Here is our list of space policy related events for the week of April 25-29, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

After many years of delays, Russia says that it is finally ready to conduct the first launch from its new Siberian launch site, Vostochny.  The launch is April 27 at 5:01 am Moscow Time, which is April 26 (Tuesday) 10:01 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).  (We should note that some press reports cite a potentially earlier launch date, but Russia’s official news agency, TASS, reported on April 19 that the launch is set for April 27 at 5:01 Moscow Time, so that is what we use here.)  Russia’s Roscosmos space agency/state corporation sometimes webcasts launches.  If we hear of any other live webcasts, we’ll add them to our calendar entry.  Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com has comprehensive information about Russia’s decision to build a new launch site within Russia’s borders to handle many of the launches that now take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan became an independent country and Russia must lease the facility from the Kazakh government with financial and national security ramifications.  (Russia also has a launch site near the Arctic Circle at Plesetsk for high inclination launches.)

Here in Washington, Congress will be very busy Wednesday morning marking up the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (House Armed Services Committee) and the Space Weather Research and Forecasting Act (Senate Commerce Committee), as well as holding a hearing on DOD’s FY2017 budget request (Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee). 

The Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) and the Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will hold their spring meetings this week.  ASEB meets Monday and Tuesday; SSB Tuesday through Thursday.  The meeting on Tuesday is a joint meeting of both boards.  Unfortunately, we’re told there will be no webcast of either Board’s meetings, which is a shame because the agendas are chock full of really interesting topics and speakers.  Among them is a panel discussion on Tuesday afternoon on the “Future of Low Earth Orbit – Moving Toward a Commercial Market.”

Speaking of commercial space, the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) meets this week.  Its various working groups meet on Wednesday and the full committee on Thursday.   The agenda was not posted as of this morning, but COMSTAC meetings are always very interesting.

The President of the French space agency, Jean-Yves Le Gall, will speak to the Washington Space Business Roundtable (WSBR) on Friday at the University Club.

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

Monday-Tuesday, April 25-26

• Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (National Academy of Sciences), Keck Center, 500 5th Street, NW, Washington, DC (April 26 is joint with the Space Studies Board)

Tuesday

• Russia’s First Launch from New Vostochny Site, Vostochny, Ruussia, 10:01 pm ET (April 27, 5:01 am Moscow Time)

Tuesday-Thursday, April 26-28

• Space Studies Board (National Academy of Sciences), Keck Center, 500 5th Street, NW, Washington, DC (April 26 is joint with the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board)

Wednesday, April 27

• Assured Communications 2016, Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, VA, 8:30 – 10:30 am ET
• HASC Full Committee Markup FY2017 NDAA, 2218 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
• Senate Commerce Committee Markup Space Weather Research and Forecasting Act, 253 Russell, 10:00 am ET (one of several pieces of legislation to be considered)  Webcast
• Senate Appropriations Defense Sbcmte Hearing on FY2017 DOD Budget, 192 Dirksen, 10:30 am ET

Wednesday-Thursday, April 27-28

•  COMSTAC, NTSB Conference Center, 429 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Washington DC

Thursday-Friday, April 28-29

• NOAA Science Advisory Board, Silver Spring Sheraton, 8777 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, MD

Friday, April 29

• WSBR Luncheon Featuring CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall, University Club, 1135 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET

Three Senators introduced legislation yesterday to clarify federal agency responsibilities for space weather research and forecasting.  Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced S. 2817, which allocates specific roles to NOAA, DOD, NASA, NSF and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  NOAA, for example, is directed to “immediately begin planning” to ensure there is no gap in solar observations.  The bill focuses on policy and does not authorize any funding. [UPDATE:  The Senate Commerce committee announced this afternoon that it will mark up the bill on Wednesday, April 27.] [UPDATE 2: The bill was ordered favorably reported from committee.]

