What's Happening in Space Policy January 19-23, 2015 – UPDATE 2

UPDATE, January 20:  New House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Mac Thornberry will lay out his agenda for the 114th Congress at 10:00 am ET this morning (Monday) to the American Enterprise Institute. It will be webcast.

UPDATE, January 19:  The White House announced today that astronaut Scott Kelly will be one of the many guests sitting with First Lady Michelle Obama during Tuesday’s State of the Union address.  Whether or not the President will mention Kelly and his upcoming year-long mission to the ISS or anything else about the space program is unclear, but it raises that possibility.

January18, 2015: Here is our list of space policy related events coming up for the week of January 19-23, 2015 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate will be in session for part of the week (Monday is a holiday — Martin Luther King Jr. Day) and on Tuesday will meet in joint session to hear President Obama’s State of the Union Address.

During the Week

The list of events this week is somewhat short, but they are important events that will set the stage for what transpires in months to come.

The two committees that set policy for NASA will hold their organizational meetings this week:  the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee on Tuesday and the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee on Wednesday.   Committee and subcommittee members are usually formalized at these meetings and the chairs and ranking members often use the opportunity to lay out their priorities for the year.  The Senate committee will now be run by Republicans instead of Democrats since Republicans won control of the Senate in last year’s elections.  Sen. John Thune (R-SD) will be chairman and Sen. BIll Nelson (D-FL) is the ranking member.   In space policy circles. a lot of attention is being paid to the selection of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to chair the Space, Science and Competitiveness subcommittee and what that may mean especially for NASA’s earth science program.   Cruz told the Houston Chronicle his overall priorities for oversight of the U.S. civil space program, starting with reauthorization of the Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA) and returning NASA to its “core priority of exploring space.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Steve Palazzo (R-MS) will retain their leadership positions on the full House SS&T committee and its Space Subcommittee respectively.  Smith said last year that CSLA will be one of his top priorities in this Congress.  A prohibition on the FAA enacting new regulations on commercial human spaceflight expires this year, so that is certain to be a topic for debate.  How the October 2014 Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash will affect the outcome is an open question.

On Tuesday, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will speak to the Maryland Space Business Roundtable (MSBR).  While he won’t be able to talk about the President’s upcoming budget request for FY2016, which will not be released until February 2, he should be able to explain how the agency will spend the extra half billion dollars Congress provided for the current fiscal year above the President’s request, and provide updates on ongoing programs.   He and members of his NASA Advisory Council (NAC) had frank exchanges about the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) last week and perhaps he will try once more to convince the space community that moving an asteroid — or part of an asteroid — from one place in the solar system to another is critical to achieving the long term goal of sending humans to Mars.   That is the part of the mission NAC members question.   NASA says it will announce in “mid-January” its choice of whether to move an entire small asteroid (Option A) or pluck a boulder off of a larger asteroid (Option B) and move just that part.  It is mid-January already.  Perhaps Bolden will make the announcement at the MSBR meeting, though we have not heard any rumors to that effect.  The decision was supposed to have been announced last month, but was delayed at the last moment.

Also on Tuesday, President Obama will present his annual State of the Union Address.  There is no indication that the space program will be mentioned, but it should be interesting nonetheless to see what the President has in mind as he faces his last two years in office with a Congress controlled entirely by Republicans.  During his first two years, Democrats controlled both chambers.  Democrats lost the House in 2010 and he faced a split Congress for the next four years.  Now they have lost the Senate as well and Republicans made significant gains in the House.   Expectations are low that Washington gridlock will come to an end.  Senate Democrats may be as effective in the minority as the Republicans were for four years and the President wields the veto pen.

Tuesday, January 20

• HASC Chm Thornberry Speaks to AEI, American Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th St., NW, Washington, DC, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• MSBR Luncheon Featuring NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, Martin’s Crosswinds, Greenbelt, MD, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm ET
• Senate Commerce Committee Organizational Meeting for 114th Congress, 253 Russell, 2:30 pm ET
• State of the Union Address, The Capitol, 9:00 pm ET

Wednesday, January 21

• House SS&T Committee Business Meeting, 2318 Rayburn, 11:00 am ET