Sunday is shaping up to be a busy day in the space business with two significant launches — one U.S., one Russian — and a commercial cargo demonstration on tap.  All are subject to change, of course, but here’s the line-up at the moment. 

Fortunately for the U.S. missions, Sunday is still FY2013 so they will not be affected by the gridlock over FY2014 funding.

Orbital’s Cygnus.  At 7:15 am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft will make a second try to berth to the International Space Station (ISS).  The first attempt last Sunday, September 22, was aborted because of a data mismatch between Cygnus and ISS, but a software patch has been uploaded and tested and Orbital and NASA are ready to give it another go.  This is Orbital’s demonstration mission as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

• 3:30 am EDT — Cygnus begins approach to ISS
• 4:30 am EDT — NASA TV coverage begins
• 5:10 am EDT — Cygnus will be about 250 meters from ISS
• 6:12 am EDT — In the Washington, DC area, if the weather cooperates ISS and Cygnus will be visible for four minutes beginning at 6:12 am EDT at 45 degrees elevation travelling from northwest to east northeast (visit NASA’s SpotTheStation website to find out when ISS can be seen elsewhere)
• 7:15 am EDT — Cygnus to be grappled by ISS astronauts using Canadarm2
• 9:00 am EDT — Cygnus installed onto ISS docking port (time approximate)

Space X’s Falcon 9 v1.1.  At 12:00 noon EDT (9:00 am local time at the launch site), the window opens for launch of SpaceX’s new version of the Falcon 9 rocket — Falcon 9 v1.1 — from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.  This launch was supposed to take place September 15, but was postponed for additional engine tests.  It is SpaceX’s first launch from Vandenberg and will place a Canadian scientific satellite, Cassiope, and five smaller satellites into orbit.

• 12:00 noon EDT (9:00 am Pacific) — two hour launch window opens
• Check SpaceX’s website for live coverage

ILS Proton M.   Russia’s Proton M rocket will make its return-to-flight carrying a commercial communications satellite, SES’s Astra-2E.  This is the first Proton M flight since a catastrophic accident 17 seconds after liftoff in July that destroyed three Russian government GLONASS navigation satellites.  No one was hurt.  International Launch Services (ILS) markets the Proton and confirmed today that the launch is scheduled for Sunday afternoon EDT (early Monday morning at the launch site in Kazakhstan).  This flight also had been scheduled for September 15, but was postponed for technical reasons.

• 5:38 pm EDT — launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it will be 3:38 am Monday, September 30 
• ILS says live coverage will be webcast at http://astra2e.imgondemand.com/; Bob Christy at zarya.info provides a second website for viewing  http://www.tsenki.com/en/broadcast/

 

UPDATE, September 27, 1:30 pm:   NASA’s plans in the event of a shutdown are now posted on the agency’s budget website.

ORIGINAL STORY, September 27: With just four days to go before the fiscal year changes from 2013 to 2014, the question of whether Congress will be able to pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operating is as up in the air as ever.

Government workers are to be told by the end of today whether they are “essential” or “non-essential” for shutdown purposes.  Essential employees must report for duty even though they may never be paid; non-essential employees are not allowed to work even if they want to.   Personnel who operate space-based systems — including the International Space Station — seem likely to make the grade as essential, and the shutdown does not affect Members of Congress or political appointees, but who else will be showing up for work on Tuesday morning absent a CR is still to be determined.

Even seasoned political pundits are hedging their bets on how this will turn out.  The Senate is expected to vote today on its version of CR that will delete a House-passed provision to defund the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  It may also fund the government at a higher level than the House-passed version and is likely to last only through November 15 rather than December 15.  

What the House will do with the Senate bill is the question.   The battle is being fought within the Republican party.  Many House Republicans including their leadership (Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eic Cantor) do not want a shutdown for fear it will hurt their chances to retain Republican control of the House in next year’s elections.  They have been trying to convince a small but key group of Tea Party Republicans who want to defund Obamacare to wage that fight on an upcoming debate over the debt limit rather than on this government funding bill, but so far without success.  

The government is expected to hit the debt limit in a few weeks and while emergency measures can prevent a default for a few more weeks, Congress must take action soon to raise or suspend the debt limit in order for the government to pay its bills.  The House leadership reportedly proposed a bill to suspend the debt limit in exchange for defunding Obamacare and other Republican priorities to its own Republican members yesterday, but it didn’t fly.

