Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of October 29-November 5, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate and House are in session this week, though the House doesn’t begin work until Wednesday.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel made it crystal clear today that building a tug to deorbit the International Space station is “not optional,” budget constraints notwithstanding. The panel has been urging NASA for years to provide a U.S. deorbit capability and NASA finally requested the first tranche of funding in FY2024, but ASAP worries it may fall victim to congressional cuts. That cannot be allowed to happen, they warned, or catastrophe could ensue.
China launched a new crew to the Tiangong-3 China Space Station this evening EDT. The three-man Shenzhou-17 crew will replace three others who have been aboard since May, continuing their new practice of rotating crews on roughly six-month schedules to keep the space station permanently occupied like the International Space Station.
After three chaotic weeks, House Republicans elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as the new Speaker of the House. The fourth to win a majority vote within the Republican Conference, he was the first with enough support to get a majority of the whole House. Today he won with all 220 Republicans present voting for him. Deep divisions remain within the Republican party and between Republicans and Democrats, but as Johnson said today, at least the House is back in business.
NASA is bracing for a period of budgetary belt-tightening as House Republicans demand deep cuts to nondefense discretionary spending, the category that includes NASA. The effects will be felt across the agency, but recent meetings of NASA advisory committees highlight how science programs will be impacted. Astrophysics is a case in point. While the popular Hubble Space Telescope is not in danger of being terminated, the almost $100 million a year spent on operations may have to slim down. The Chandra X-ray telescope is in the same boat.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com in the last week, October 16-22, 2023, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article. …
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 22-28, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House schedule is uncertain.
India successfully completed a high altitude crew capsule abort test for its nascent Gaganyaan human spaceflight program today. The first attempt scrubbed just before liftoff, but they quickly found and fixed the problem, restarted the countdown, and lifted off two hours later than planned. After the capsule separated from the rocket, it splashed down in the ocean and was recovered by the Indian Navy.
NASA may have received discouraging news from a recent independent review of the Mars Sample Return mission, but key NASA officials and members of the space science community remain upbeat about finding a path forward. NASA is just beginning a detailed examination of the report to determine next steps, but at a meeting today of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group, the message was that returning samples from Mars is the highest priority planetary science mission and they will find a way to do it.
SpaceX told a Senate committee today that government regulations are slowing the development of Starship and the commercial human spaceflight industry is at a “breaking point” in terms of maintaining U.S. leadership in space. The message from SpaceX and other industry leaders was that ensuring safety is important, but so is innovation and the regulatory landscape has to change for the U.S. to stay ahead of China.