What’s Happening in Space Policy October 20-26, 2024
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 20-26, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until after the November elections except for pro forma sessions.
During the Week
The question of the week — for the third week in a row — is whether Crew-8 finally gets to come home. Their return has been delayed again and again due to bad weather in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico near Florida. SpaceX has eight spots on either side of the peninsula where Crew Dragon can splash down, but it’s been no-go even before Hurricane Milton.
NASA decided this afternoon (Sunday) — tentatively — to try to bring them home on Tuesday. There’s been a “marginal” improvement in the weather, so they’re planning for undocking at 9:05 pm ET tomorrow night with splashdown at 12:55 pm ET on Tuesday. But they won’t make a final decision until after the next weather briefing tomorrow morning.
NASA and SpaceX teams have seen a marginal improvement in forecast weather conditions in potential splashdown sites off the coast of Florida for the return of the Crew-8 mission. The teams are proceeding closer to undock in order to get better resolution on the weather forecast,…
— NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) October 20, 2024
Crew-8 launched on March 3 and they were supposed to come home in August after Crew-9 arrived to replace them. NASA delayed Crew-9’s launch and Crew-8’s return while deciding what to do about the Boeing Starliner CFT crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. If they couldn’t come home on Starliner, they would need two of the four seats on Crew-9 and two of the original Crew-9 astronauts would have to stay home. That’s ultimately what NASA decided to do. Crew-9 launched on September 28 and arrived the next day. After the usual week-long handover period, Crew-8 was getting ready to come home, but lousy weather in Florida has prevented it.
Speaking of Starliner, another important event this week is on Wednesday when Boeing will release its third quarter financial results. The company’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, is making clear that a lot has to change at the company to survive. He released preliminary 3rd quarter results on October 11 revealing that the Defense, Space, & Security division that includes Starliner and other Boeing space programs will take a $2 billion loss this quarter because of Starliner (“commercial crew”) and three non-space programs: T-7A Red Hawk Advanced Pilot Training System, KC-46A Pegasus Tanker, and MQ-25 Stingray aerial refueling drone.
Starliner is a fixed-price contract so Boeing has to cover any cost overruns. So far it has spent $1.6 billion of its own money and now has to figure out why the Crew Flight Test experienced helium leaks and Reaction Control System thrusters anomalies, which will cost even more. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has made clear the agency wants, needs and expects Boeing to make Starliner successful.
It will be interesting to hear what if anything Ortberg has to say about Starliner on Wednesday, or about the company’s other space programs. Starliner is just one part of Boeing’s space portfolio. Just for NASA, Boeing operates ISS and is the prime contractor for the Space Launch System, for example. It’s also a 50-50 co-owner with Lockheed Martin of United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is waiting for DOD to certify the new Vulcan rocket for national security launches.
Wednesday is also the day IAM union members will vote on a new contract deal reached yesterday that could end the five-week-old strike, which certainly could be good news.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are having their own third quarter financial results telecons this week, too.
Other interesting events include a meeting of the National Academies’ Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) tomorrow and Tuesday. Open sessions will be livestreamed (note that times on the agenda are in Pacific Daylight Time). They include updates on planetary science and astrobiology programs at NASA in general, the Europa Clipper mission that successfully launched last week, Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions under the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP), and NASA’s response to the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Independent Review Board. NASA announced last week that former Administrator Jim Bridenstine is leading an MSR strategy review team to assess the 11 proposals submitted on how to get the samples being collected by the Perseverance rover back to Earth more quickly and affordably than earlier planned.
Separately, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is holding two virtual Town Hall meetings on Thursday, one for heliophysics and one for astrophysics. The heliophysics Town Hall follows a two-and-a-half day meeting of the Heliophysics Advisory Committee.
The astrophysics Town Hall appears to be a stand-alone event. Astrophysics Division Director Mark Clampin said in July the agency would announce its decision about the future of the Chandra X-Ray space telescope in mid-September, but when we asked about it last month we were told “While awaiting Congressional appropriations for fiscal year 2025, NASA is continuing to work with the Chandra team to maintain workforce required for science operations as this mission reaches end of life.” NASA’s FY2025 appropriations are in abeyance at least until December 20 while all the discretionary agencies operate under a Continuing Resolution. We’ll be listening to see if there’s any Chandra news on Wednesday. A review team earlier this year concluded that NASA’s FY2025 budget proposal for Chandra would doom it.
