What’s Happening in Space Policy August 6-13, 2017

Here is our list of space policy events for the week of August 6-13, 2017 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess (except for pro-forma sessions) until September 5.

During the Week

The action this week starts in Logan, Utah with the annual Small Satellite Conference.  The conference itself, including a number side-events, begins tomorrow (Monday), but pre-conference events are being held this weekend.  Small satellites are all the rage these days and this year’s conference  attracted the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Robert Cardillo, as its keynote speaker. He speaks tomorrow at 1:15 pm Mountain Time (3:15 pm ET).  The website does not indicate if there will be a webcast.  If we find out, we will add the information to our calendar item for this event.

On Tuesday, another major conference begins, this one in Huntsville, AL.  The theme of the year’s Space and Missile Defense Symposium is “Enabling Decisive Action in a Multi-Domain Environment.”  The conference kicks off Tuesday morning with an address by Gen. John Hyten, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, on “Preparing Space, Cyberspace and Missile Defense in an Uncertain World.”  The Air Force has been stressing this year that space is part of “multi-domain” warfighting, just like land, sea, air and cyber.  The conference’s website does not indicate whether Hyten’s speech or other parts of the conference will be livestreamed.  We’ll let you know if we find out.

Washington, DC is a pretty quiet place with Congress in recess until after Labor Day and the President on a 17-day vacation at his golf club in New Jersey, but there are a couple of events this week including NASA’s all-day  “International Space Station Stakeholders Workshop” on Wednesday.  NASA wants to engage in dialogue with everyone interested in long-term space station planning.

SpaceX is getting ready to launch its next cargo mission, SpX-12, to the ISS on Sunday, August 13, at 12:56 pm ET.   NASA will hold a media telecon in advance of the launch (on Tuesday) to talk about what’s on board.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below.  Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar.

Sunday-Thursday, August 6-10

• Small Satellite Conference, Logan, UT
  • August 7: Cubesat Launch & Deployment Best Practices (Secure World Foundation side event), 9:00-11:00 am MT

Tuesday, August 8

• Space Foundation Briefing on 2017 Space Report, 2045 Rayburn House Office Building, 8:00-9:00 am ET (RSVP required)
• NASA Telecon on SpX-12 Science Payload, virtual, 12:00 pm ET
• ISU-DC Space Cafe featuring NRL’s Paul Jaffe, Cotton & Reed, 1330 5th St. NE, Washington, DC, 7:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Thursday, August 8-10

• Space and Missile Defense Symposium, Huntsville, AL
• National Academies Planetary Protection Processes Cmte, Woods Hole, MA (only open session is Aug 8, 5:15-5:45 pm ET)

Wednesday, August 9

• NASA ISS Stakeholder Workshop, Marriott Marquis Washington DC, 901 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC, 8:30 am – 6:00 pm ET

Sunday, August 13

• SpX-12 Launch, Kennedy Space Center, FL, 12:56 pm ET (webcast)