The Senate is expected to go home today after it passes its version of the CR leaving the House to work through the issues over the weekend and, presumably, send a bill back to the Senate on Monday, the last day of FY2013.    Among the options are that the bill could be a short term “clean” bill that simply keeps the government operating for a week or two while the debate continues, that it calls for a delay in implementing Obamacare instead of defunding it (with the defunding battle to be fought later),  that it restores the language the Senate is about to remove to defund Obamacare, or that there is no bill.   In either of the last two cases, a government shutdown is almost certain.

Although almost everyone refers to it as “a government shutdown,” it actually is a “partial” government shutdown.  As noted, some people are exempt and others will be deemed essential and expected to work without pay.  In the past, Congress has voted to pay those individuals retroactively, but there is no guarantee of that happening this time.

Fiscal Year 2014 begins exactly a week from today and there is still no end game in sight for the political wrangling to keep the government open.  The situation is unchanged from a day ago, or even a week ago, except that the deadline is closing in.

To keep the government operating after midnight September 30, the House and Senate must agree on a funding measure that President Obama is willing to sign into law.  All three must accept it.

The House passed a version of a FY2014 Continuing Resolution (CR) that includes a provision – defunding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — that it knew the Senate would not accept and the President would not sign.  Senate Democrats and enough Senate Republicans do not want a government shutdown and plan to pass a “clean” version of a CR that simply keeps the government operating at current levels.  The Senate bill reportedly will fund the government through November 15, not December 15 like the House bill because the Senate remains hopeful that the 12 regular appropriations bills can clear Congress and be signed into law before then.

A small faction of Senate Republicans — notably Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) — however, are determined to fight.   This afternoon Cruz began what is expected to be a marathon floor speech that seems a lot like a filibuster, though it is not a filibuster since it is not preventing the Senate from proceeding with legislative business.  Democrats reportedly have enough Republican votes to end a real filibuster if one were to materialize, which is considered highly unlikely.

At the moment, the Senate is expected to vote on a clean CR tomorrow afternoon, but the timing is subject to change.  The bill then must go back to the House where its fate is very uncertain.  Although the House Republican Leadership — Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — both also do not want a government shutdown, they are struggling to maintain control of a sizable group of Republican members who are not concerned about shutting down the government, believing that they were elected to get rid of Obamacare.  (Defunding it does not repeal the law, however, it only keeps government agencies from spending money to implement it.)  The leadership reportedly is trying to convince them that the funding bill is not the place to wage that battle.

Threats of a government shutdown have become so common that it can be difficult to take any of this political drama seriously, but trying to guess what Congress will do is a perilous business.  For agencies like NASA, NOAA and DOD, it means trying to manage complex, long-term programs amidst continuing uncertainty.

The following events may be of interest during the week.  The House and Senate will be in session part of the week.

During the Week

It’s crunch time in Washington as FY2013 comes to an end next Monday and there is no law in place to fund the government thereafter.  The House was scheduled to be in recess this week, but the House Republican leadership changed its mind and ordered the House to return on Wednesday.  The Senate will be in session beginning Monday, but no votes are scheduled until Tuesday when it will take up the FY2014 Continuing Resolution (CR) that the House passed on Friday.   It would fund the government through mid-December, but deny any funds for implementing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).   The Senate is expected to reject that bill and pass a “clean” CR that only funds the government.  What happens after that is anyone’s guess.  The House Republican leadership and many Republican Senators do not want a government shutdown, but there are enough House Republicans who are happy to shut down the government temporarily in order to make political points about their views on Obamacare that the end game is far from clear.  It’s a high stakes political battle.

With many in the space community over in Beijing for the International Astronautical Congress — the annual conference of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and International Institute of Space Law (IISL) — there are relatively few space policy events coming up, but those we know of are listed below.