On the national security space front, the Mitchell Institute will have another interesting Schriever Spacepower Series webinar on Tuesday, this time with Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, Commander, U.S. Space Forces Indo-Pacific. He’s been in command there since the U.S. Space Force stood up its Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) component command in 2022 with great fanfare. It was the first of five USSF component commands supporting combatant commands around the world. The others are Space Forces Korea, Space Forces Central, Space Forces Europe and Africa, and Space Forces Space.
As a reminder, because we know it’s confusing — U.S. Space Force is one of the six military services that support the 11 Combatant Commands, like Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, European Command, Africa Command, and U.S. Space Command. Military services “organize, train and equip” personnel who are assigned as needed to Combatant Commands that control and command military forces during peace and war. Space Forces Space is the Space Force’s component command in U.S. Space Command, for example. U.S. Space Command has four other component commands from the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force respectively.
On a fun note, the Institute of Navigation has declared October 23 as International Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Day. “Chosen for its significance, the date 10.23 mirrors the foundational GPS frequency of 10.23 MHz, a number that resonates as the original heartbeat of GPS satellites, signals, and receivers.” GPS, of course, is the U.S. Global Positioning System — owned and operated by DOD with its civilian signals available free to everyone in the world — that is so much a part of everyday lives that few people even know it’s there, but it would be very difficult to manage without it. Other countries have their versions and they collectively are known as GNSS. ION offers ideas on how to celebrate mostly by outreach to schools and the public through “workshops or interactive sessions to spark curiosity and passion for GNSS.”
Update: Just after we published, Blue Origin announced they will try again to launch New Shepard-27 (NS-27) on Wednesday, October 23. The launch window opens at 10:00 am CENTRAL Time (11:00 am Eastern) and the webcast will begin 10 minutes in advance. This is a verification flight for a new human-rated vehicle and no people will be aboard. Two previous attempts were scrubbed.
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-Tuesday, October 21-22
- National Academies’ Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS), Beckman Center, Irvine, CA/online
- Satellite Innovation (part of Silicon Valley Space Week), Computer Science Museum, Mountain View, CA
- TENTATIVE: Crew-8 Undocks from ISS, Earth orbit 9:05 pm ET
Monday-Friday, October 21-25
- 2024 Advancing IDEA in Planetary Science Conference (LPI), virtual
Tuesday, October 22
- Schriever Spacepower Series with Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir (Mitchell Inst), virtual, 10:00 am ET
- Lockheed Martin 3Q2024 Financial Results, virtual, 11:00 am ET
- TENTATIVE: Crew-8 splashdown, Florida coast, 12:55 pm ET
Tuesday-Thursday, October 22-24
- NASA Heliophysics Advisory Committee, public attendance virtual only
- Planetary Science Technology Symposium, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH/virtual
Wednesday, October 23
- International GNSS Day, global
- Boeing 3Q2024 Financial Results, virtual, 10:30 am ET
- Blue Origin NS-27 Verification Flight (third try), West Texas, 11:00 am ET
- NASA Heliophysics Town Hall Meeting, virtual, 12:00 pm ET
- NASA Astrophysics Town Hall Meeting, virtual, 3:00 pm ET
- ISU-DC Space Café with Starburst’s Robert Gamin, 1020 N. Highland St., Arlington, VA, 6:00-8:00 pm ET
Wednesday-Thursday, October 23-24
- MilSat Symposium (part of Silicon Valley Space Week), Computer Science Museum, Mountain View, CA
Thursday, October 24
- Northrop Grumman 3Q2024 Financial Results, virtual, 9:00 am ET
- First Look at Space Agenda 2025 (Aerospace Corp), virtual, 12:00-1:15 pm ET
Friday, October 25
- Annual Space Diplomacy Symposium (Univ of Washington), Seattle, Washington, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm PACIFIC Time
This article has been updated.
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