human spaceflight program, not its science program, and has very different objectives.)

Speaking of human spaceflight, three ISS crew members return to Earth on Tuesday night ET.  Jeff Williams, Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka will land in Kazakhstan at 9:14 pm ET (7:14 am Wednesday local time at the landing site).  NASA TV will provide live coverage of undocking and landing.

George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute and the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation are having a seminar on Friday on U.S.-Japan Space Cooperation featuring government, academic, and industry officials from both countries.  It is part of a series of meetings of the U.S.-Japan Space Forum that began in 2014 to address how the two countries could work together to use space for common interests.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the week to see others that we learn about later and add to our Events of Interest list.

Tuesday, September 6

Wednesday, September 7

Wednesday-Thursday, September 7-8

Thursday, September 8

Friday, September 9

 

Last Updated: Sep 04, 2016 2:39 pm ET
What's Happening in Space Policy August 29-September 9, 2016

What's Happening in Space Policy August 29-September 9, 2016

By Marcia Smith | Posted: August 28, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: August 28, 2016 4:16 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the next TWO weeks, August 29-September 9, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate return for legislative business on September 6.

During the Weeks

We have one last relatively light week before Congress returns on September 6.  The House and Senate leadership and congressional committees have not announced their schedules yet, but we should learn more as the week progresses,

Meanwhile, this week NASA has a press conference on Tuesday to introduce the three International Space Station (ISS) crew members who will launch in November (Whitson, Pesquet and Novitsky) and on Thursday NASA TV will provide live coverage of the second ISS spacewalk by Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins.   Two of the panels of the ongoing National Academies Earth Science and Applications from Space (ESAS) Decadal Survey will meet Tuesday-Wednesday (Solid Earth, in Washington DC) and Thursday-Friday (Hydrology, in Irvine, CA).

Next week begins with a U.S. Federal holiday, Labor Day, on Monday.  On Tuesday, Congress returns to work.   As usual, it is facing the task of passing some sort of appropriations bill — probably a Continuing Resolution (CR) — to keep the government operating when FY2017 begins on October 1.  They have four weeks to do it and it is possible that final agreement could be reached on at least one of the 12 regular appropriations bills — Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA).  It has already passed the House and Senate, a conference agreement was reached, and the House approved the conference report. An attempt to bring the conference report to the Senate floor. however, failed even though the bill is the legislative vehicle being used to provide funding to deal with the Zika virus.  Senate Democrats assert that it contains “poison pill” provisions Republicans know Democrats will not accept.  Even if that issue gets cleared up by the end of September, there are still the other 11 regular appropriations bills.  Here’s a snapshot of where all 12 stand as of today.

 

Status of FY2017 Appropriations Bills as of August 28, 2016
(prepared by SpacePolicyOnline.com)

FY2017 approps bill

House

Senate

Agriculture

committee approved

committee approved

Commerce-Justice-Science

committee approved

committee approved; floor debate began June 15, but suspended over gun control issues

Defense

Passed June 16

committee approved; 5 attempts to bring to floor defeated for variety of reasons

Energy-Water

Defeated May 26 over gay rights/gender identity issues

Passed May 12

Financial Services

Passed July 7

committee approved

Homeland Security

committee approved

committee approved

Interior-Environment

Passed July 14

committee approved

Labor-HHS

committee approved

committee approved

Legislative Branch

Passed June 10

committee approved

Military Construction-Veterans Affairs

Passed May 19; conference completed; House passed conference report June 23

Passed May 19; 2 attempts to bring conference report to floor defeated for variety of reasons

State-Foreign Ops

committee approved

committee approved

Transportation-HUD

committee approved

Passed May 19 (packaged w/MilCon-VA)

 

One issue is that the House Appropriations Committee approved more funding in its bills than allowed under the budget caps, so that will have to be fixed to avoid sequestration. The Senate bills are below the caps, though, so it can probably be resolved in conference committee(s).

