What's Happening in Space Policy July 4-9, 2016 – UPDATE

This is our list of space policy events for the week of July 4-9, 2016 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House returns to work on July 5; the Senate on July 6.  [This posting was updated on July 4.]

During the Week

Monday, July 4, is a federal holiday and government offices officially are closed, but some folks at NASA surely will be on duty because the BIG EVENT for the coming week is the arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter that day.

Miles O’Brien explained in
a recent PBS Newshour segment what Juno will tell us about Jupiter that
the Galileo spacecraft didn’t (basically Galileo was looking at the
cloudtops outward while Juno will look under the clouds down through
Jupiter’s core).  NASA has held a number of pre-arrival briefings already. Another will be broadcast on NASA TV on Monday at noon ET with a mission update. 

NASA TV coverage of orbit insertion begins at 10:30 pm ET and a post-arrival briefing is scheduled for 1:00 am ET July 5. 

The spacecraft will fire its engine at 11:18 pm ET on July 4 for 35 minutes to enter Jupiter’s orbit, ending at 11:53 pm ET.  Everything is automated at this point — either the engine will work properly or it won’t.  The signal travel time from Jupiter to Earth is 48 minutes.  The times here are Earth-receive times accounting for the delay.

Closer to Earth, a new crew will launch to the International Space Station on Wednesday evening Eastern Daylight Time (Thursday GMT, Moscow Time, and local time at the launch site).  The three crew members — NASA’s Kate Rubins, JAXA’s Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos’s Anatoly Ivanishin — will be using an upgraded version of the Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz MS-01.   Since it’s new, they will take the longer 2-day trajectory to the ISS to test everything out, docking early Saturday morning EDT.

Meanwhile, here on Earth, on Thursday, the Environment Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on the nation’s current and next generation weather satellites.  It is a bit unusual in that it blends plans for civil and military weather satellites.  The witness list as of today includes two experts on NOAA’s weather satellite programs — Steve Volz, head of NOAA/NESDIS and the GAO expert who follows those civil weather satellite programs (David Powner), and two on DOD’s weather satellite program — Ralph Stoffler, Director of Weather in the office of the USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and the GAO expert on military satellites (Cristina Chaplain).  Subcommittee chairman Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) serves on both this subcommittee and the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) which may explain the decision to hold a combined hearing on the weather satellite plans for both NOAA and DOD.  House SS&T typically webcasts its hearings on its website and YouTube.

The events we know about as of Monday, July 4, are listed below.  Check back throughout the week for additions to our Events of Interest list.

Monday-Tuesday, July 4-5 ET

• Arrival of the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter (watch on NASA TV)
  • July 4, 12:00 pm ET, pre-orbit insertion briefing
  • July 4, 10:30 pm ET, orbit insertion and NASA commentary
  • July 5, 1:00 am ET, post-orbit insertion briefing

Wednesday, July 6

• Soyuz MS-01 launch to ISS, 9:36 pm ET (watch on NASA TV)

Thursday, July 7

• House SS&T Sbcmte Hrg on Weather Satellites, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
• NASA Briefing with Upcoming ISS Crew (to be launched in September), Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 2:00 pm ET (watch on NASA TV)

Saturday, July 9

• Soyuz MS-01 docking at ISS, 12:12 am ET (watch on NASA TV)

Note:  This article, orignally published June 30, 2016, was updated throughout on July 4, 2016.