Vice President Kamala Harris will convene the first meeting of the White House National Space Council on December 1. Speaking at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, she said they will meet to outline a comprehensive framework for the U.S. space program and made clear that a major focus will be efforts to address climate change.
Blue Origin’s lawsuit against NASA for awarding SpaceX the only contract for a lunar landing system was rejected today by the Court of Federal Claims. The opinion itself is sealed for now, but in a public document Judge Richard Hertling granted NASA’s motion to dismiss.
The astrophysics community is urging NASA to take a new approach to building flagship space telescopes, the biggest and most expensive in NASA’s portfolio. More effort would be put into maturing concepts and technologies before picking the final design. The first to enter this program would be an infrared/optical/ultraviolet space telescope to search for signatures of life on planets outside our solar system, with an estimated cost of $11 billion and launch in the early 2040s. …
Bhavya Lal, a Biden political appointee who has held several positions at the agency since the inauguration, is taking on a new role as head of the agency’s just-created Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy. The reorganization merges two units including the Office of Chief Technologist and Lal will also serve as Acting Chief Technologist. A number of personnel reassignments were announced simultaneously.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 31-November 6, 2021 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
Congress continues to debate the two infrastructure bills that form the basis of President Biden’s domestic agenda. The bigger of the two, for “human infrastructure,” included $4.4 billion for NASA in the original House version, but push-back by moderate and progressive Democrats is forcing the total $3.5 trillion package to be cut in half. The latest verison, which still faces headwinds in the House, reduces NASA’s share to $1.1 billion. All things considered, that is still an achievement.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for October 28, 2021: Juno reveals more about Jupiter’s atmosphere; VIPER lunar rover passes milestone review; NASA seeks input to transition SLS to a sustainable, affordable Exploration Transportation System. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
Boeing released its third quarter 2021 financial statement today revealing that it is taking another charge against earnings to pay for the second uncrewed test flight of its Starliner commercial crew spacecraft. Boeing is still troubleshooting what went wrong in August when the OFT-2 test flight was delayed because of a problem with propulsion system valves. Starliner is being developed under a fixed price contract with NASA.
Blue Origin, Sierra Space and several other companies announced plans today to team together and build a “mixed use business park” in low Earth orbit called Orbital Reef. The initial facility will have three main modules providing about the same amount of usable volume as the International Space Station, but can expand if market conditions warrant. The plan is to have it assembled in the mid-2020s to allow for an orderly transition from the ISS and avoid a “space station gap.”
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of October 24-31, 2021 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.