There is little incentive, actually, for Congress to agree to final FY2017 appropriations before the election since who occupies the Oval Office and which part(ies) control the House and Senate will make a significant difference for the fiscal road ahead.  Similarly, there is little incentive for Republicans to allow their most conservative members to force a government shutdown, since that could undermine their goal of retaining control of the House and Senate. The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee and Senate candidate Chris Van Hollen said last week that he could not rule out a shutdown, however, because some Republicans strongly oppose the budget deal worked out among then House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and President Barack Obama last fall. That deal relaxed budget caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act and those Republicans want to stick by the original caps (even though, as noted, the House Appropriations Committee approved funding in excess even of the revised caps).  Still, convincing the electorate to let them retain control of Congress by showing they can keep the government operating probably will outweigh those complaints. Van Hollen said he hopes Congress will pass a CR that covers the time period past the election, with final resolution before the end of the calendar year.

Appropriations will be a key issue, but not the only one.  The FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is in conference already and there continues to be talk of getting a new NASA authorization bill completed this year.   Plus a host of non-space related issues.  September promises to be a busy month before Congress recesses again to continue campaigning in advance of the November 8 elections.

Apart from the congressional schedule, the first week of September offers two especially interesting conferences and a very important space science launch.   The conferences are an aerospace workforce summit co-sponsored by AIAA and AIA to highlight issues for the next President, and a U.S.-Japan space cooperation seminar co-sponsored by the Mansfield Foundation and the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.  The launch is of the robotic asteroid sample return mission OSIRIS-Rex, scheduled for September 8.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday, August 28, are shown below.  Check back throughout the weeks for others we learn about later and add to our Events of Interest list.

Tuesday, August 30

Tuesday-Wednesday, August 30-31

Thursday, September 1

Thursday-Friday, September 1-2

Tuesday, September 6

  • House and Senate Return for Legislative Business

Wednesday-Thursday, September 7-8

Thursday, September 8

Friday, September 9

  • U.S.-Japan Space Cooperation (Mansfield Foundation/Space Policy Institute), Lindner Family Commons, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm ET
Last Updated: Aug 28, 2016 4:16 pm ET
House FY2017 Appropriations Bills Exceed Budget Caps by $792 Million

House FY2017 Appropriations Bills Exceed Budget Caps by $792 Million

By Marcia Smith | Posted: August 26, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: August 26, 2016 6:17 pm ET

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has informed the White House and Congress that the 12 appropriations bills reported from the House Appropriations Committee for FY2017 exceed budgets caps by $792 million — $17 million in defense and $775 million in non-defense spending.  If enacted, they therefore would be subject to automatic reductions (sequestration) to bring the total in line with the levels Congress and the President agreed to last fall.  The companion bills reported from the Senate Appropriations Committee, however, are below the caps.

In an effort to curb deficits, the White House and Congress agreed to 10-year limits on federal spending in the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA).  After a congressional “supercommittee” could not agree on how to implement the reductions, automatic cuts — the sequester — went into effect for FY2013. The consequences were sufficiently dire for both defense and non-defense agencies that agreements were reached to relax the limits for FY2014-2015 (the Ryan-Murray agreement) and FY2016-2017 (the Boehner-McConnell-Obama agreement).  Currently, the top line for defense spending for FY2017 is $609.868 billion and for non-defense (including NASA and NOAA) is $543.597 billion.

In a required “Sequestration Update” to the President and Congress on August 19, OMB reported that the House bills surpass the modified limits for FY2017 by $17 million in defense spending and by $775 million in non-defense spending.  The Senate bills are under the limits, however.  They provide $167 million less for defense and $2.032 billion less for non-defense.

Only one of the 12 bills (Military Construction-Veterans Affairs) has passed both the House and Senate.  Four others have passed the House (Defense, Financial Services, Interior and Environment, and Legislative Branch).  One other has passed the Senate (Transportation-HUD, as part of a package with MilCon-VA, but it was not incorporated into the House-passed bill). 

