The Department of Commerce Inspector General has issued a harshly critical assessment of how Department officials handled Sharpiegate last year where NOAA rebuked the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, AL when it disagreed with a statement by President Trump about Hurricane Dorian. Only a summary was released, however, not the full report. In a separate memo today (July 1), Inspector General Peggy Gustafson expressed “deep concern” that the Department is preventing her office from completing its work. Two key members of Congress are demanding release of the full report. [Updated July 3 with additional statements from Sen. Cantwell and Rep. Johnson.]

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Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for June 30, 2020: Mars Perseverance launch delayed to July 30; Russia to fly woman cosmonaut and allow space tourist to make a spacewalk; and 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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Gen. Jay Raymond, Chief of Space Operations for the U.S. Space Force (USSF), unveiled the USSF’s organizational structure today.  It will have three field commands and subordinate units designated  “deltas” and “squadrons.”  Activation of the new units will begin later this summer.

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Almost five years after Congress passed a law directing NOAA to initiate a pilot program to determine if commercial weather data could be incorporated into NOAA’s weather forecasting, the answer is back — yes.  After two rounds of contract awards to companies producing radio occultation data to improve weather forecasts, NOAA will soon issue a request for proposals for operational data and begin looking at other commercial technologies.

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Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 28-July 4, 2020 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

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A three-day meeting of a NOAA advisory committee was full of praise for the new commercial remote sensing regulations published last month.  Yet speaker after speaker used the phrase “the devil is in the details” to characterize what comes next. Implementation can be the hardest part and some think legislation is needed.

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A campaign kicked off today to rename NASA’s Stennis Space Center as the deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers continue to raise societal awareness of racial disparities. Stennis is named after John C. Stennis (1901-1995), a segregationist U.S. Senator from Mississippi where the Center is located. Separately, NASA announced today it is naming its headquarters building after Mary Jackson, the first African American woman engineer to work at the agency.

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Mike Griffin, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD/R&E), announced today that he is leaving on July 10 along with his deputy, Lisa Porter.  In a joint email, they said they are pursuing a private sector business opportunity.

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Commercial human spaceflight, often called space tourism, is making more strides with help from NASA.  The agency has announced plans to fly its own astronauts and other personnel on commercial suborbital space missions launched by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.  At the same time, Virgin Galactic signed a deal with the agency to train tourists who want to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) and make arrangements for the trip.

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hopes to release its updated regulations for the commercial space launch and reentry business in September, a year later than originally planned. Working with industry has been more time consuming than anticipated, but apparently worth the investment. An FAA official said today the new version is “extensively changed” from what it planned to publish last year that created considerable industry angst. …

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