Events of Interest: Week of July 22-28, 2012 – UPDATE

UPDATE:  The Senate Commerce Committee’s Wednesday hearing on the International Space Station has been added in Group 2.

ORIGINAL STORY:  The following events may be of interest in the week ahead.  The House and Senate both are in session.

During the Week

The House and Senate are in session this week and next.  They both then will have a 5-week recess during which the Republican and Democratic conventions will take place. When they return in September, the House will meet for legislative business for only eight days while the Senate will meet that month for three weeks under the current schedule.  That is how much time they have to make decisions on funding for FY2013, which begins on October 1.   Including the defense appropriations bill that passed last week, the House has passed seven of the 12 appropriations bills, including the one that funds NASA and NOAA (the Commerce-Justice-Science bill).  The Senate has not passed any.   Amid much speculation on the end-game for FY2013 appropriations and the chilling possibility of a sequester, the truth is that there are as many opinions as people to ask.  All we know for certain is that time is getting tight.

Meanwhile, the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and its committees will hold meetings in the coming week at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to provide advice and recommendations to NASA on the agency’s activities.  Monday and Tuesday are committee meetings as a prelude to the full NAC meeting on Wednesday-Friday.   Most if not all of these meetings can be “attended” virtually through teleconference and WebEx.  Details are in the notices.  Since there are many NAC-related meetings, we have grouped them together below (Group 1) rather than intermixing them with other meetings occurring this week.  A blended listing is available on our right menu under Events of Interest.

NAC is not the only advisory committee gearing up to help NASA.   On Thursday and Friday, the National Research Council’s Committee on NASA’s Strategic Direction will meet to continue its deliberations as part of a congressionally-requested study.

Also, three meetings that are open to the public are planned to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Landsat land remote sensing satellite series.   The first Landsat — then called the Earth Resources Technology Satellite-1 (ERTS-1) was launched on July 23, 1972.  The four-decade data set and ongoing collection of 30-meter and 15-meter data provided by these satellites have a large and vocal user community.  Landsat has had a tumultuous programmatic history, however, and its future beyond the launch of the next in the series, scheduled for early next year, is up in the air.  The Landsat meetings are listed with other non-NAC meetings of interest in Group 2 below.

Group 1:   NASA Advisory Council (NAC) meetings at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

Monday-Tuesday, July 23-24

• Science Committee 
• Audit, Finance and Analysis Committee 
• Commercial Space Committee 
• Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Committee 
  • Joint Meeting on Science and HEO Committees re Mars planning on Monday

Tuesday, July 24

• Aeronautics Committee 
• Education & Public Outreach Committee 
• Information Technology Infrastructure Committee 
• Technology & Innovation Committee 
• Joint meeting with HEO, Commercial and Audit Committees re Commercial Crew and Cargo on Tuesday 

Wednesday-Friday, July 25-27

•  NAC itself

Group 2:  Other Events

Sunday-Friday, July 22-27

• IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium, Munich, Germany

Monday, July 23

• NASA/USGS Briefing on Landsat 40th Anniversary, Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC., 11:00 am ET
• AGU Congressional Briefing on Landsat 40th Anniversary, 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, 3:30-5:00 pm ET

Tuesday, July 24

• AIAA Panel on Deep Space-Relaunching American Exceptionalism, 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, 11:30 am -2:00 pm ET

Wednesday, July 25

• Senate Commerce Committee hearing on International Space Station, 253 Russell Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET 

Thursday, July 26

• WIA Panel Celebrating 40th Anniversary of Landsat, 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, 8:00-9:30 am ET
• NASA Briefings to Preview Upcoming ISS Activities, Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 1:00 am CT (12:00 PM ET) and 1:00 pm CT (2:00 pm ET), watch on NASA TV

Thursday-Friday, July 26-27

• National Research Council Committee on NASA Strategic Direction, Keck Center, 500 Fifth St., NW. Washington, DC (some sessions of this meeting may be closed)

Thursday-Saturday, July 26-28

• NewSpace 2012 Conference, Santa Clara, CA