Congress will have to do something about appropriations before October 1 when FY2017 begins or the government will shut down.  The House and Senate reconvene on September 6, giving them four weeks.  They most likely will pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government funded at FY2016 levels for a period of time, although Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said earlier this week that he could not rule out a shutdown because of Republican opposition to last fall’s Boehner-McConnell-Obama agreement.  His hope, however, is that a CR will be enacted to cover through the November elections, with final agreement on FY2017 funding levels before the end of 2016 and the 114th Congress.

How the House and Senate resolve their differences to avoid breaching the budget caps and what effect that will have on civil or national security space programs is unknowable at this point. The caps are not broken down by agencies, only into defense and non-defense categories.  It is up to Congress to decide how to allocate the funds, which involves a lot of give-and-take. 

At this point, FAA’s space office, NOAA’s satellite programs, and NASA have fared well in the House and Senate appropriations committees.  The committees have been especially generous to NASA when compared to the President’s request for FY2017, although the amounts are similar to what Congress appropriated for FY2016.

The House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill provides $19.508 billion for NASA and the Senate committee approved $19.306 billion.  Congress appropriated $19.285 billion for FY2016, but for FY2017 the President requested $18.262 billion in appropriated funds — a $1 billion cut. (As explained in SpacePolicyOnline.com’s fact sheet on NASA’s FY2017 budget request, NASA displays its request as $19.025 billion because it includes $763 million in non-appropriated funding from mandatory accounts and a tax on oil companies.  NASA has never received money from the mandatory part of the federal budget, which pays for programs like Social Security and Medicare, and how the White House imagined that it would this year is a mystery. The tax on oil companies was part of a White House “clean transportation” initiative that never materialized.  The inclusion of the $763 million is widely viewed as an attempt to obscure the fact that the President’s request was a significant cut for NASA.)

Congress’s ability to provide so much more than the request is largely because the budget caps were relaxed and NASA has powerful champions on the House and Senate Appropriations committees. 

As a new President takes office and a new Congress convenes next year, decisions will need to be made on whether to change or eliminate the sequester rules.  They are set in law and will go back into full effect with the FY2018 budget, the first that will be submitted by the incoming President.

Last Updated: Aug 26, 2016 6:17 pm ET
What's Happening in Space Policy August 22-September 2, 2016

What's Happening in Space Policy August 22-September 2, 2016

By Marcia Smith | Posted: August 21, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: August 21, 2016 2:14 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the next TWO weeks, August 22-September 2, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.   The House and Senate will return for legislative business on September 6.

During the Weeks

It is just two weeks until Congress returns for legislative business, so this edition of What’s Happening covers only those two weeks with the expectation that activity will begin ramping up again and there will be new events to list soon.

Not that the rest of August doesn’t have a lot to offer. First is the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference coming up this week in Raleigh, NC.  It is certain to whet the appetite with concepts for the longer term future.  When they say innovative, they MEAN innovative.  “Nano Icy Moons Propellant Harvester,” “Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander,” and “Stellar Echo Imaging of Exoplanets” are just three of the novel ideas that will be presented. The conference will be livestreamed.

This Wednesday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen will speak to the Maryland Space Business Roundtable.  As we explained earlier, he is considered the front runner to succeed Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who is retiring at the end of the year.   Should be interesting to learn his views on the space program.  Considering how much government, private sector. and academic space activity there is in Maryland — from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab to the Space Telescope Science Institute to Lockheed Martin corporate headquarters, to name just a few — one could well anticipate that he’ll be a strong supporter like Mikulski.  If elected, he won’t have her seniority, though, so his influence on the outcome of, say, appropriations, likely will take some time to develop.

