The House passed the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) today by a veto-proof majority of 295-125, an important margin if President Trump follows through on his threat to veto the bill if it reaches his desk as is. The dispute is over renaming military bases, not space activities, but could endanger the entire legislation. The Senate is nearing passage of its own version of the NDAA, which also has a renaming provision.

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Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for July 21, 2020:  new Air Force/Space Force Arctic strategy, Space Force getting 2,410 new members, people on the move.  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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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Hope spacecraft successfully lifted off from the Tanegashima launch site in Japan this afternoon Eastern Daylight Time (July 20 in Japan). It is the first Arab planetary probe, built in cooperation with U.S. universities and launched by a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket.  If all goes according to plan, it will enter Mars orbit in early 2021, in time for the UAE’s celebration of its 50th anniversary.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of July 19-25, 2020 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

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Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) passed away yesterday. A legendary civil rights activist, his role at a pivotal point in the history of the space station program is less well known. He is the Member of Congress who cast the deciding vote in 1993 to continue the program despite years of cost overruns and schedule delays. Today’s International Space Station might not exist without his support.

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NASA is targeting the return of the SpaceX Demo-2 crewed flight test for August 2.  If all goes according to plan, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will undock the evening before and splash down in the Atlantic Ocean in mid-afternoon.  The mission has been going so successfully that it is easy to forget that it is a test flight and the test will not be over until the crew is back home.

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NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a strongly critical report today asserting that NASA is not being transparent about the Life Cycle Costs of the Orion crew spacecraft.  By its calculations, NASA is excluding $17.5 billion from what it calls the “tailored” estimate of $12.2 billion NASA uses. The report also lays out the program’s many schedule delays and says the uncrewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft atop the Space Launch System (SLS), Artemis I, now is expected in November 2021. The crewed test flight, Artemis II, will not take place until August 2023.

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NASA announced today that the launch of the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will slip another 7 months due to technical challenges and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  The new launch date is October 31, 2021.  A bright spot is that the extra costs can be covered by existing reserves, so the pricetag will not grow.

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The head of Russia’s space state corporation, Dmitry Rogozin, said today that he is not interested in working with the United States on lunar exploration. He prefers China, “a worthy partner,” while the U.S. lunar program is “more of a political project.”

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The House Appropriations Committee is criticizing NASA’s “ominous” shift in priorities away from legacy programs and those with environmental and educational benefits to meet a “politically motivated timeline” for the Artemis program to put astronauts back on the Moon by 2024.  In its report on the FY2021 appropriations bill that funds NASA, the committee not only rejects the Trump Administration’s effort to increase NASA’s budget by 12 percent to pay for Artemis, but reallocates $1.5 billion to what was requested for science, technology, and education activities the Administration wants to reduce or terminate entirely. UPDATE:  The committee approved the bill on July 14, 2020.

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