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.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week (plus a day) of June 20-27, 2021 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
The Senate confirmed Pam Melroy to be Deputy Administrator of NASA and Rick Spinrad to be Administrator of NOAA today. The action came just one day after their nominations were approved by the Senate Commerce Committee.
China and Russia laid out their roadmap for joint exploration of the Moon this morning, hours before China launched the first crew to its new space station module, Tianhe. The Chinese-Russian International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) concept exemplifies China’s modestly-paced human spaceflight cadence, with the first human missions to the Moon not envisioned until the mid-2030s. That may undermine arguments that the United States is in a race with China and needs to get astronauts back to the Moon by 2024 before they arrive.
One day before launch, China finally confirmed unofficial reports that it will launch the first crew to its new space station module, Tianhe, on June 17 Beijing Time (June 16 Eastern Daylight Time). It is China’s first human spaceflight launch in 5 years. The three men will stay aboard Tianhe for three months, the longest time in orbit for any Chinese crew. Separately, Russia’s space agency head revealed that Russia plans to send its own cosmonauts to the Chinese Space Station in the future.
Two days before his summit with President Joe Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin told NBC news that he wants continued space cooperation with the United States. Some Russian officials have been suggesting Russia will pull out of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025, but Putin said that is a misunderstanding. His comments also come one day before the heads of NASA and Russia’s space agency speak at an international conference in Russia.
NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor is finally getting a break. A decade in the planning, the asteroid-hunting space telescope was just approved to move into preliminary design and NASA’s FY2022 budget request includes enough money to pay for it. Now it is up to Congress. The outlook should be promising since NEO Surveyor’s purpose is to meet a congressional mandate to find 90 percent of NEOs more than 140 meters in diameter.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week (plus a day) of June 13-20, 2021 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
Someone will pay $28 million to fly on Blue Origin’s first passenger flight of the New Shepard rocket. The name of the winning bidder in Blue Origin’s auction today will not be revealed for several weeks, but whoever it is will join Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark on an 11-minute suborbital ride to space on July 20.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for June 10, 2021: Virginia spaceport gets new director; Biden and Johnson want space to be secure and sustainable; NASA selects its first lunar far-side science investigations. 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.