Next week, two of the panels for the Earth Science and Applications from Space (ESAS) Decadal Survey will meet.  As we explained in our last issue, this is the second ESAS Decadal Survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.  The first was issued in 2007 and they are done every 10 years (a decade, hence “decadal”), so this one is expected to be completed next year.  Meetings of the other panels and two steering committee meetings now are scheduled through January 2017 as shown on our month-by-month FULL CALENDAR OF FUTURE EVENTS view (click on the link at the bottom of the Events of Interest list on our home page).

Those are the only four events we know about for the next two weeks as of Sunday morning (August 21) and are shown below.  Check back throughout the weeks to see new events that we learn about later.

Tuesday-Thursday, August 23-25

Wednesday, August 24

Tuesday-Wednesday, August 30-31

Thursday-Friday, September 1-2

Last Updated: Aug 21, 2016 2:14 pm ET
What's Happening in Space Policy August 15 – September 2, 2016

What's Happening in Space Policy August 15 – September 2, 2016

By Marcia Smith | Posted: August 14, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: August 14, 2016 12:41 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the next THREE weeks, August 15 – September 2, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate return for legislative business on September 6.

During the Weeks

As described in our July 31 and August 7 editions, there’s quite a bit going on this month even though it should be vacation time.  In addition to the events mentioned in those earlier issues — including the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, AL (August 16-18), the NIAC symposium in Raleigh, NC (August 23-26), and the Maryland Space Business Roundtable luncheon in Greenbelt, MD with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (August 24) — there has been one addition and one deletion over the past week for that time period.  This edition also adds the week of August 29-September 2.

The deletion is the return-to-flight launch of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket that was scheduled for August 22.   It has been postponed until the second half of September (date to be determined). The company said the delay was due to “a variety of interrelated factors” including continued processing, integration and testing of the re-engined rocket and the busy schedule aboard the International Space Station.

The addition is a NASA media briefing on August 17 to discuss the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission that is scheduled for launch on September 8.   OSIRIS-REx is the entirely robotic science mission that will obtain a sample of asteroid Bennu and return it to Earth in 2023 for scientific studies, not the Asteroid Redirect Mission that uses a robotic spacecraft to move part of an asteroid to lunar orbit where astronauts will obtain a sample and return it to Earth in the mid-2020s as part of NASA’s effort to send people to Mars.  For the curious, OSIRIS-REx’s full name is the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.

The week added in this version of “What’s Happening” includes meetings of two panels of the ongoing Earth Science and Applications from Space (ESAS) Decadal Survey conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  This is the second ESAS Decadal Survey by the Academies.  The first was released in 2007.  Decadal Surveys are conducted every 10 years (hence “Decadal”) for each of NASA’s space and earth science disciplines (other agencies may be involved, too), so this one is due to be completed next year.  It has a steering committee and five panels on specific aspects of the topic. The two that are meeting within this period of time are solid earth (August 30-31) in Washington, DC, and hydrology (September 1-2) in Irvine CA.  The ESAS steering committee is co-chaired by Waleed Abdalati, University of Colorado-Boulder, and Bill Gail, Global Weather Corporation.  Again for the curious, the full name of the solid earth panel is Earth Surface and Interior: Dynamics and Hazards panel, which is co-chaired by Douglas Burbank, UC Santa Barbara and David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  Hydrology is formally the Global Hydrological Cycles and Water Resources Panel and is co- chaired by Ana Barros, Duke University, and Jeff Dozier, UC Santa Barbara. 

The full list of upcoming events for the next three weeks is shown below.  Keep checking back to see additions that we learn about later and add to our Events of List interest (or those that get postponed).

Monday, August 15

Tuesday-Wednesday, August 16-17

Tuesday-Thursday, August 16-18

Wednesday, August 17

Thursday, August 18

Friday, August 19

Tuesday-Thursday, August 23-25

Wednesday, August 24

Tuesday-Wednesday, August 30-31

Thursday-Friday, September 1-2

Last Updated: Aug 14, 2016 12:41 pm ET
What's Happening in Space Policy August 8-26, 2016

What's Happening in Space Policy August 8-26, 2016

By Marcia Smith | Posted: August 7, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: August 7, 2016 10:46 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the next THREE weeks, August 8-26, 2016, and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in recess until September 6.

