What’s Happening in Space Policy July 28-August 3, 2024

What’s Happening in Space Policy July 28-August 3, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of July 28-August 3, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House is in recess until September 9 except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

Last week, House leadership decided to send everyone home for the summer recess a week early when it became clear they didn’t have enough votes to pass the remaining FY2025 appropriations bills. They left on Thursday and will not return until September 9. Among the bills that didn’t make it to the floor were Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) that funds NASA and NOAA, Financial Services-General Government (FSGG) that funds the FCC, and Transportation-HUD (THUD) that funds the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The Defense bill is the only space-related bill that’s passed so far.

There’s been no expectation that the appropriations bills would be enacted before October 1 when FY2025 begins or even by the November 5 elections, but the House had hoped to get all of their bills passed before the August recess. Last year was extremely tumultuous and this year is turning out to be pretty much the same.

The Senate Appropriations Committee is still in the process of marking up its FY2025 bills. They finished CJS and THUD last week and will take up Defense and FSGG this Thursday along with three others, completing them all. The Senate leaves for the summer break at the end of this week and similarly will return on September 9.  When or if they consider the bills on the floor remains to be seen.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) will speak at Politico’s event on Shaping the Next Space Economy on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Politico has an interesting event on Tuesday that’s on Capitol Hill, though not in the halls of Congress. It’s at a nearby hotel and features Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas). Hickenlooper is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and its Space and Science Subcommittee. Moran is the Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations CJS subcommittee. They’ll be joined by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, FAA/AST Associate Administrator Kelvin Coleman, NOAA Office of Space Commerce Director Richard DalBello, Space Foundation SVP for Washington Operations Meghan Allen, and Satellite Industry Association President Tom Stroup. It’s a really top notch group discussing “Go for Launch: Shaping the Next Space Economy” and is in-person as well as livestreamed (register to get the link).

Off the Hill there are two very interesting conferences this week.  First is the ISS National Lab’s annual ISS Research & Development Conference, ISSRDC, organized by the American Astronautical Society.  It’s in Boston this year with another great lineup of speakers. Although we don’t see a link on the website yet, we’re told it’ll be livestreamed. The conference sessions are Tuesday-Thursday with pre-conference meetings tomorrow (Monday).

NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free will speak at the ISSRDC conference in Boston on Wednesday.

Among the highlights — the NASA astronauts aboard the ISS  (Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Tracy Dyson) will join via a live downlink on Tuesday at 9:35 am ET. The luncheon speaker Tuesday is Jinni Meehan, the new Assistant Director for Space Policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  On Wednesday,  NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free is the luncheon speaker and later that day Nicky Fox, head of the Science Mission Directorate, will speak and ISS Program Director Robyn Gatens will moderate a panel on continuity of research during the transition from ISS to commercial space stations. On Thursday, ISS Program Manager Dana Weigel moderates a panel with the ISS international partners.

Representatives of some of the companies planning to build commercial space stations will be there including Rich Leshner from Vast who’ll give a lightning talk on Wednesday. Vast says they’ll have a commercial space station, Haven-1, in orbit “no earlier than August 2025” that among other things will test artificial gravity. The Starlab team has a panel on Wednesday afternoon. The entire conference looks terrific.

AIAA’s annual ASCEND conference is at the same time. ASCEND itself is Tuesday-Thursday and is being held in conjunction with AIAA’s Aviation forum, which is Monday-Friday. As always, ASCEND has a dizzying array of Macro, Meta, Micro, and Technical Paper sessions along with networking and special programming events. They have sessions on the space economy; space exploration and infrastructure; space security and protection; space and society, education and workforce; space and sustainability; and space traffic management. Looks great! Unfortunately we’re told there is no virtual option this year, but AIAA will record opening sessions and lectures and post them to YouTube later.

Another really interesting meeting is Wednesday-Thursday: a workshop on “Science and Planetary Protection in Advance of Human Missions” to Mars facilitated by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. A second workshop in the series will be held October 30-November 1.  Experts will discuss what data needs to be collected and research conducted to limit harmful contamination of Mars before humans arrive, how that’ll inform the activities of human explorers, and what research those explorers will do when they’re there and how forward and back contamination will be incorporated into those research activities. It’s virtual.

Lt. Gen. Susan Helms (Ret.), chair of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, which will present its latest findings and recommendations on Thursday.

Also virtual — by telephone only — is the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel’s public session where they summarize their latest quarterly findings and recommendations. That’s on Thursday. The recaps are always interesting and sometimes newsy.

In case you missed it, Patricia Sanders, who chaired ASAP for 14 years, has handed the baton to Lt. Gen. Susan Helms (Ret.), a former NASA astronaut. Helms took over the role at the ASAP meeting in February where she called building an ISS deorbit vehicle “probably one of the most urgent safety issues” the panel sees right now. NASA agrees on the need and is trying to get the money from Congress.

Jared Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn private astronaut flight was scheduled for this week, but postponed when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 suffered a failure two weeks ago. Falcon 9 is back in service already — they had three launches this weekend — so we expect a new date for Polaris Dawn soon and will post it when we get it. The Crew Dragon spacecraft will take Isaacman and three others to an altitude higher than Earth-orbiting humans have flown before and he and crewmate Anna Menon will perform the first commercial spacewalk. All four crew members will need to don SpaceX spacesuits since the entire spacecraft will be depressurized, but only Isaacman and Menon will venture outside. More on that to come.

The 38th annual Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University begins on Saturday and runs through August 8.  National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Chris Scolese and Aerospace Corporation President and CEO Steve Isakowitz are keynote speakers. It’s become quite an extravaganza over the years with a plethora of fascinating side events that almost out-shine the conference itself. As far as we know, there’s no virtual option for any of it.

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-Thursday, July 29-August 1

Tuesday, July 30

Tuesday-Thursday, July 30-August 1

  • ASCEND (AIAA), Las Vegas, NV

Tuesday-Friday, July 30-August 2

Wednesday, July 31

Wednesday-Thursday, July 31-August 1

Thursday, August 1

Saturday, August 3 – Thursday, August 8

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