What’s Happening in Space Policy June 30-July 13, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the next two weeks, June 30-July 13, 2024, and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess this week except for pro forma sessions, returning the week of July 8.

During the Week

First, Happy Asteroid Day!  Today (Sunday) is the annual International Asteroid Day designated as such by the United Nations in 2016. A number of organizations are holding events around this date. More information is on the Asteroid Day website (see our Calendar Entry)

Apart from that, this week is really quiet.

The United States celebrates Independence Day on Thursday, July 4, commemorating the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, that established the United States of America as independent and no longer subject to the rule of King George III of Britain. Thursday therefore is a federal holiday, but Congress and a lot of other people take off the entire week so there are few space-related events.

It’s even quiet on the International Space Station. Two NASA astronauts were going to do a spacewalk on Tuesday, but that’s been postponed to sometime towards the end of the month and the date for the Starliner Crew Flight Test crew to come home also is TBD.

The only event we have for this week is a Space News webinar on Tuesday on “Race to the Moon.” It features Douglas Terrier from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Yoo Song from China’s commercial launch startup Orienspace, Namrata Goswami from Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, and Blaine Curcio from Orbital Gateway Consulting in Hong Kong. Space News’s David Ariosto is the moderator and says in a video that it will bring together leading voices from NASA, the Chinese space sector, and India. Goswami is in the U.S. now, but spent the early part of her career at India’s Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis. She specializes in Great Power Politics and co-authored “Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space.”

Apart from that, this is a good week to relax and get ready for next week, which has some very interesting events on tap starting with the inaugural launch of Europe’s new Ariane 6 on July 9.

As usual for rockets, the first launch has been delayed and delayed, year after year. What’s unusual is that Ariane 6 was delayed so long that Europe ran out of Ariane 5s. The last Ariane 5 launched a year ago and Europe has not had independent access to space since then. Europe also has a small rocket, Vega, but problems developed with the new version of that one, too.  ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher refers to Europe’s space access situation as a “crisis” with ESA and the European Union forced to buy launches from abroad — SpaceX.  We’ll have much more about Ariane 6 next week, but be sure it’s on your calendar. In pencil, of course. Launch dates often slip, though Ariane 6 got through the Wet Dress Rehearsal on June 20 and is ready to go as of today.

Also coming up next week is the Secure World Foundation’s 6th Summit for Space Sustainability. It’s taking place in Japan this year on July 11-12 and is co-hosted by Japan’s Cabinet Office Space Policy Secretariat. It’ll be livestreamed, though Japan is 13 hours ahead of EDT which will make timing a bit of a challenge.  The summit opens July 11 at 9:30 am Japan Standard Time (July 10, 8:30 pm EDT). We’ll have more about it in next week’s edition, but it has an impressive line-up of speakers from around the world, but with a focus on the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine will also release the “mid-term report” on NASA’s implementation of the most recent Decadal Survey on Earth Science and Applications from Space. The Academies’ five Decadal Surveys for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate are issued every 10 years (a decade) and half-way through they  take a look to see how everything is going. The most recent ESAS Decadal, “Thriving on Our Changing Planet”, was released in 2018.

The House and Senate will be back in session the week of July 8.  As of June 7, the House Appropriations Committee planned full committee markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that funds NASA and NOAA on July 9 and Transportation-HUD (including FAA) on July 10. The markups are not listed on the committee’s website at the moment, however. We’ll keep an eye out for confirmation.

Those and other events we know about as of this morning (June 30) are shown below. Check back throughout the weeks for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Sunday, June 30

• International Asteroid Day, global

Tuesday, July 2

• Race to the Moon (Space News), virtual, 11:00 am ET

Thursday, July 4

• Independence Day (federal holiday)

Monday, July 8

• Schriever Spacepower Series with Lt. Gen. David Miller, Space Operations Command (Mitchell Inst), virtual, 10:00-11:00 am ET

Monday-Tuesday, July 8-9

• Space Weather Roundtable (National Academies), Keck Center, 500 5th St., NW, Washington, DC/virtual

Monday-Wednesday, July 8-10

• SPACETIDE 2024, Tokyo, Japan (in conjunction with the 6th Summit for Space Sustainability, which follows)

Tuesday, July 9

• Inaugural Launch of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket, Kourou, French Guiana
• House Appropriations Full Committee Markup FY2025 CJS (NASA/NOAA) bill, details TBA

Wednesday, July 10

• Space Investors Forum (NSSA), Tysons Corner, VA (time TBA)
• House Appropriations Full Committee Markup FY2025 THUD (FAA) bill, details TBA

Thursday, July 11

• Report Release: Mid-Term Assessment of Earth Science Decadal Survey (National Academies), virtual, 3:00-4:00 pm ET

Thursday-Friday, July 11-12

• NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), virtual
• Summit for Space Sustainability (SWF/Government of Japan), Tokyo, Japan (in conjunction with SPACETIDE 2024, which precedes it)

Saturday, July 13 – Sunday, July 21

• COSPAR 2024: 45th Scientific Assembly, Busan, South Korea