During the Weeks

It may be the dog days of August, but after a one-week respite, there’s a lot happening, starting with the Small Satellite Conference in Utah.  It actually began yesterday with a 2-day pre-conference workshop that is being livestreamed.  It’s not clear from the meeting’s website whether the Monday-Thursday sessions also will be available that way.  Lots of creative ideas will be discussed, no doubt, at this, its 30th anniversary. Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) from Space News is on site tweeting if there’s no livestream or you don’t have time to listen in.

Last week we laid out all the meetings through August 19 that we knew about at the time.  They are all still posted on our Events of Interest list and in the summary below.  In this section, we will focus on August 22-26, a week that wasn’t included last time.

At the top of the list is the scheduled return to flight of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket on August 22 from Wallops Island, VA.  It’s a daytime launch (5:59 pm ET) so won’t be as visible from surrounding areas as the night launches, but still could be viewable from the D.C. area (depending on the weather).  Orbital ATK often posts maps of where to look and we will add links to them to our calendar entry when they’re available.  As anyone who follows space launches knows, plans can always change for technical or weather reasons.  We’ll update our calendar entry with any news we get.  (Orbital ATK will discuss its 2Q 2016 financial results this Wednesday; more information may be provided at that time.) This is the first flight of the re-engined Antares (now using new Russian RD-181s instead of refurbished Russian NK-33/AJ26s) following the October 28, 2014 failure.  Orbital ATK has launched two Cygnus cargo spacecraft on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets in the meantime.  They were designated OA-4 and OA-6; this one is OA-5 and, as one may guess, was originally intended to launch in between those two, but was delayed.

If the Small Satellite Conference piques your curiosity with all those new ideas, another place to hear fresh views is the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium.  It will be held August 23-25 in Raleigh, NC and will be livestreamed.

On August 24, the Maryland Space Business Roundtable (MSBR) is hosting a luncheon with Rep. Chris Van Hollen that may be particularly interesting. He is widely expected to succeed Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who is retiring at the end of this year.  Van Hollen won the Democratic primary (against Rep. Donna Edwards) earlier this year.  He faces Republican Kathy Szeliga in November, but Democrats have held both Maryland Senate seats since 1986 and therefore is expected to win.  His views on the space program are not well known, so this will give the space community an opportunity to hear directly from him.  Mikulski is one of NASA’s biggest supporters in Congress, especially for earth science and other programs executed at Goddard Space Flight Center, so the extent to which her successor shares those views is important.   Whatever his views, though, he’ll be a freshman in a system that thrives on seniority and it will take some time before he can attain Mikulski’s influence, especially on the all-important Senate Appropriations Committee. She chaired the committee when Democrats controlled the Senate and is now the top Democrat there.  (For those interested in such matters, usually the highest ranking committee or subcommittee member of the party that is not in power is referred to as the “ranking member.”  On Senate Appropriations, though, it has become common to designate that person as the “vice chairman” or “vice chairwoman” in a nod to bipartisanship, so Mikulski is currently vice chairwoman of the committee.)

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday (August 7) morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the weeks for events that we learn about later and add to the Events of Interest list.

Saturday-Thursday, August 6-11

Monday-Tuesday, August 8-9

Tuesday, August 9

Wednesday, August 10

Thursday-Friday, August 11-12

Monday, August 15

Tuesday-Wednesday, August 16-17

Tuesday-Thursday, August 16-18

Thursday, August 18

Friday, August 19

Monday, August 22

Tuesday-Thursday, August 23-25

Wednesday, August 24

 

Note:  This article was updated to add the August 19 spacewalk and the preview press conference on August 15.  It was later corrected with the name of Van Hollen’s Republican opponent, who is Kathy Szeliga, not Katie McGinty.

