What's Happening in Space Policy February 1-5, 2016

Here is our list of space policy related events for the week of February 1-5, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

A conference on commercial space transportation and a House hearing on NASA’s human exploration proposals are just two highlights of the coming week.

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation’s (AST’s) 19th annual conference is in Washington, DC on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Neither the conference’s website nor the agenda indicate that any of the sessions will be webcast, which is a shame because they look really interesting.   If we learn that remote access will, in fact, be available, we’ll add that information to the entry in our Events of Interest list. [UPDATE:  FAA/AST confirms that there will NOT be a webcast.  UPDATE 2 — AS WE JUST LEARNED NOW THAT WE’RE HERE AT THE CONFERENCE, THE COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT FEDERATION IS WEBCASTING THE EVENT.] There are keynotes and panels featuring top leaders from the Administration (e.g. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman), Congress (Rep. Brian Babin, R-TX, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-TX, and a panel of congressional staff), and industry (Sierra Nevada Corporate VP for Space Systems Mark Sirangelo and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell).   For those who are advocating for an expansion of AST’s jurisdiction beyond launch and reentry of satellites, one of the panels will discuss European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jan Woerner’s Lunar Village (or Moon Village) concept.   AST’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) recently recommended that AST “engage directly” with ESA to foster the participation of U.S.-based commercial entities in planning and creation of such a village.  Woerner spoke to COMSTAC during a telecon meeting last month and will participate in this conference via livestream.

Wednesday’s hearing before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee also should be interesting.   The topic is NASA’s human exploration proposals, but in this case there are no NASA witnesses.  Instead, three “outside” witnesses will present their views.   Aerospace industry icon Tom Young is one of them.  He has testified many times, perhaps most memorably answering “never” to a question about when humans would get to Mars under NASA’s current budget. He is a member of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC), which has been deliberating for at least two years over NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and NASA’s planning for sending humans to Mars.  Young will be speaking only for himself, but NAC has not been enthusiastic about ARM for many reasons, one of which is skepticism that it will cost only $1.25 billion as NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden insists.  NAC members also criticize NASA’s Evolvable Mars Campaign because it lacks specifics.  The other two witnesses are Paul Spudis, a fervent advocate of returning humans to the lunar surface before going to Mars, and John Sommerer, who chaired the Technical Panel of the 2014 “Pathways” report from the National Academies that also endorsed returning astronauts to the lunar surface and raised questions about the value of ARM to the long term goal of human Mars exploration.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday afternoon are listed below.  Check back throughout the week to see any new meetings we learn about and post to our Events of Interest list.

Monday-Tuesday, February 1-2

• National Academies Committee on Science Mission Extensions, Keck Center, 500 Fifth St,, NW, Washington, DC
• NASA Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX (available by WebEx)

Tuesday, February 2

• NASA Announcement of SLS Cubesats, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, 11:00 am ET (10:00 am CT) (watch on NASA TV)

Tuesday-Wednesday, February 2-3

• FAA/AST 19th Commercial Space Transportation Conference, National Housing Center, 1201 15th St,, NW, Washington, DC

Wednesday, February 3

• Spaceport UK, Royal Aeronautical Society, London, England
• Russian Spacewalk at ISS, NASA TV coverage begins 7:30 am ET
• House SS&T Sbcmte Hearing on Expert Perspectives on NASA’s Human Exploration Proposals, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET (webcast)