What’s Happening in Space Policy July 14-20, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of July 14-20, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

It’s a relatively quiet week in space policy. The House and Senate are in recess so members can participate in the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which will go on despite the horrific events yesterday.

For the space policy crowd, the pick of the week probably is the American Astronautical Society’s Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland tomorrow (Monday) through Wednesday, though the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on Saturday is a close second. The latter might be at the top of the list except the biggest celebration we’ve heard about so far is the Moon Village Association’s meeting in China, which will be at 2:00 am EDT, a little early for most of us (or late in the case of the West Coast where it’ll be 11:00 pm July 19).

Let’s start with the AAS Glenn symposium. The theme is “Increasing the Thrust of Space Sustainability” with panels on sustainable propulsion, aviation sustainability, and building a sustainable workforce. Keynote speakers on Tuesday and Wednesday are Charity Weeden, NASA Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy and Strategy, and Pete McGrath, Chief Operating Officer at Intuitive Machines. Over the three days there’s a nice mix of government and private sector speakers on commercial partnerships, technology gaps, funding (“No Bucks, No Buck Rogers”), power and propulsion, lunar surface communications, and much more. Looks really good!  A virtual option is available.

The Apollo 11 anniversary typically focuses on July 20, the day Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon, but the entire mission lasted from launch on July 16 through splashdown on July 24. NASA is grouping together a number of otherwise seemingly unrelated events scheduled to take place between July 15 and July 25 under the banner of an Apollo 11 commemoration. It also will “share the iconic bootprint image and the significance of Apollo 11 to the NASA mission, as well as use the #Apollo11 hashtag, across its digital platforms online.”

With the agency getting ready to send people back to the Moon, it’s a bit surprising NASA isn’t using this 55th anniversary as an opportunity to highlight the importance of human lunar exploration. They are being rather low-key. The only one of the events with a direct tie-in to Artemis is Tuesday’s roll-out of the core stage for the Space Launch System rocket that will be used for Artemis II next year and it’s not even on the NASA TV schedule. Apparently unless you can be there in person, you won’t see it (so we don’t list it on our Calendar). Perhaps additional NASA events haven’t been announced yet. If we hear of any, we’ll post them our Calendar.

The biggest Apollo 11 anniversary celebration we’ve heard of so far is the Moon Village Association’s (MVA’s) conference in Harbin, China. MVA led the effort to get July 20 declared International Moon Day by the United Nations in 2021.  They’ve got a very interesting line-up of speakers, though it’s not clear if they’ll be there in person or virtually. The list includes greetings from the Director of the U.N.’s Office of Outer Space Affairs (Aarti Holla-Maini), the Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Space Affairs (Valda Vikmanis-Keller), the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (S. Somanathan), the CEO of the Egyptian Space Agency (Sherif Sedky), and someone from the China National Space Agency. That’s followed by four keynote speeches and two roundtables on the “Importance of Lunar Exploration and Utilisation for Humanity.” The livestreamed event begins at 14:00 Beijing Time (2:00 am EDT).

Here in D.C., the National Cathedral will have special events on Friday and Saturday for their own commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the “Space Window” at the cathedral.  One of the rocks brought back by Apollo 11 is embedded in the window. The Apollo 11 crew was present for the dedication on July 21, 1974 along with then-NASA Administrator Jim Fletcher and his predecessor, Tom Paine, who was Deputy Administrator and then Administrator during the Apollo 7-13 missions.

Staying ahead of China in everything, including space, is one of the few areas of agreement across the political spectrum. U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns will participate in a fireside chat at CSIS on Friday. It’ll be interesting to see if space comes up either in the context of the U.S. getting back to the Moon before taikonauts arrive or threats we perceive in the national security space realm.

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.

Monday-Wednesday, July 15-17

• AAS Glenn Space Technology Symposium, Cleveland, OH

Monday-Sunday, July 15-21 (continued from July 13)

• COSPAR Scientific Assembly, Busan, South Korea

Tuesday, July 16

• MSBR Luncheon with OSTP’s Jinni Meehan, Martin’s Crosswinds, Greenbelt, MD, 11:30 am-1:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Thursday, July 16-18

• Small Payload Ride Share Symposium 2024, Laurel, MD

Friday, July 19

• Fireside Chat with U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns (CSIS), 1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW, Washington D.C./virtual, 9:00-10:00 am ET

Friday-Saturday, July 19-20

• National Cathedral Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Dedication of Moon Rock “Space Window”, Washington, DC, 10:00 am-5:00 pm ET

Saturday, July 20

• International Moon Day: Illuminating the Shadows (global)
• International Moon Day Conference (Moon Village Association), Harbin, China/livestreamed, 14:00 Beijing Time (2:00 am EDT)