As NASA copes with the significant cut it received in FY2024, experts on the civil space budget are warning that FY2025 could be even worse.  Caps imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act remain in effect in FY2025 and the budget “tricks” used to lessen the pain in FY2024 will not be available this time. On top of that, NASA will be competing with other national needs like policing and preparations for the next census. One NASA program that still appears to be in comparatively good shape is Artemis.

…

Read More Read More

The Japanese space agency’s SLIM lunar lander defied the odds again, surviving not just one, but two bitter cold lunar nights and sizzling hot lunar days. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has sent back another new image from its navigation camera two months after a sporty landing that initially suggested its lifetime would be sharply limited.

…

Read More Read More

NASA is inviting the public to participate in collecting science data during the April 8 solar eclipse through its citizen science projects. Weather permitting, everyone in the contiguous United States will see at least a partial eclipse and those in 15 states will see a total eclipse. The space agency is also reminding everyone NEVER to look directly at the Sun unless wearing special protective glasses.

…

Read More Read More

George Abbey, another NASA legend, died yesterday at the age of 91 following an illness. His death comes just one week after the passing of former astronaut Tom Stafford and a month after former astronaut and NASA Administrator Richard Truly passed away, all marking the end of an era. Abbey was not an astronaut, but as director of flight crew operations decided which astronauts got to fly and when. His influence on the agency went far beyond that over many decades as an advisor at NASA Headquarters, Director of Johnson Space Center, and Senior Fellow at Rice University after his retirement.

…

Read More Read More

Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com over the last week, March 18-24, 2024, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.

…

Read More Read More

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of March 24-30, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.

…

Read More Read More

Six months into FY2024, Congress finally finished work on FY2024 appropriations early this morning.  President Biden quickly signed the bill into law. With the FY2025 request already pending before Congress, House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger suddenly announced she is stepping down from that role. She is retiring at the end of this Congress and wants her successor named now to take the bills all the way to their conclusion, which likely will be after her departure. …

Read More Read More

Russia’s Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft lifted off on time from the Baikonur Cosmodrome this morning, two days after the first attempt aborted at T-20 seconds. The delay means the three crew members — a Russian, an American and a spaceflight participant from Belarus — need to take a different route to the International Space Station that will last two days instead of three hours. They will arrive on Monday morning.

…

Read More Read More

NASA and Boeing officials said today they are targeting May 1 for the launch of the Crew Flight Test of Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew spacecraft. If successful, the long-awaited flight could usher in an era where NASA has more than one domestic option to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station, what it calls “dissimilar redundancy.”

…

Read More Read More

The fate of NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission dominated today’s hearing before a House Science, Space, and Technology subcommittee on NASA’s science program. While committee members were supportive of the effort to bring samples of Mars back to Earth, they also were cautious about ensuring the program does not experience the huge overruns and schedule delays of past programs like the James Webb Space Telescope.

…

Read More Read More