Monday-Friday, September 23-27

• International Astronautical Congress, Beijing, China

Tuesday, September 24

• Cygnus Spacecraft Arrival at the International Space Station (delayed from Sunday), time TBA
• FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), telecon, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Wednesday, September 25

• Launch and Docking of Soyuz TMA-10M with Three ISS Crewmembers, launch 4:58 pm ET, docking 10:47 pm ET

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

During the Week

With two-and-a-half weeks to go until the beginning of the new fiscal year, there is still no sign of an agreement on keeping the government operating after September 30.   The dispute at this point is primarily among Republicans in the House.  Some, including Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) appear determined to avoid a shutdown for fear it will hurt Republican chances to retain control of the House in next year’s elections.   Others are less concerned about next year’s elections than about other high profile issues like Obamacare and want to tie any agreement on federal funding overall to defunding that program.   The sides seems pretty far apart at the moment, but anything can happen between now and Friday when Cantor has scheduled a vote on a Continuing Resolution (CR) subject to a rule being granted.  The House is scheduled to be in recess next week, but Cantor has hinted that if agreement on a CR is not reached by the end of this week, he may keep the House in session.

Apart from that high stakes political drama, in the space business many eyes will be focused on Orbital Sciences Corporation’s launch of its Antares rocket sending the Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).   The launch is currently scheduled for 10:50 am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Wednesday, September 18, but launch dates can always slip.  Stay tuned to SpacePolicyOnline.com for updates.

Lots of other interesting meetings and congressional hearings on tap as well, as detailed below.

Monday, September 16

• Space Policy & History Forum Featuring Alan Ladwig, National Air and Space Museum (D.C. location), 4:00-5:00 pm EDT (note RSVP requirement and instructions)

Tuesday, September 17

• Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee Nomination Hearing for NASA CFO Beth Robinson to Become Under Secretary of Energy, 366 Dirksen, 9:30 am EDT
• MSBR Luncheon Featuring Louis Uccellini, Director of the National Weather Service, Martin’s Crosswinds, Greenbelt, MD, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm EDT
• Space and National Security (Stimson Center), 1111 19th Street, NW, Washington, DC, 12:30-2:00 pm EDT

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 17-18

•  NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Heliophysics Subcommittee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC

Wednesday, September 18

• Launch of Antares rocket and Cygnus Spacecraft, Wallops Island, VA, 10:50 am EDT (launch window open to 11:05 am EDT)  Launch dates are always subject to change.

Thursday, September 19

• Future of Milsatcom (Marshall Inst/Space Enterprise Council), 601 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, North Building (enter on Indiana Ave), 9:00-11:00 am EDT
• SASC Nomination Hearing for Deborah Lee James to be Secretary of the Air Force, G50 Dirksen, 9:30 am EDT
• Senate Commerce Nomination Hearing for Kathy Sullivan to be NOAA Administrator, 253 Russell, 10:00 am EDT  (Also for Jo Emily Handelsman to be OSTP Associate Director for Science, and Robert Simon to be OSTP Associate Director for Environment and Energy)
• House SS&T Joint Subcmte Hearing on Dysfunction in Management of Weather and Climate Satellites, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am EDT
• NASA History Lecture Featuring Michael Neufeld, Natl Air & Space Museum, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm EDT

Friday, September 20

• House SS&T Space Sbcmte Hearing on NASA Infrastructure: Enabling Discovery and Ensuring Capability, 2318 Rayburn, 9:30 am EDT
• NAC Astrophysics Subcommittee, virtual, 2:00-3:00 pm EDT

The House will postpone until next week its vote on a FY2014 Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operating after September 30.   The CR was introduced last night and a vote was expected tomorrow, but Republicans reportedly need more time to convince their own members to support the bill.

The bill, H. J. Res. 59, would keep the government operating at current levels — including the sequester — until December 15, 2013.  For space programs, the only exception was made for NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) weather satellite programs, which would be funded sufficiently to ensure their launch dates do not slip.  The total amount of funding in the bill is $986.3 billion.

Democrats oppose the bill because they obkect to the sequester and because an associated House rule would require the Senate to vote on a separate bill to defund Obamacare before voting on the CR.  It does not require the Senate to agree to defund Obamacare, only that a vote take place according to The Hill newspaper.