Last Updated: Aug 07, 2016 10:46 pm ET
What's Happening in Space Policy August 1-19, 2016

What's Happening in Space Policy August 1-19, 2016

By Marcia Smith | Posted: July 31, 2016 12:00 am ET | Last Updated: July 31, 2016 12:39 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the next THREE weeks, August 1-19, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.   The House and Senate are in recess until September 6.

During the Weeks

Whew!  The conventions are over.  Congress is in recess.  It’s vacation time!  For one week, at least.

There is nothing on our space policy events calendar for this week, though we are keeping an eye on NASA to see if they issue an announcement about the results of the July 15 Key Decision Point-B (KDP-B) review of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).   NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said at a NASA Advisory Council meeting last week that the decision memorandum would be out this week or next. He said that cost growth in the program was forcing NASA to decide whether to accept the increased cost estimate or reduce program content to keep it at the originally promised $1.25 billion level.

Apart from that, one has to look all the way to Saturday for the next event of interest — the annual Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University.  This is USU’s 30th conference on a topic that is all the rage today, but three decades ago was of only modest interest.  It is aptly entitled “Pioneering an Industry.”

Also of special interest during this time period is a presentation by the European Union’s (EU’s) Jean-Luc Bald, First Secretary for Space for the EU’s delegation to the United States.  He will speak at an International Space University-DC alumni chapter “space cafe” on August 9.  (Note the new location for these ISU-DC space cafes — Brixton, 901 U Street, NW — instead of The Science Club on 19th Street, which closed in March.)  Inquiring minds want to know what if any aerospace-related impact will result from the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU, including future UK participation in EU space programs (Galileo and Copernicus).  Should be an interesting conversation.

Personally we’re feeling a little overdosed with NASA advisory committee meetings after last week, but for those who can’t get enough, the NAC Heliophysics Committee meets August 8-9 at NASA HQ in Washington and the Outer Planets Assessment Group will get together in Flagstaff August 11-12.  The heliophysics meeting will be available remotely through WebEx/telecom; the OPAG website doesn’t say one way or the other.  Also on the planetary science side of things, the National Academies study committee that’s reviewing NASA’s Planetary Science Division’s new Research & Analysis (R&A) structure holds its second meeting on August 16-18.  It will be at the Keck Center in Washington, DC.

On a completely different front, the annual Space & Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville is coming up August 16-18.  There is a resurgence of interest (in Congress, at least) in using space-based weapons platforms as part of a layered ballistic missile defense (BMD) system.  Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 114-92, Sec. 1685)) required the Director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to begin concept definition of a “space-based ballistic missile intercept layer” providing a “boost-phase layer for missile defense” or “additional defensive options against direct ascent anti-satellite weapons, hypersonic glide vehicles, and maneuvering reentry vehicles.”  The House and Senate Armed Services Committees (HASC and SASC) doubled down on that in this year’s bill (H.R. 4909/S. 2943). The House version, for example, requires the MDA Director to begin planning “for concept definition, design, research, development, engineering evaluation and test of a space-based ballistic missile intercept and defeat layer” and “for the research, development, test and evaluation activities with respect to a space test bed for a missile interceptor capability.”   The idea of space-based BMD weapons platforms was studied extensively during the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” era, but cost and technical feasibility issues moved them to the back burner. The Obama Administration is not persuaded that much has changed.  It issued a veto threat against H.R. 4909 and that provision was cited as one of the reasons.  In any case, the Huntsville conference could be particularly interesting this year.  MDA Director VADM James Syring will speak on Wednesday morning (August 17).   There’s no indication if it will be livestreamed.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning, July 31, are shown below.   Check back throughout the weeks for other events we learn about later and add to the Events of Interest list.

Saturday-Thursday, August 6-11

Monday-Tuesday, August 8-9

Tuesday, August 9

Thursday-Friday, August 11-12

Tuesday-Wednesday, August 16-17

Tuesday-Thursday, August 16-18

Thursday, August 18

 

Last Updated: Jul 31, 2016 12:39 pm ET

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