What’s Happening in Space Policy October 27-November 3, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of October 27-November 3, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until after the November 5 elections except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

With Crew-8 finally back home after three weeks of weather delays and all four crew members back in Houston after one of them spent the night in a Pensacola hospital for reasons NASA will not discuss due to privacy concerns, this week is comparatively quiet.

Still a lot going on, though. China’s getting ready to launch a new crew to their Tiangong-3 space station. As usual, China is not saying when or who, but they’ve rolled the rocket out to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Space Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. One source cites October 29 as a likely launch date. They will exchange places with the three-person Shenzhou-18 crew that’s been on board since April.

Down here on terra firma, the American Astronautical Society will hold its annual three-day Von Braun symposium in Huntsville starting tomorrow (Monday). The theme this year is “Expanding Exploration: From Vision to Reality” and has a top notch line-up of speakers as usual. A virtual option is available.

The keynoters are Casey Swails, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator (Monday); Eric Zarybnisky, Director, Office of Space Launch, National Reconnaissance Office (Tuesday); and Jim Free, NASA Associate Administrator, together with Wayne Hale who recently retired after a storied career at NASA and in industry (Wednesday).

Among the many interesting panels are “All Hands on Deck: Artemis Synergies and Sustainability,” “Nuclear Propulsion Technologies – Plans and Progress,” “A.I. and Space Exploration: ‘Sure Dave. I Can Do That’,” “No Lost Bags: Lunar Logistics and Mobility,” and “An Astronaut Discussion: Going Beyond LEO.” That last one features three former astronauts — Alvin Drew who just became space sustainability lead at NASA Headquarters, Doug Hurley who is now at Northrop Grumman, and Mark Polansky now with Barrios — and is moderated by Jeff Foust of Space News. Remember that times on the agenda are in CENTRAL Time (add one for Eastern).

Speaking of Space News, they’ve got an interesting webinar on Tuesday at 1:00 pm ET where host David Ariosto will have a one-on-one interview with Steve Altemus, co-founder, president and CEO of Intuitive Machines. IM’s Odysseus lunar lander had a sporty, but largely successful, landing on the Moon in February and a second IM lander is expected to launch this coming January. IM also is one of the organizations that expressed interest in taking over the VIPER lunar lander that NASA intends to terminate even though it’s already built and through most of its pre-launch testing.

Immediately after that, at 3:15 pm ET, VIPER project scientist Tony Colaprete will provide an update on VIPER at the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting in Houston. (Remember that times on the agenda are in CENTRAL time).  Perhaps we’ll find out if the final step in pre-launch testing is completed and the status of reviewing the proposals from IM and others on a potential path forward. Colaprete gave a great presentation at the Exploration Science Forum in July from Johnson Space Center where VIPER had just completed acoustic testing, leaving only thermal vacuum testing to go (it had passed vibration testing already).

Intuitive Machines and two of the other companies providing services under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative will also be at the LEAG meeting, which begins tomorrow. Representatives of Astrobotic (Dan Hendrickson), IM (Tim Crain), and Firefly (Joseph Marlin) are on the agenda Tuesday afternoon right after Colaprete.  Joel Kearns, who heads the CLPS initative at NASA Headquarters, speaks tomorrow morning.

NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) has its public outbrief from their third quarter review of safety at NASA on Thursday. It’s a firehose of information, presented over a telephone line (even in this day and age!), but there’s almost always something really important to learn so worth the effort to listen.

We’re including next Sunday (November 3) in this week’s edition because at 2:00 am, before we publish our next issue, the U.S. will switch from summer time to standard time. Don’t forget to “fall back” everywhere in the U.S. except Arizona and Hawaii, which do not observe the annual time change ritual. People in the other 48 states get an extra hour of sleep to compensate for the hour we lost in March when Daylight Saving Time went into effect and we “sprang forward.”

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, October 28

• NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee, public attendance virtual only, 12:00-1:30 pm ET
• Science Strategy for Human Exploration of Mars Virtual Town Hall (National Academies), virtual, 12:30-1:45 pm ET

Monday-Tuesday, October 28-29

• Keystone Space Collaborative 2024 Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA

Monday-Wednesday, October 28-30

• AAS Von Braun Space Exploration Symposium, Huntsville, AL/online
• Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt (Aerospace Corp), San Francisco
• NASA Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG), Houston/virtual
• Steering Committee for Science Strategy for Human Exploration of Mars (National Academies), DC (the meeting is closed except for the virtual Town Hall on Monday listed above)

Tuesday, October 29

• POSSIBLE Launch of Shenzhou-19 to Tiangong-3 Space Station, Jiuquan, China (depending on time of launch, this could occur on October 28 EDT)
• WSBR Luncheon with DOD’s Jason Rathje, 700 Pennsylvania Ave. SE (note this is at Rocket Lab’s offices in Southeast DC near Eastern Market, not in Northwest DC as most meetings are), Washington, DC, 11:30 am-1:00 pm ET
• The Rise of Intuitive Machines (Space News), virtual, 1:00 pm ET

Wednesday, October 30

• Space Warfare: A Virtual Book Talk with John Klein (CSIS), virtual, 10:00 am ET

Wednesday-Friday, October 30-November 1

• Science and Planetary Protection in Advance of Human Missions to Mars (NASA SMD), virtual

Thursday, October 31

• STA Luncheon with JAXA Astronaut KANAI Norishige, Capitol Hill (invitation only)
• NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), telecon, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Friday-Saturday, November 1-2

• New Worlds 2024 & The Space Cowboy Ball, Houston, TX

Friday-Sunday, November 1-3

• Making Space: A Workshop on Space, SciArt, & Society (PSI), Pasadena, CA

Sunday, November 3

• Daylight Saving Time Ends in the United States, 2:00 am