Some House Republicans oppose the bill because it does not tie the fate of FY2014 federal funding to delaying or defunding Obamacare more directly.  They want the CR itself to include Obamacare defunding rather than allowing two separate votes.   Enough House Republicans oppose the bill that the House leadership decided to postpone action until next week.  They will use the extra time to try and convince enough of their own members to vote aye to ensure passage of the bill, since they do not expect any favorable Democratic votes.   Those House Republicans do not want the government to shut down for lack of funding for fear it will hurt their chances of retaining control of the House in next year’s elections.

 

The following activities may be of interest in the week ahead.  Congress returns to work this week with a full plate of issues to resolve. 

During the Week

Syria tops the issues Congress will grapple with as it returns to work after its summer recess, but passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government after September 30 is also on the docket.   The content of the CR is the subject of many rumors starting with how long it will last (weeks or months) and whether it will hold agencies to their FY2013 funding levels, the funding levels in the House-passed budget resolution (which are lower), the funding levels in the Senate-passed budget resolution (which are higher), or something in between.   Congress often compromises on the “something in between” level.  We may get a hint later this week; some reports suggest that the House could take up a CR on Thursday.

NASA still has not released its FY2013 operating plan, which details how the money it was allocated for FY2013 as adjusted for the sequester and two rescissions will be distributed among its various programs, projects and activities.  SpacePolicyOnline.com was able to obtain top level numbers from NASA last week and we updated our FY2013 and FY2014 budget fact sheets accordingly, but the next tier of detail is available only for planetary science based on a presentation by planetary science division director Jim Green to the NRC’s Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) a few days ago (which we also added to our fact sheets).  We continue to try to get NASA to release the more detailed figures for other parts of the Science Mission Directorate and the rest of NASA.

In other matters, three International Space Station crew members are set to return home on Tuesday night; SpaceX is gearing up for its first launch of a new version of the Falcon 9 rocket — v1.1 — from Vandenberg Air Force Base, though it has not announced the date so it may or may not occur this week (so it’s not listed below); and there are meetings and conferences from Washington, D.C. to Wailea, Hawaii as shown below.

Tuesday, September 10

• House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Satellite TV, 2141 Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 am ET
• Soyuz TMA-08M landing with three ISS crew members, 10:58 pm ET (8:58 am September 11 local time at the landing site in Kazakhstan)

Tuesday-Thursday, September 10-12

• AIAA Space 2013 conference, San Diego, CA

Tuesday-Friday, September 10-13

• AMOS Space Surveillance Conference, Wailea, HI

Thursday, September 12

• The Longevity of Human Civilization, Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, room 119, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm ET

Officially Congress does not return until September 9, but at least one committee (Senate Foreign Relations) reportedly is planning a hearing on the situation in Syria this week and others may follow suit in the wake of President Obama’s decision to seek congressional approval for military action there.  No space-related hearings are expected, however.  Meanwhile, here’s what IS happening in space policy in the coming week.

Tuesday, September 3

• NASA International Space Station Advisory Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Wednesday,  September 4

• NASA News Conference on Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Upcoming COTS Launch (Antares/Cygnus), Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 3:00 pm Central Time (4:00 pm Eastern)

Wednesday-Friday, September 4-6

• National Research Council (NRC) Space Studies Board Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS), NRC Keck Center, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC
• Some sessions are closed (there are open sessions on Wednesday and Thursday only — see agenda)
  Free on-line pre-registration is highly recommended to ease access to the building — see CAPS website, Meetings and Events, September 4-6)

Thursday, September 5

• European Satellite Day, Brussels, Belgium
• WSBR Luncheon Featuring Frank Culbertson, Orbital Sciences Corp., University Club, 1136 16th St., NW, Washington, DC, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET

Space policy events are not likely to interfere in back-to-school activities in the coming week — there is nothing on the schedule as of today (though that can always change).  The pace picks up a bit next week and will almost certainly resume with vigor the week of September 9 when Congress returns.

August 26-30 (Monday-Friday)

• Not a thing at the moment

Tuesday, September 3

• International Space Station Advisory Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Friday, September 4-6

• National Research Council, Space Studies Board, Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS), NRC Keck Center, 500 5th Street, NW, Washington, DC (open sessions are on September 4 and 5 only, online preregistration is strongly encouraged to ease entrance into the building)

Thursday, September 5

• European Satellite Day, Brussels, Belgium
• Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon featuring Orbital’s Frank Culbertson, University Club, Washington, DC, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET