What’s Happening in Space Policy January 28-February 3, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of January 28-February 3, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Capitol Hill remains pretty quiet in terms of space-related issues although progress is being made on FY2024 appropriations. Politico reported yesterday that the chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), have agreed on the “302(b)” allocations.

New: The ????’s are locked in.

Top appropriators reached a deal on the totals for a dozen spending bills late Friday night, clearing a critical hurdle toward securing a broader government funding agreement: https://t.co/UeqwJ9uJGV

— Caitlin Emma (@caitlinzemma) January 27, 2024

The House and Senate majority and minority leaders agreed on top-line spending earlier this month. The next step was for the leadership of the two committees to divide it up among their 12 subcommittees. That’s what just happened. The 302(b) reference is to a section of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act that created this process.

The House and Senate committees did this last year to craft the bills that already have been under consideration, but they were using different top-line numbers. The Senate used what then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden negotiated in the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA). The House used lower amounts. Now that they have bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the total amount they can spend, they’re going through the process again.

With the 302(b) allocations determined, each subcommittee now must decide again how to allocate the money to the departments and agencies under their jurisdictions. It’s a step-by-step process and there’s still a long way to go, but it is progress. The bigger challenge may not be the funding figures, but the social policy provisions on abortion, LGBTQ, and diversity that House Republicans want to add that Democrats strongly oppose. The deadlines for doing something to avoid a partial shutdown are March 1 (for four bills including the one that funds FAA) and March 8 (the other eight including Defense, NASA and NOAA).

Elsewhere, Intuitive Machines (IM), SpaceX and NASA are getting ready for the next U.S. attempt to land on the Moon. For whatever reason, none of them will say what the potential launch dates are. They just keep saying “mid-February.”  Spacecraft can only be launched to the Moon a few days per month when the Moon and Earth are correctly aligned so they must know which days they are, but they’re not sharing the information. NASA and IM are having a media teleconference on Wednesday to discuss the NASA payloads that will be aboard. Perhaps we’ll find out then.  IM’s Nova-C is the second launch for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The first, Astrobotic’s Peregrine, suffered a propulsion failure. NASA has said all along they understand the risks and a 50-50 success rate for CLPS as a whole is OK.  Hopefully Nova-C will even it out. As JAXA’s Small Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) showed, landing on the Moon isn’t for the faint of heart, even when you get to claim success in the end.

Commercial Space Week is taking place in Orlando this week. It’s a collection of three conferences: the Global Spaceport Summit tomorrow (Monday), the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command’s Space Mobility Conference (Tuesday), and Spacecom|50th Space Congress (Tuesday-Thursday).

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is the kick-off speaker for GSA on Monday where he will “share his unique perspective on the future of space operations and the role of spaceports in enabling commercial space activities.” Tuesday’s Space Mobility Conference features Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, U.S. Space Force’s Program Executive Officer for Assured Access to Space as well as commander of Space Launch Delta 45, Director of the Eastern Range, and Director of Launch and Range Operations for Space Systems Command. White House National Space Council Executive Secetary Chirag Parikh is the opening speaker that day. Spacecom|50th Space Congress has an extensive list of speakers available to peruse.

NASA’s Day of Remembrance was last week, but the anniversaries of the three tragedies it commemorates were yesterday, today and Thursday.

Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee were killed on January 27, 1967 when fire swept through their Apollo capsule during a pre-launch test when an electrical arc ignited the 100 percent oxygen atmosphere.

Today (Sunday, January 28) is the anniversary of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy that killed NASA astronauts Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Judy Resnik; Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe; and Hughes Aircraft payload specialist Greg Jarvis. Aerodynamic forces tore the shuttle apart 73 seconds after liftoff because an “O-ring” in one of the two Solid Rocket Boosters failed due to very cold temperatures and led to the failure of the other SRB and External Tank.

Thursday, February 1, is the anniversary of the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that killed NASA astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, and Michael Anderson, and Israeli Air Force Pilot Ilan Ramon. They were returning from a 16-day science mission when hot gases entered the shuttle’s wing through a hole created by foam falling from the External Tank during liftoff. Every year Israel celebrates Israeli Space Week around this time and holds the Ilan Ramon International Space Conference. Because of the Israel-Hamas war, the conference will be limited in scope this year and take place only on January 30. There is an online option, though the time zone difference is a challenge. It starts at 12:30 am Eastern Standard Time and ends at 10:00 am.

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-Thursday, January 28-February 1

• 104th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Baltimore, MD/online

Monday, January 29

• Global Spaceport Summit (GSA), Orlando, FL (part of Commercial Space Week)
• Committee to Assess NASA Science Activation 2.0 (National Academies), Keck Center, 500 5th St., NW, Washington, DC/online, 11:00 am-4:00 pm ET

Monday-Friday, January 29-February 2 (continues next week)

• Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOUS), Vienna, Austria (webcast)

Tuesday, January 30

• 19th Ilan Ramon International Space Conference, Herzliya, Israel/online
• 2nd Space Mobility Conference (USSF Space Systems Command), Orlando, FL (part of Commercial Space Week)
• Launch of Northrop Grumman’s NG-20 Cargo Mission to ISS, Cape Canaveral, FL, 12:07 pm ET (NASA TV begins 11:50 am ET)

Tuesday-Thursday, January 30-February 1

• NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ/online
• SPACECOM|50th Space Congress, Orlando, FL (part of Commercial Space Week)

Wednesday, January 31

• Boeing 4Q2023 Financial Results Telecon, virtual, 10:30 am ET
• NASA Science Mission Directorate Quarterly Town Hall meeting, virtual, 1:00-2:00 pm ET
• Gateway Utilization Town Hall for International Science Communities, virtual, 3:00 pm ET
• NASA Media Telecon on NASA Payloads on Intuitive Machines’ IM-1, virtual, 3:30 pm ET
• ISU-DC Space Café with Voyager Space’s Clay Mowry, 900 19th Street, NW, 6th Floor, Washington, DC, 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Thursday, February 1

• Change of Command Ceremony for USSF Space Systems Command, Los Angeles, CA