What's Happening in Space Policy April 6-10, 2015

Here is our list of space policy-related events for the week of April 6-10, 2015 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate remain in recess for the Easter holidays; they will return on April 13.

During the Week

The week is dominated by meetings of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and three of its committees.  Perhaps of most interest to readers of this website will be the meetings of the NAC Science and NAC Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) committees, especially their joint sessions in the afternoon of April 7 and morning of April 8, and the meeting of the full NAC on Thursday and Friday.  NAC and its committees cover the entire scope of NASA’s activities, but their meetings lately have focused a great deal on the future of the human spaceflight program including the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and the Evolvable Mars Campaign.

While traditionally such topics would have been relegated to the human spaceflight side of the house, a great deal of emphasis in Charlie Bolden’s tenure is being placed on getting NASA’s science and human exploration communities working together in common purpose, overcoming their traditional animosity towards each other.  Animosity may be too strong of a word. Or not.  It depends on who has the podium. 

One thing for sure is that the message from the presentation to the NAC Planetary Science Subcommittee (PSS) last week by the new NASA Mars exploration program director Jim Watzin is that the future robotic Mars program is being designed to “Inform and enable human mission design” as much as to answer scientific questions.  After the Mars 2020 rover, Watzin said, the next Mars mission will be an orbiter, prompting some subcommittee members to ask: “what happened to sample return?”  It will be interesting to see if that conversation continues at the NAC meetings this week.

Another interesting tidbit that came of the PSS meeting last week is that the “AGs” are no longer part of the NASA advisory process.  Those are “Assessment Groups” or “Analysis Groups” that focus on a specific topic of research interest.  One example is the Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG) that is meeting near NASA’s Langely Research Center this week.   According to NASA Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green, a change in the NAC charter last year left these AGs out of the advisory process, meaning that for these groups of scientists to meet, they must work through NASA’s more laborious procedures to hold a conference with consequent potential limitations on attendance, for example.  Green said he has taken the lead for the Science Mission Directorate is working with NASA’s lawyers to find out if the change was intentional or an unintended consequence and what it all means for the future of the AGs.  Planetary science is not the only NAC Science subcommittee that uses AGs, but it has the most.

Also of special interest to space policy aficionados is the book signing event on Tuesday evening at George Washington University.  John Logsdon will talk about and sign copies of his new book on President Nixon’s role in U.S. space policy and programs.  Nixon, of course, was the President who oversaw the end of the lunar Apollo missions and had to decide the future of the human spaceflight program in that era.  Logsdon’s book details how Nixon’s decisions still shape the program today.  Logsdon is a very highly regarded authority on space policy and space history — the “dean” of space policy — and author of two books on President Kennedy’s role in the Apollo program.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday afternoon are listed below. 

Monday-Wednesday, April 6-8

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Science Committee (some sessions are joint with the NAC Human Exploration and Operations Committee), NASA HQ, Washington, DC

Tuesday, April 7

• NAC Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 8:00 am – 5:00 pm ET
• NASA event on Our Solar System and Beyond: NASA’s Search for Water and Habitable Planets, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 1:00-2:00 pm ET
• Book Signing Event by John Logsdon for his new book “After Apollo?  Richard Nixon and the American Space Program,” GWU Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC, 6:30 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, April 7-8

• NAC Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Committee (some sessions are joint with the NAC Science Committee), NASA HQ, Washington, DC

Thursday, April 9

• Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG), National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, VA (near NASA’s Langley Research Center), 8:00 am – 4:00 pm ET
• Giant Leap: The Race to Mars and Back (Future Tense), 1899 L Street, NW, Washington, DC, 12:00-2:00 pm ET

Thursday-Friday, April 9-10

•  NASA Advisory Council (NAC), NASA HQ, Washington, DC