While space geeks thrill at the sight of launches and reentries, airline passengers trying to make a meeting or special family event may be more interested in reaching their destinations on time. The FAA has just activated a new system to reduce the amount of time airspace must be closed to help satisfy complaints from the airline industry and its supporters in Congress.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for July 6, 2021: who gets FAA commercial astronaut wings?; NASA seeks new LETS lunar lander ideas; Ingenuity flies again. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter @SpcPlcyOnline for live-tweeting of events and other up-to-the-minute news.
The Biden White House is continuing to work on implementing the Trump Administration’s National Strategy for Planetary Protection. Last week, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) held a day-long roundtable with representatives of companies and industry associations to get feedback on planetary protection issues.
Two astronauts aboard the Chinese space station module Tianhe conducted a 7-hour spacewalk today. It is only the second spacewalk in the history of the Chinese space program. The first, more than a decade ago, lasted just 22 minutes.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the next TWO weeks, July 4-17, 2021, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions. Next week the Senate returns for legislative business while the House will be in a “committee work week.”
Wally Funk will finally get a chance to fly into space on July 20. One of the “Mercury 13” women who participated in rigorous physical and psychological tests in the hope of becoming NASA astronauts in the earliest days of the U.S. space program, she has been waiting six decades. Thanks to Jeff Bezos and his New Shepard rocket, she now has less than three weeks to go. But another mega-billionaire is trying to upstage the news by announcing his own flight into space nine days before Bezos.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced two key agency appointments today. Vanessa Wyche is the new Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Janet Petro is now Director of Kennedy Space Center. Both were deputy directors of those centers who have been serving as acting directors for the past month. Four of NASA’s nine civil service field centers now have women in the top jobs.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 27-July 3, 2021 and any insight we can offer about them. The House is in session through Thursday before beginning its one-week July 4th recess. The Senate’s two-week recess (except for pro forma sessions) is already underway.
Members of the House committee that oversees NASA pressed Administrator Bill Nelson today for a commitment on when they will get to see a plan for how the Artemis program will be executed. Nelson is new to the job, but the answer was the same as his predecessors: not yet. For his part, Nelson repeatedly reminded the committee that how quickly astronauts return to the Moon is in their hands since they decide how much money is available.
Col. Pam Melroy (Ret.) is now officially the Deputy Administrator of NASA. Confirmed by the Senate last week, she was sworn in during a ceremony at NASA on June 21. She joins two fellow former astronauts, Bill Nelson and Bob Cabana, at the top of the agency’s leadership.