What’s Happening in Space Policy December 11-17, 2022

What’s Happening in Space Policy December 11-17, 2022

By Marcia Smith | Posted: December 11, 2022 6:08 pm ET | Last Updated: December 13, 2022 2:10 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of December 11-17, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

The key events in this busy, busy, busy week (we have 31 events listed already and it’s only Sunday) can be summed up in two words — Moon and Money.

Already today three spacecraft launched to the Moon and one returned from the Moon amid celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the last Apollo mission to the Moon.

NASA astronauts Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, Gene Cernan (waving), and Ron Evans (top) step aboard the USS Ticonderaga after splashing down at the end of the Apollo 17 mission, December 19, 1972. Credit: NASA

Exactly 50 years ago today, Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt landed on the Moon while Ron Evans orbited overhead. Cernan and Evans have passed away, but Schmitt is still very active in space activities.

He will participate in a National Academy of Sciences event on Wednesday evening (livestreamed) to commemorate that flight — the end of the Apollo lunar program — and celebrate progress on the Artemis program to resume human lunar exploration. That day, December 14, is when he and Cernan lifted off from the Moon to rejoin Evans.

The British Interplanetary Society has a virtual event the same day.  NASA will host a panel discussion at Space Center Houston on Friday, the anniversary of the day they all left lunar orbit to head back home.

Purely by coincidence, NASA’s Orion spacecraft returned from the Moon today completing the uncrewed test flight of the Space Launch System and Orion crew spacecraft. The Artemis I launch was delayed several times so it wasn’t planned, but the timing worked out well.

While Artemis won’t return astronauts to the lunar surface until at least 2025, the very successful conclusion of this test flight is a major step in that direction. Artemis is Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology. NASA chose the name to underscore that this time women as well as men will walk on the Moon. NASA has vowed that a woman will be on the next crew to set foot there.

The Artemis I test flight, launched on November 16, went almost perfectly from beginning to end with splashdown off the coast of the Baja Peninsula at 12:40 pm ET after 25 days and 11 hours in flight.

Ten hours earlier, at 2:38 am ET, a Falcon 9 rocket sent a trio of international robotic spacecraft to the Moon. The main payload was HAKUTO-R M1, built and owned by the Japanese company ispace, the first commercial lunar lander. Along with the lander is the United Arab Emirates’ Rashid lunar rover. The pair will land in the Moon’s Atlas Crater at the end of April. HAKUTO-R M1 will also collect lunar dirt (regolith) and send back photos and data about it to NASA, then transfer ownership of it to NASA as a commercial venture. The third spacecraft is NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, a cubesat that originally was supposed to launch on Artemis I. It will orbit the Moon and search for water ice at the South Pole.

That’s just today.

There are other Moon-related events this week, too. Tomorrow (Monday) the Secure World Foundation will hold an event in D.C. on the past, present and future of the Artemis Accords, a set of principles spearheaded by the United States for how countries can work together cooperatively on the Moon. It’s been signed by 21 nations so far. The SWF meeting is in-person, but a video will be posted on the SWF website later.

On Tuesday, the annual Galloway Space Law symposium in D.C. has a panel on “Exploration of the Moon and Mars: Policy and Legal Issues” moderated by Gabriel Swiney, who was instrumental in drafting the Accords when he was at the State Department. He’s now at NASA.

On Wednesday, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, and the Moon Village Association will hold a webinar on lunar surface mobility. JAXA is working with Japanese automotive and space companies on a pressurized lunar rover.

And on Friday, South Korea’s lunar orbiter, Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also called Danuri, will enter lunar orbit after a 4-month journey. Among the instruments onboard is Arizona State University’s ShadowCam, developed with NASA funding. NASA also is providing communications and navigation support for KPLO.

As we said, the Moon is big news this week.

So is money. The Continuing Resolution that’s keeping the government open right now expires on Friday.  There’s no inkling that Congress will force a partial government shutdown, but there’s also no inkling that Democrats and Republicans are coming together on a funding solution for FY2023. They have not agreed yet on the top-line of how much money in total the government will be allowed to spend. Both parties agree defense should get more money than the Biden Administration requested (the defense authorization bill that passed the House on Thursday proposes $858 billion, a $45 billion increase above the request), but Democrats want a commensurate increase for non-defense spending (the category that includes NASA). Republicans object.

Last week the betting was they would pass another CR for one or two weeks while they ironed out the details to get a deal done before the 117th Congress ends on January 3 and Republicans take control of the House, which would slow negotiations even further. In recent days the rhetoric has hardened, however, and the path forward isn’t clear. By the end of last week, the Democratic chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees (Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Rosa DeLauro) said they’d introduce an omnibus bill tomorrow combining the 12 regular appropriations bills with provisions they believe are “fair and bipartisan.” They said the only alternative is a full-year CR, not a short-term bill.

It’s an apparent take-it-or-leave-it gambit hoping to force Republicans to the negotiating table because year-long CRs are extremely disruptive. They hold agencies to their current funding levels and do not allow existing programs to end or new ones to begin. The Defense Department is especially worried.

It’s not unusual to have this kind of high-stakes standoff just before the closing bell, but guessing which way the chips will fall is perilous. Stay tuned.

There are so many other interesting events this week. To name just a few: an AIAA discussion of the DC-X/XA (really interesting effort to develop reusable rockets way before SpaceX) on Monday, a seminar on space issues coming up in the next Congress on Tuesday, a Russian spacewalk on Wednesday evening that likely will extend into Thursday morning (very rare to do a spacewalk at that time of day), two launches on Thursday — the NASA/CNES Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite from Vandenberg and Rocket Lab’s first launch from Wallops (of three Hawkeye 360 satellites), and the AGU meeting all week long where fascinating results from space science missions will be revealed. Please peruse the list below so you don’t miss anything.

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 or changes to these.

Sunday, December 11

Monday, December 12

Monday-Thursday, December 12-15

Monday-Friday, December 12-16

Tuesday, December 13

Tuesday-Thursday, December 13-15

Wednesday, December 14

Wednesday-Thursday, December 14-15

Thursday, December 15

Friday, December 16

Last Updated: Dec 13, 2022 2:10 pm ET

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