What’s Happening in Space Policy November 5-11, 2023

What’s Happening in Space Policy November 5-11, 2023

By Marcia Smith | Posted: November 5, 2023 12:24 pm ET | Last Updated: November 5, 2023 4:51 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 5-11, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Welcome to Standard Time in the United States. Hope everyone (except in Arizona and Hawaii) remembered to “fall back” one hour overnight. Tuesday is Election Day across the country for state and local races, and Friday is a federal holiday in observance of Veterans Day, which actually is Saturday.

Space policy events begin today, Sunday, at 1:00 pm ET.

Redwire is holding a panel discussion at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on “Leveraging Space to Transform Medicine and Biotechnology on Earth.”  It’ll be livestreamed on YouTube and has a great set of panelists: Redwire’s Mike Gold (moderator) and Rich Bolling; NASA Johnson Space Center’s Kris Lehnhardt; actor Jess Bush from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; and former NASA astronaut Anna Fisher. An avid Star Trek aficionado, Gold calls it the “Space Biotech and Star Trek” panel.

This is a week full of action in Seville, Spain for the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Union (EU) space activities.

Tomorrow (Monday), they begin a two-day “space summit.” Tomorrow’s is organized by ESA. Its 22 member states “will raise Europe’s ambition to drive forward space for a green future, take decisive steps in exploration, and ensure Europe’s access to space, while preparing a paradigm shift towards a more competitive next generation of launchers.” Portions will be livestreamed beginning just before 14:00 CET (8:00 am EST) with ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen addressing the group from the International Space Station. Later will be remarks by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and there’s a press conference at 18:45 CET (12:45 pm EST). Watch on ESA TV and ESA’s YouTube channel.

Tuesday’s segment is organized by the EU under the presidency of Spain. They refer to it as an “informal ministerial meeting on space competitiveness.” It’s the beginning of a three day hybrid EU Space Week billed as “a central hub for anyone interested in current — and future — trends of the EU space programme.” An ESA-EU press conference is scheduled for Tuesday at 14:00 CET (8:00 am EST) but note that it is on ESA’s Channel 2, because they’ll be busy on Channel 1 with the Euclid reveal.

The Euclid reveal? Yes, on  Tuesday, ESA will release the first images from their new Euclid space telescope, which is collecting data to help solve the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter. Launched on July 1, Euclid is now out at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point where the NASA-ESA-CSA James Webb Space Telescope and others are located. ESA will reveal the new images at 14:15 CET (8:15 am EST). An on-site media briefing precedes the release, and a Q&A session afterwards at 15:00 CET (9:00 am EST).

Back here in the States, there are lots of really interesting events as usual.

NASA’s Consortium for Space Mobility and In-space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (COSMIC) will hold its kickoff meeting at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Tuesday, the first day of the two-day hybrid meeting, features Pam Melroy, NASA Deputy Administrator; Maj. Gen. John Olson, U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Mobilization Assistant; and Ezinne Uzo-Okoro from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy among many others. Led by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, the goal is to bring “together a diverse forum of users, customers, developers, and researchers to accelerate the widespread adoption of ISAM capabilities as an integrated segment of the space enterprise architecture.” The five focus areas for this meeting are missions and ecosystems, demonstration infrastructure, workforce development, research and technology, and policy and regulation.

Another event that looks really interesting, also on Tuesday, is being held by the Stimson Center in D.C. in cooperation with Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs.  “New Era in Space: Global Governance for a Contested Space Domain” features two panels: Democratization of Space, and Future of Space Governance.

Laura Delgado López, CSIS Visiting Fellow, will speak at the Stimson Center/Princeton event on Global Governance for a Contested Space Domain on Tuesday.

It begins with a keynote address and moderated discussion by Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations Under Secretary General and High Representative for Disarmament with Space News reporter Jeff Foust. The Democratization of Space panel includes a stellar group of international experts: Chris Chyba, Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton; Laura Delgado López, Visiting Fellow at CSIS; Masami Onoda, Director of JAXA’s Washington office; Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan from India’s Observer Research Foundation; and Marc Jochemich, the head of DLR’s Washington office.

The second panel on space governance features William Durch from Stimson; Ruth Pritchard-Kelly from RPK Advisors; Brian Weeden from the Secure World Foundation; Col. Aniello Violetti, the space attaché at the Italian embassy in DC; and Julia Selman-Ayetey, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana).

Up on Capitol Hill, both chambers will be in session. The House will continue work on appropriations bills, but not the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NASA and NOAA. The House Appropriations Committee decided to skip full committee markup of CJS as well as Labor-HHS. They’ve gone directly from subcommittee markup to the Rules Committee, which says they “may” meet the week of November 13 on both of them. The Senate passed the first minibus consisting of three bills (not defense or CJS) last week, but it’s clear another Continuing Resolution will be needed when the current one expires on November 17.  There’s a lot of talk about what they might do, but nothing that’s so solid that it’s worth reporting at this point. Stay tuned.

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will mark up the Weather Modernization Act of 2023 that has a little bit about weather satellites, but not very much.  The committee apparently will not take up the Commercial Space Act introduced on Thursday. At least it’s not on the schedule as of today.

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.

Sunday, November 5

Monday-Tuesday, November 6-7

Monday-Friday, November 6-10

Tuesday, November 7

Tuesday-Wednesday, November 7-8

Tuesday-Thursday, November 7-9

Wednesday, November 8

Thursday, November 9

Thursday-Saturday, November 9-11

Friday, November 10

Friday-Saturday, November 10-11

 

This article has been updated.

Last Updated: Nov 05, 2023 4:51 pm ET

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