What’s Happening in Space Policy October 25-31, 2020

What’s Happening in Space Policy October 25-31, 2020

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of October 25-31, 2020 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session for part of the week. The House will meet in pro forma sessions only.

During the Week

Yes, it’s another overly full week of conferences, webinars, and advisory committee meetings, but with extra special events that mark the beginning of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of permanent human occupancy of the International Space Station (ISS).

Just looking at conferences, we’ve got the annual American Astronautical Society’s (AAS) Wernher Von Braun symposium (Monday-Wednesday), the annual fall meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s (also AAS) Division on Planetary Sciences (DPS) conference (Monday-Friday), the second week of the annual SpaceCom conference (Monday-Thursday), the first four events in the Space Foundation’s new “Space Symposium 365” series with key speakers who were intended to speak at the COVID-cancelled Space Symposium (Monday-Wednesday), and the CONFERS Global Satellite Servicing Forum (Wednesday-Thursday).

Among the webinars is one tomorrow sponsored by AIAA on “Space Policy: The Road Ahead” with leaders from AIAA (Dan Dumbacher), AIA (Mike French), the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration (Mary Lynne Dittmar), and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (Eric Stallmer), moderated by the editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com (me).  On Wednesday, Dan Dumbacher will be the moderator for a panel including me, Jeff Foust (Space News) and John Logsdon (GWU Space Policy Institute emeritus) at the AAS Von Braun symposium for a policy session that afternoon just after NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine speaks, and just before a panel with Mike Griffin (now with his own consulting company, LogiQ) and Scott Pace (White House National Space Council).

The Von Braun symposium (note that times on the agenda are in CENTRAL Time, add one for Eastern) has lots of other interesting sessions, mostly focused on Artemis. They include an international panel Tuesday morning with NASA’s Mike Gold and the Washington office representatives of ESA (Sylvie Espinasse), JAXA (Masami Onoda) and CSA (Jill Symth). In addition to Bridenstine and Gold, other top NASA officials scheduled to speak include the Associate Administrators for human exploration (Kathy Lueders), space technology (Jim Reuter), and science (Thomas Zurbuchen) as well as Jody Singer, Director of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, where this symposium is traditionally held. Top officials from the Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce (Kevin O’Connell) and FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (Wayne Monteith) also are on tap, along with many other government and private sector representatives too numerous to mention.

The Space Foundation had rescheduled its Space Symposium from spring to this coming weekend in the hope the COVID situation would improve, but that clearly did not work out and now is scheduled for August 2021.  In the meantime, it is starting a series of “Space Symposium 365” webinars this week with some of the keynote speakers that were planned. On Monday, it will present the James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award to legendary NASA flight director Gene Kranz. On Tuesday, Bridenstine will speak, and on Wednesday there are two: Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett together with Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond at 1:00 pm ET, and NRO Director Chris Scolese at 3:30 pm ET.

SpaceCom starts off the second week of its virtual conference tomorrow with NASA’s Joel Montelbano, recently appointed as International Space Station (ISS) program manager, and Alex MacDonald, dual-hatted as NASA’s Chief Economist and program executive for the ISS National Lab (also known as CASIS). Human spaceflight — ISS and Artemis — is a major focus of SpaceCom this week.

In fact, this week begins the celebration of the 20th anniversary of permanent human occupancy of ISS. The first ISS crew — Bill Shepherd from NASA, and Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev from Roscosmos — launched on October 31 and boarded the ISS on November 2, 2000. NASA begins its celebration on Thursday with a panel discussion about that “Expedition 1” and on Friday the current three-person ISS crew, also one American (Kate Rubins) and two Russians (Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov), will hold an in-flight press conference.

Lots of other fascinating events coming up.  Remember that our home page only lists the next 20, so click on “View All Events” to see the complete menu or look at the list below. Be sure to check back throughout the week for other events we learn about later and add to our Calendar (especially NASA media briefings that often are announced with little notice).

Monday, October 26

Monday-Wednesday, October 26-28

  • Von Braun Symposium (American Astronautical Society), virtual (times on the agenda are in CENTRAL Time)

Monday-Thursday, October 26-29 (continued from last week)

Monday-Friday, October 26-30

Tuesday, October 27

Tuesday-Wednesday, October 27-28

Tuesday-Thursday, October 27-29

Wednesday, October 28

Wednesday-Thursday, October 28-29

Thursday, October 29

Friday, October 30

User Comments



SpacePolicyOnline.com has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.  We do not post comments that include links to other websites since we have no control over that content nor can we verify the security of such links.