Space weather — the result of particles emitted by the Sun interacting with Earth’s atmosphere and potentially damaging satellites and ground-based infrastructure like the electric grid — is of growing concern.   A 2008 report from the National Research Council raised awareness of the societal and economic impacts of space weather.  NASA has studied solar and space physics, the underlying science behind space weather, for decades as has the European Space Agency (ESA).  Satellites positioned at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point now give warnings of solar eruptions.  NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, CO issues forecasts and alerts when damaging events are expected.

NASA’s veteran Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) and ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) were joined by the NOAA-NASA-Air Force Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) last year.  ACE was launched in 1997 and SOHO in 1995.  NASA provided three of SOHO’s 12 instruments and operates the spacecraft.  SOHO has a type of telescope called a coronagraph that provides the first indication of an eruption on the Sun.  The particles then fly past ACE and DSCOVR, which collect data about intensity and polarization that in turn allow SWPC to make its forecasts.

Last year in its FY2016 budget request, the White House proposed that NASA be responsible for all non-military satellite earth observations, with NOAA responsible only for weather satellites, including space weather.  NOAA requested $2.5 million to begin planning for the next space weather satellite.  Congress agreed with the assignment of responsibilities, but approved only half the funding.  The FY2017 request is also $2.5 million.

In October 2015, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a National Space Weather Strategy and National Space Weather Action Plan.  They set six strategic goals to reduce the nation’s vulnerability to space weather.

Some of the OSTP goals, such as establishing benchmarks for space weather events, are contained in the new legislation. the Space Weather Research and Forecasting Act.   The bill would clarify the roles and responsibilities of federal agencies for understanding, predicting and forecasting space weather:

• NOAA and DOD would provide operational space weather forecasts;
• NASA and NSF would conduct basic heliophysics research, develop next generation technologies, and transfer findings, data and models to operational forecasters;
• NOAA would immediately begin planning for back-up solar observations to prevent a single point of failure in the current satellite fleet (SOHO’s age is of particular concern);
• the four agencies would begin planning for next-generation observations and science missions;
• the agencies would develop space weather benchmarks to characterize the nature, frequency, and intensity of expected space weather events; and
• the Department of Homeland Security would assess the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to space weather events.

The bill has other provisions to foster greater interagency cooperation, multidisciplinary research, and partnerships with international, commercial and academic organizations.   It also directs NASA to “seek to implement” missions identified in the most recent NRC Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics.

Dan Baker, Director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado-Boulder, chaired that Decadal Survey and praised the legislation in a press release issued by the Senators:  “I believe this legislation will be instrumental in helping the nation achieve the kind of operational space weather system that we’ve long needed.”   The CEO and Executive Director of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Christine McEntee, also supports the bill, saying AGU applauds “the bill’s intent to further scientifically informed action towards disaster preparation, mitigation, response, and recovery.”

The bill was referred to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which announced on April 21 that it will mark up the bill on April 27 at 10:00 am ET (along with several other bills and pending nominations).   All three sponsors of the legislation are members of the committee and of its Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee.  Peters is the ranking member (top Democrat) on that subcommittee.

Update:  This article was updated at 2:20 pm ET on April 21 to reflect the Senate Commerce Committee’s announcement that it will mark up the bill next week.

Here is our list of space policy related events for the week of April 18-22, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

As expected, Congress did not meet the April 15 deadline to pass a FY2017 budget and there is no indication that it will succeed in doing so any time soon.  Nonetheless, the appropriations process must proceed.  This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will markup the bills that fund the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (Transportation-HUD) and NASA and NOAA (Commerce-Justice-Science).  Subcommittee markups are on Tuesday; full committee on Thursday.  That’s just a first step — there’s a long way to go — but will give an indication of how the Senate, at least, is looking at funding those programs.

