What's Happening in Space Policy July 26-31, 2015

Here is our list of space policy related events for the week of July 26-31, 2015 and any insight we can offer about them.  Congress is in session this week.

During the Week

The House is scheduled to begin its annual August recess on Friday (no votes are scheduled after Thursday at 3:00 pm ET), so this is the last week for Congress to deal with any “must pass” legislation for programs expiring at the end of July.  To that end, the Senate is beginning its week today, Sunday, in a continuing attempt to pass a bill to reauthorize expenditures from the Highway Trust Fund for highway, highway safety, and public transportation programs that otherwise will expire on July 31.  While the highway bill per se is not a space-related issue, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has agreed to allow an amendment to be offered to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.  Last month, Congress failed to reauthorize the bank and its charter expired.  The bank is still operating, but cannot take on new projects. The bank offers loan guarantees for customers wanting to buy products — like communications satellites — from U.S. manufacturers and the Aerospace Industries Association and Satellite Industry Association are among its supporters.  Critics claim it is corporate welfare. The issue splits both parties and has the Senate in turmoil.  Even if a bill does pass the Senate, there is no guarantee the House will go along. The Senate is scheduled to be in session during the first week of
August, but if the House recesses as planned, it would not be
able to pass a compromise until it returns in September, so the Senate would have to agree to something the House already passed, perhaps a short-term extension for the highway funds and/or the Ex-Im Bank.  What will happen is very much up in the air.

With such disarray, the likelihood of other legislation passing is diminished, but it is always possible that relatively non-controversial bills could get through.  One possibility is the Senate Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, S. 1297, which was formally reported from the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday (S. Rept. 114-88).  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the main sponsor of the bill, however, and his verbal attack on McConnell on the Senate floor on Friday because of the Ex-Im bank issue (available on YouTube) might weigh against it getting a spot on the calendar, which McConnell controls.  It really is anyone’s guess, though.

This is “NAC week” at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA.   Many of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) committees will meet early in the week, with the full NAC meeting Wednesday afternoon through Friday morning.   The committee and Council meetings are available by WebEx and telephone for anyone who wants to listen in.  Bear in mind that times listed on the agendas are in local time at the meeting venue — Pacific Daylight Time in this case.

On Tuesday, trying to tune into those meetings will compete with three interesting events in Washington, DC:  the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB’s) public meeting to
finalize its report on the October 2014 SpaceShipTwo crash beginning at
9:30 am ET; a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee hearing at 10:00 am ET on planetary exploration — including testimony from the Principal Investigators for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres (Alan Stern and Christopher Russell, respectively); and a NOAA briefing at 1:00 pm ET on 10 Years Since Hurricane Katrina featuring NOAA Administrator Kathy Sullivan and the heads of NOAA’s four line offices, including Steve Volz, who is in charge of NOAA’s satellite programs.  All three events are available by webcast or WebEx.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are listed below.

Monday-Tuesday, July 27-28

• NAC Human Exploration and Operations Committee, JPL
• NAC Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee, JPL

Monday-Wednesday, July 27-29

• NAC Science Committee, JPL

Monday-Friday, July 27-31

• Multilateral Negotiations on an International Code of Conduct for Space Activities, United Nations, New York City

Tuesday, July 28

• NTSB Public Meeting on SpaceShipTwo Crash, NTSB HQ, Washington, DC, 9:30 am ET
• House SS&T Subcommittee Hearing on Exploring the Solar System, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
• NAC Aeronautics Committee, JPL (12:00 pm ET; 9:00 am PT)
• NOAA Briefing on 10 Years Since Hurricane Katrina, Dept. of Commerce Library, 15th St. and Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 1:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, July 28-29

• NAC Institutional Committee, JPL

Wednesday-Friday, July 29-31

• NASA Advisory Council, JPL