The top Democrats and Republicans on the House committee that authorizes NASA activities introduced a bill today rejecting the White House’s plan to accelerate a human return to the Moon by 2024.  The bill focuses on human exploration of Mars. The Moon is consigned to a limited role for precursor activities and astronauts back on the surface in 2028 as NASA originally planned, not the amped up 2024 schedule announced by Vice President Pence last year and later named the Artemis program.

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NASA announced today that Marla Pérez-Davis has been appointed Director of Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. With her appointment, and that of Dennis Andrucyk to head Goddard Space Flight Center, all the NASA centers now have permanent leaders.

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Private sector and academic institutions involved in commercial space activities are moving forward in establishing a mechanism to share information about cybersecurity threats to satellites and their ground systems.  The founding members of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Space ISAC) are meeting this week in Washington, DC to finalize the mechanics of the organization and meet with government stakeholders.

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Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for January 21, 2020:  Andrucyk to take Goddard post permanently, NRO smallsat to launch from New Zealand, vote to name the Mars 2020 rover by January 27.  Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of January 19-25, 2020 and any insight we can offer about them.  The Senate is in session this week beginning Tuesday.  The House is in recess except for pro forma sessions.

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SpaceX’s successful test this morning of an abort system to return astronauts safely to Earth if anything goes awry during launch moves the United States closer to restoring the capability to launch astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).  SpaceX’s Crew Dragon system could take two NASA astronauts to ISS in the second quarter of this year if data analysis and other tests go as planned.  NASA has not been able to launch anyone to ISS since the space shuttle program was terminated in 2011.  It currently pays Russia for crew transportation services.

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With its first tranche of funding for NASA’s new mission to search for Near Earth Objects (NEOs), Congress is underscoring its interest in protecting Earth from these Potentially Hazardous Objects.  After directing NASA in 2005 to find 90 percent of NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter within 15 years, it is now funding a dedicated space telescope to make that a reality.  The original deadline cannot be met, but the new mission will reduce from 30 to 10 the number of years still needed to achieve the goal.

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SpaceX and NASA are still planning to conduct the Crew Dragon In-Flight Abort (IFA) test tomorrow, but the weather is a particular challenge since it needs to be good not only for launch, but recovery.   NASA’s Kathy Lueders warned reporters today that they may have to wait some time for everything to be just right.  The four-hour window opens at 8:00 am ET, but SpaceX’s Benji Reed added they may extend that window if necessary. [UPDATE, JANUARY 18: The test has, in fact, been delayed to Sunday due to high winds and waves in the recovery area.]

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Dynetics confirms that it is one of the companies bidding for a NASA Human Landing System (HLS) contract to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024.  The news broke last week during a Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) media teleconference where a SNC representative disclosed that SNC is teaming with Dynetics on the proposal.

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NASA and SpaceX confirmed today that the In-Flight Abort test for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will take place on Saturday, January 18.  The four-hour launch window opens at 8:00 am ET.  The test is a critical milestone towards Demo-2, the crewed flight test of SpaceX’s commercial crew system to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

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