One of NASA’s most stalwart supporters in the Senate, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), is retiring this year.  Tomorrow (Monday) she will give her annual speech to the Maryland Space Business Roundtable, which may offer a preview of what to expect at the CJS markup.  Mikulski is a very powerful advocate for NASA because of her seniority on the appropriations committee (she chaired the full committee and the CJS subcommittee when Democrats controlled the Senate and is the top Democrat on both panels now).  It will be interesting to see if any senior Democratic appropriator steps up to the plate for NASA next year.  CJS also appropriates money to NOAA and Mikulski supports NOAA, too,  but she is more publicly critical of NOAA’s management of the weather satellite programs.

The House Armed Services Committee will begin marking up the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week.  (Not sure of the difference between an authorization and an appropriation?  Or, for that matter, what a markup is?  Read our “What’s a Markup?” fact sheet.)   Subcommittee markups are on Wednesday and Thursday.  The Strategic Forces subcommittee oversees most defense space issues.  Its markup is on Thursday at noon.  Full committee markup is next week.

On Tuesday, the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on small satellites and the commercial space launch industry.  Witnesses are Elliott Pulham of the Space Foundation, Eric Stallmer of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and Jason Andrews from Spaceflight Industries, a Seattle-based company that matches customers who need to put small payloads into orbit with launch service providers and offers associated services (like payload integration).

NASA is having one of its “Destination Station” events here in Washington on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but we haven’t heard much about it other than a media advisory from Johnson Space Center.  It reveals that the non-profit organization that manages research aboard the U.S. segment of the International Space Station (ISS), the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), is having an “industry day” on Thursday.  Oddly, we could find no mention of it on the CASIS website so we don’t have any details other than what is in the media advisory.  The most recent “event” on the CASIS website was for something that took place in February.  Perhaps CASIS will update its website soon. NASA’s Destination Station website could use an update as well.  We confess that we were not aware that NASA had a Destination Station series of events until now.  Apparently they have been held in various places across the country since 2011.  NASA has a dedicated website for it that features a list of “where we’ve been, where we’re going,” but it ends in July 2015.  According to the website, Destination Station is an ISS “national awareness campaign.”  It would be hard to find anyone who disagrees that more effort is needed to make the nation aware of ISS.  The Internet is a great way to do that, but out-of-date content doesn’t help the cause.

Friday is Earth Day 2016.  Go out and do something nice for our planet!

Monday, April 18

• MSBR Luncheon Featuring Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), University of Maryland Conference Center, Hyattsville, MD, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET

Tuesday April 19

• House SS&T Space Subcommittee Hearing on Small Satellites and Commercial Space Launch Industry, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• Senate Appropriations T-HUD Subcommittee markup (incl FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation), 192 Dirksen, 10:30 am ET (audio webcast)
• Senate Appropriations CJS Subcommittee markup (incl NASA and NOAA), 192 Dirksen, 2:30pm ET (audio webcast)

Wednesday-Thursday, April 20-21

• HASC Subcommittee Markups FY2017 NDAA, various times and locations (Strategic Forces Subcommittee is at 12:00 pm ET on April 21)

Thursday, April 21

• CASIS/NASA Industry Day, General Assembly, 12th Floor, 1133 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 9:30 am – 1:00 pm ET
• Senate Appropriations Full Committee Markup T-HUD and CJS bills, 106 Dirksen, 10:30 am ET (audio webcast)

Friday, April 22

• Earth Day, everywhere

 

 

As promised, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) released a final draft of his American Space Renaissance Act (ASRA) at the Space Symposium today.  It will be officially introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday.   Bridenstine created a website devoted exclusively to the legislation and welcomes input. 

Bridenstine said earlier this year that he does not expect the bill to pass en toto.  Instead, he sees it as a repository of plug-and-play provisions that could be inserted into other pieces of legislation, including this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  Bridenstine serves on both the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, which authorizes NASA and NOAA activities, and the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), which oversees defense programs.

The bill would “permanently secure the United States of America as the preeminent spacefaring nation.”

Bridenstine created a website where interested persons can read the bill and a section-by-section analysis, provide input, and sign up for updates.  It is a broad bill encompassing military, civil and commercial space activities.  According to the website, the bill’s objectives are to:

• Project military strength and protect our space based capabilities
• Provide certainty to encourage commercial space innovation, and
• Promote stability, accountability, and mission clarity at NASA

Drafting legislation typically takes place behind the scenes, with stakeholders lobbying to get favored provisions in and troublesome provisions out. Bridenstine has welcomed input from everywhere, however, posting an initial draft on his website in March and creating a link for input to this current version on the ASRA website.  In a sense, the bill is a potpourri of provisions that align with Bridenstine’s view of the world, which champions a strong defense and promotes commercial activities.

A few (yes, just a few) of the provisions in the 110-page bill would —

National Security Space

• require the President to develop doctrine for responding to deliberately hostile acts against U.S. government, commercial and allied/partner space assets;
• codify the roles and responsibilities of the Principal Defense Space Advisor (a position that already exists and is filled by the Secretary of the Air Force, but could be eliminated by a future administration if not codified in law);
• require the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) to leverage hosted payloads to the maximum extent practicable;
• require a number of actions regarding the space- and ground-based components of military satellite communications systems;
• require the President to establish a National Executive Committee on Weather similar to the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee;
• require SecDef to develop and certify standards to facilitate the use of commercial weather data;
• authorize $10 million for a commercial weather data pilot program (Bridenstine created one for NOAA already);
• prohibit reliance on foreign partners for cloud characterization, theater weather imagery and space-based weather data;
• after December 31, 2022, instruct DOD to consider bids from launch providers utilizing domestically-built engines as costing 25 percent less than the list cost of the bid for the purpose of the competitive bidding process;
• require DOD to establish a venture-class launch services program and authorize $27 million to award not less than four contracts (NASA has a venture-class program for very small satellites already);
• authorize $4 million to conduct studies on allied launch service providers to serve as backup to launch national security missions;
• require the Secretary of the Air Force to commercialize Air Force Satellite Control Network operations by January 2018

 Civil Space

• amend the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act to align NASA’s mission with a doctrine of pioneering space;
• direct NASA to be the first to arrive at space destinations, expand access, and put in place infrastructure to facilitate utilization and development;
• establish a 5-year term for the NASA Administrator;
• establish a 21-person NASA Leadership and Advising Commission whose members are chosen by Congress to provide a list of candidates for Administrator and provide Congress with an analysis of NASA’s annual budget submission and recommend changes;
• require all NASA appropriations to be multi-year or no-year;
• establish a $250 million revolving fund to supplement NASA programs suffering development challenges and support infrastructure upgrades;
• direct the NASA Inspector General to recommend a mechanism for the automatic removal of the Administrator based on program delays or lack of adherence to long term plans;
• beginning October 1, 2019, require NASA to determine the maximum probable loss associated with commercially-provided launches, and to require launch service providers to obtain certain levels of insurance;
• establish landing on Mars as NASA’s primary human spaceflight priority;
• express a sense of Congress that the United States should maintain a continuous presence in low Earth orbit and utilize commercial operations for that purpose;
• by the end of 2018, require NASA to enter into at least one competitively bid agreement to test the viability of a commercially built habitat;
• effective January 1, 2023, instruct NASA to consider bids from launch providers utilizing domestically-built engines as costing 25 percent less than the list cost of the bid for the purposes of the competitive bid process

Commercial Space

• establish the position of Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Commercial Space Transportation and designate this person as the Associate Administrator of FAA/AST;
• authorize appropriations for FAA/AST for 2017-2021, rising from $43.2 million in FY2017 to $99 million in FY2021 (the FY2016 level is $17.8 million);
• establish an Office of Spaceports within FAA/AST;
• establish a Space Awareness Advisory Committee to advise on space situational awareness (SSA);
• direct the Secretary of Transportation to utilize private sector SSA capabilities to the extent practicable;
• define Space Traffic Management (STM) and direct that a lead government agency for STM be designated, and regulations to prevent collisions in Earth orbit be promulgated, by September 30, 2020;
• require the Secretary of State to seek bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements with spacefaring nations to standardize regulations and work through interagency and multilateral processes to develop a unified, global space traffic management architecture;
• direct the NOAA Administrator to promulgate rules on the treatment of weather data from commercial space-based systems to ensure the United States releases only the minimum amount of proprietary data to remain in compliance with World Meteorological Organization Resolution 40 (WMO 40);
• require NASA to submit a report on how to leverage industry capabilities for Earth science missions;
• require the Secretary of Commerce to review the feasibility and benefits of rearranging space-related activities within the Department;
• make changes to how commercial remote sensing licenses are handled;
• authorize appropriations for 2017-2021 for commercial weather data buys by NOAA, rising from $15 million in FY2017 to $130 million in FY2021 (NOAA has $3 million in FY2016 to evaluate the feasibility of using commercial data in numerical weather models);
• express a sense of Congress that the Secretary of Transportation has authorities to determine compliance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty;
• establish a loan guarantee program within the Department of Commerce to support a domestic space industrial base for national security;
• permit the Secretary of Transportation to allow experimental aircraft to be used for commercial compensation for spaceflight training

 

Editor’s Note:  The section-by-section portion of the website is NOT user-friendly.  Here’s a hint:  be sure to use the sliding scale at the bottom of the webpage to make the font large enough to read, not the more obvious + sign to which we are all so accustomed.   And be forewarned — there are a lot of ads.

Here is our list of space policy related events for the week of April 11-15, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.   The House and Senate both are in session this week.

During the Week

The Appropriations Committees on both sides of Capitol Hill will begin marking up the FY2017 appropriations bills this week and adopting the “302(b)” allocations that dictate how much money each of the 12 subcommittees can spend.  Usually that step comes after the House and Senate have passed Budget Resolutions to set the overall amount of money Congress can spend in a given year, but no Budget Resolutions have passed yet and it is not clear that any will.  Congress has ways around the Budget Resolution process (this wouldn’t be the first year that Congress could not pass one) and since the budget deal worked out last fall between Congress and the White House covers FY2017, the total spending figures exist already.  Tea Party Republicans do not like them, though, and want a new deal to reduce spending for non-defense programs, which is complicating House action on a Budget Resolution.  Time is marching on, however, and the appropriations committees need to act so they are going to get the markups underway.   Those scheduled for this week do NOT include Commerce-Justice-Science (which includes NASA and NOAA) or the main Defense Appropriations bill, although both will mark up the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs bill.  (The other bills scheduled for markup at subcommittee or full committee level this week are Energy-Water in both the House and Senate, and the Agriculture bill in the House.)

TOTALLY unrelated to space policy, but perhaps of interest to our readers who are U2 fans, Bono is scheduled to testify to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations on Tuesday at 2:00 pm ET.   The topic is “causes and consequences of violent extremism and the role of foreign assistance.”

Most of the space policy action this week will be in Colorado Springs, CO at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium.  There are many interesting sessions at the conference itself, including the Space Agencies Leaders panel Tuesday morning and Rep. Jim Bridenstine’s talk just afterwards where he will release his draft American Space Renaissance Act.  Side events also will be of interest, starting tomorrow (Monday) afternoon when Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance will announce a new partnership at 4:00 pm Mountain Time (6:00 pm Eastern).  That press conference will be webcast.  (There is no indication that any sessions of the conference itself will be webcast.)

If you can’t get to Colorado, ASCE is having an interesting conference in Orlando this week on engineering in extreme environments, including space.  A pre-conference 8-hour short course on “Space Mining and Planetary Surface Construction” kicks that conference off tomorrow.

And, of course, Tuesday, April 12, is the 55th anniversary of the launch of the first man in space — the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin.  “Yuri’s Night” events are scheduled around the world to celebrate his April 12, 1961 historic achievement of orbiting the Earth one time.  (Alan Shepard was the first American to reach space, which he did three weeks later on May 5, 1961, but his was a suborbital, not orbital, flight.  The first American to orbit Earth was John Glenn on February 20, 1962.)

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

Monday, April 11

• Space Mining and Planetary Surface Construction Short Course, Orlando, FL (in conjunction with ASCE Earth and Space Conference)
• Bigelow Aerospace-United Launch Alliance press conference, Colorado Springs, CO (in conjunction with Space Symposium), 4:00 pm Mountain Time (6:00 pm Easter)  Webcast

Monday-Thursday, April 11-14

• Space Symposium (Space Foundation), Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, CO

Monday-Friday, April 11-15

• Earth and Space:  Engineering for Extreme Environments (ASCE), Rosen Centre Hotel, Orlando, FL
• Legal Subcommittee of the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (continues from last week), Vienna, Austria

Tuesday, April 12

• Yuri’s Night, various times, various locations around the globe

Wednesday, April 13

• First Rock from the Sun: Exploring Mercury by Spacecraft (Carnegie Institution), Carnegie Institution for Science, 1530 P Street, NW, Washington, DC, 6:45 pm ET

Here is our list of space policy events for the week of April 4-8, 2016.  The Senate is in session this week.  The House remains in recess; it will return April 12.

During the Week

If you haven’t registered already, you’ll miss one of the most interesting events coming up this week — a space weather symposium hosted by the State Department and the Secure World Foundation (SWF).   It’s at the State Department, so everyone had to register by last Wednesday to get on the list to attend.   Space weather is a hot topic these days with many forums for discussion, but this one seems especially interesting because it includes an international panel with experts from the UK, Europe and international organizations.  Moderated by SWF’s Laura Delgado López, it has representatives from the UK Met Office, the European Space Agency, the World Meteorological Organization, the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and NATO.  It will be preceded by a panel of U.S. experts from NASA, NOAA, the Air Force, and the Department of Homeland Security, moderated by Bill Murtaugh from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  If you can’t make it in person, the event will be recorded and posted on the Web later.  C-SPAN also may cover it live.

SWF has another timely symposium on Friday.  That one is on the policy and practical implications of spectrum protection.  With everyone’s insatiable appetite for wireless broadband connectivity, other users of the electromagnetic spectrum — like military, civil, and commercial satellites — are under increasing pressure to surrender spectrum assigned to them.   James Miller from NASA, Scott Pace from the Space Policy Institute at the George Washington University, Jennifer Warren from Lockheed Martin and Christopher Hegarty from CNS Engineering & Spectrum will explain it all.   Lunch will be served, so please RSVP by Wednesday so they know how much food to order.

Later on Friday afternoon, SpaceX will attempt its first cargo launch to the International Space Station (ISS) since the SpaceX CRS-7 (SpX-7) failure in June 2015.   The Falcon 9 has launched three times since then, all successfully, but this is the first one with a Dragon cargo spacecraft chock full of supplies and equipment for the ISS crew. Among Dragon’s cargo is a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) that will ride in Dragon’s unpressurized “trunk.” Later it will be moved to an ISS docking port using Canadarm 2 where it will be expanded and used for tests over the next 2 years. (Mr. Bigelow insists it is “expandable” rather than “inflatable” even though it builds on NASA’s work on inflatables when it was developing the TransHab habitation module for ISS.  TransHab was cancelled by NASA, but Bigelow Aerospace picked it up for further development and has launched two test versions, Genesis I and Genesis II, already as free-flyers.)  Launch is at 4:43 pm ET and will be broadcast on NASA TV (and presumably on spacex.com).  SpaceX almost always tries to land the Falcon 9 first stage, but it has not yet posted a press kit for this launch, so we can’t definitively say that’s in the plan this time (but it’s a good bet).

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday afternoon are listed below.   Check back throughout the week to see other events we learn about as the week unfolds and add to our Events of Interest list.

