The head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate hinted today that more delays may be in the offing for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). While progress is being made integrating the spacecraft and its instruments at prime contractor Northrop Grumman, Thomas Zurbuchen is worried about the time it is taking and an agency-level assessment is underway to determine whether the March 2021 launch date is realistic.
The NASA Advisory Council (NAC) recently adopted a set of eight principles for the extraction and utilization of extraterrestrial resources. Developed by NAC’s Regulatory and Policy Committee (RPC), they are headed to the Administrator’s office where they will be received by a familiar face. Mike Gold, who chaired the RPC, is joining NASA as a special advisor to the Administrator tomorrow and hopes to shepherd the principles along to a wider audience both domestically and internationally.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 17-23, 2019 and any insight we can offer about them. The House is in session Tuesday-Thursday. The Senate is scheduled to be in session all week.
In an illuminating report about the costs of NASA’s commercial crew program, NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) today criticized almost $300 million NASA paid to Boeing above the amount agreed to in a fixed price contract. It also calculated that NASA is paying Boeing substantially more per seat than SpaceX. But the report’s overall concern is that schedule delays in both systems will sharply limit U.S. presence on the International Space Station (ISS) beginning next spring.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for November 13, 2019: Senate committee clears NASA authorization bill, Hayabusa2 on its way home, SpaceX completes IFA static fire test. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
At another congressional hearing on the Trump Administration’s directive to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2024 and on to Mars, questions persisted today about whether NASA has the right plan. Legendary astronaut Tom Stafford argued that NASA’s architecture is too complex and success hinges on keeping it simple. Veteran NASA and space industry insider Tom Young went further, asserting that what is needed is a “clear, unambiguous goal” — is the Moon a destination itself, or just a waypoint to Mars? Meanwhile, a key Republican said the chances of NASA getting the extra money it needs this fiscal year to make the 2024 deadline appear to be “dwindling.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent Senate appropriators a list of complaints about actions taken on FY2020 appropriations bills so far. Among them is the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that funds NASA and NOAA where OMB criticized underfunding of NASA’s lunar exploration budget, what rocket will launch the Europa Clipper mission, and a study about potential spectrum interference with weather satellites. Conversely, it praised funding for establishing a Space Force at DOD, although Congress has not yet passed legislation authorizing its creation.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 10-16, 2019 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week beginning Tuesday.
President Trump signed into law today a bill honoring women who worked at NASA through the 1970s and helped the agency achieve its many successes during that era. In particular, it awards congressional gold medals to four “Hidden Figures” whose contributions to putting the first Americans into space formed the basis of the book and movie of that title.
Boeing said today that the anomaly that occurred with one of the three main CST-100 Starliner parachutes during Monday’s Pad Abort Test (PAT) was due to a misplaced pin in the parachute system. Stressing that the parachute itself did not fail, only its deployment, Boeing’s John Mulholland declared the test a success, noting that the other two parachutes were more than sufficient to safely land the spacecraft. …