Space Policy Events for the Week of October 20-25, 2013

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead.  The House will be in session for part of the week; the Senate is in recess.

During the Week

The government is slowly returning to normal after the 16-day shutdown.  The House will be in session beginning Tuesday, while Senators will be back home hearing first hand how voters feel about Washington these days.  

House-Senate budget negotiations that were part of the deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit are due to begin this week.   Senate Budget Committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) will lead the discussions to reconcile the starkly different budget resolutions passed by the Senate and House earlier this year.  The Senate Budget Resolution ignored the sequester and set spending for FY2014 at $1.058 trillion.  The House Budget Resolution holds FY2014 spending to $967 billion, $91 billion less than the Senate, and protects defense spending, taking the cuts from elsewhere in the budget.  These disparities are why the House and Senate Appropriations Committees recommended such different funding levels for NASA in their FY2014 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bills.  The House Appropriations bill would give NASA $16.6 billion, while the Senate bill would provide $18.0 billion.  (See SpacePolicyOnline.com’s NASA FY2014 Budget Request fact sheet for more details on what the appropriations — and authorization — committees recommended.)  Murray and Ryan are supposed to complete their negotiations by December 13, presumably allowing for appropriations bills to pass by January 15, the date when the current Continuing Resolution expires.

In other events, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will speak to the NRC’s Committee on Human Spaceflight tomorrow (Monday) at 10:00 am ET and Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier will update the committee at 2:00 pm ET.  For all the Neil DeGrasse Tyson fans out there, he will speak to the committee Wednesday from 9:00-10:00 am ET on “Delusions of Space Enthusiasts.”   That and other meetings we know about right now are listed below.

Sunday-Friday, October 20-25

• Planet Mars IV Workshop, Les Houches, France

Monday-Wednesday, October 21-23

• NRC Committee on Human Spaceflight, Keck Center, 500 Fifth St., NW, Washington, DC.  Some sessions are closed.  Open sessions are scheduled on:
  • Monday, October 21, 10:00 am – 3:15 pm ET (including talks by Charlie Bolden at 10:00 and Bill Gerstenmaier at 2:00)
  • Wednesday, October 23, 9:00 – 10:00 am ET (Neil DeGrasse Tyson)

Tuesday, October 22

• Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus Spacecraft Departs ISS, NASA TV Coverage begins at 7:00 am ET

Thursday, October 24

• Space and Satellite Regulatory Colloquium, Jones Day Conference Facility, 51 Louisiana Ave, NW, Washington, DC, 8:00 am – 6:00 pm ET