Monday, April 4

• Space Weather as a Global Challenge (State Dept/SWF), The State Department, Washington, DC, 8:15 – 11:45 am ET

Tuesday, April 5

• AIAA-NCS Luncheon Featuring NASA’s Jason Crusan, Army Navy Country Club, Arlington, VA, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET
• Preparing DOD for the Future with Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter (CSIS), 1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 1:00-2:00 pm ET (webcast)

Thursday, April 7

• WSBR Luncheon on Small Satellites and Space Sustainability, Canadian Embassy, Washington, DC, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET

Friday, April 8

• Spectrum Protection: Examination of Policy and Practical Implication (SWF), 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 12:00-2:00 pm ET (RSVP by April 6)
• SpaceX CRS-8 (SpX-8) Cargo Launch to ISS, Cape Canaveral, FL, 4:43 pm ET (watch on NASA TV)

Here is our list of space policy events for the week of March 28-April 1, 2016.  The House and Senate are in recess this week.

During the Week

Congress may be in recess, but there’s still plenty going on in the world of space policy.

The Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine holds its annual Space Science Week Tuesday through Thursday.  The “week” brings together the five SSB standing committees, some of which are joint with other boards:  astrobiology and planetary science, astronomy and astrophysics, biological and physical science in space, earth science and applications from space, and solar and space physics.   The committees meet in plenary session on Tuesday afternoon.  A free public lecture will take place on Wednesday featuring Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto.  The lecture begins at 6:45 pm ET and will be webcast.  All of the activities are at the National Academy of Sciences building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.

The NASA Advisory Council (NAC) meets at NASA headquarters in Washington on Thursday and Friday (its Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee meets on Tuesday, too).  The NAC agenda has not been posted yet, but these meetings typically are an excellent way to get updated on many of NASA’s programs and the budget and policy issues surrounding them.  The meeting is available via WebEx and telecon for those who cannot attend in person.

Activities aboard the International Space Station (ISS) continue at a blistering pace.  Orbital ATK’s Cygnus just arrived yesterday, NASA will hold a teleconference tomorrow (Monday) to discuss the science experiments that will be aboard SpaceX’s Dragon cargo mission to ISS next week (April 8), and on Thursday Russia will launch its next Progress cargo craft (arriving at ISS on April 2).  All three systems suffered failures in the October 2014-July 2015 period and NASA and its partners are still catching up on supplies, although there have been a number of cargo missions since then. 

The first of two upcoming space weather seminars will be held on Thursday afternoon in Washington.  This one is sponsored by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.  Its focus is the “emerging opportunities for science and practical applications” and includes Tammy Dickinson from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dan Baker from the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), and Lou Lanzerotti from the New Jersey Institute of Technology among its very distinguished speaker lineup.  The other seminar is next Monday (April 4) at the State Department and is sponsored by the State Department and the Secure World Foundation (more on that in next week’s edition).

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the week to learn about additional events that come to our attention and get added to our Events of Interest list.

Monday, March 28

• NASA media telecon on science experiments aboard SpaceX CRS-8, 1:00 pm ET (listen on NASA News Radio)

Tuesday, March 29

• NASA Advisory Council Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm ET (WebEx/telecon)

Tuesday-Thursday, March 29 – 31

• Space Studies Board’s Space Science Week, National Academy of Sciences building, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC

Wednesday, March 30

• Free Public Lecture on the New Horizons Mission to Pluto with Alan Stern, National Academy of Sciences building, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 6:45 pm ET (webcast)

Thursday, March 31

• Progress MS-02 Launch to ISS, Baikonur, Kazakhstan, 12:23 pm ET (10:23 pm local time at the launch site), watch on NASA TV
• Space Weather Science and Applications (USRA/SPI),  Capitol Hill Holiday Inn, Washington, DC, 1:00 – 5:00 pm ET (followed by reception)

Thursday-Friday, March 31- April 1

• NASA Advisory Council, NASA HQ, Washington, DC (WebEx/telecon)