What's Happening in Space Policy October 5-9, 2015

Here is our list of space policy events coming up during the week of October 5-9, 2015 and any insight we can offer about them.  The House and Senate are in session.

During the Week

Today is the 58th anniversary of the Space Age.  The Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.  Nine months later, after considerable debate and many hearings, Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958.  President Eisenhower signed it into law on July 29, 1958 and NASA opened its doors on October 1, 1958.   Hard to imagine anything happening that fast these days.

Kicking the can down the road seems to be the best Washington can manage at the moment.  Congress passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) last week to keep the government operating through December 11 without resolving the issues that have prevented the 12 regular appropriations bills from getting passed.   Now there will be a leadership transition in the House.  The election of a new Speaker to replace John Boehner (R-OH), who is leaving at the end of the month, will take place on Thursday.   Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is still the favorite despite controversial comments he made over the past week.   Two others have announced their own candidacies, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL).  If McCarthy wins, there definitely will changes in other leadership positions since his current post will become vacant, and if one of the others wins, changes also are possible.

Against this backdrop, Congress has a very busy schedule between now and December 11.  Must-pass bills include reauthorizing spending from the Highway Trust Fund (another issue that was kicked down the road in July when it was given a 3-month extension that expires on October 29), raising the debt limit by November 5, and, of course, doing something about appropriations before the CR runs out.  Many consider the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act another must-pass bill and the House and Senate did reach a compromise on it, but most Democrats on the conference committee refused to sign the report and the White House has threatened to veto the bill.  The House passed the compromise last week and the Senate is supposed to take it up this week.  The fate of other bills, such as the House and Senate commercial space bills or attempts to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, remains up in the air.  The provision in existing commercial space law that had to be dealt with — the learning period for commercial human spaceflight regulations — because it would have expired on September 30 was given a 6-month extension (to April 1, 2016) in a hastily passed airport and airways bill that extended a number of expiring provisions to give Congress more time to deal with them.

The only space-related hearing that we know about as of Sunday morning is a House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Space Subcommittee hearing on Friday.  The topic is “Deep Space Exploration: Examining the Impact of the President’s Budget” with two former NASA human spaceflight officials (Doug Cooke and Dan Dumbacher) as witnesses.

NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot will talk to the Space Transportation Association (STA) on Wednesday.  The event is by invitation only, so we do not list it on our calendar, but anyone who is interested can contact STA’s Rich Coleman at rich@spacetransportation.us.  The NASA Advisory Council’s Planetary Science Subcommittee meets on Monday and Tuesday, and a National Academy of Sciences committee reviewing progress in achieving the vision outlined in the 2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey meets in open session on Thursday and Friday.  All of those are in Washington, DC.

Elsewhere in the United States, the annual ISPCS (International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight) is on Wednesday and Thursday in Las Cruces, NM, and there’s a LunarCubes workshop in San Jose, CA from Tuesday to Friday.    NASA will hold two briefings on Wednesday at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA about cubesats that are flying on a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launch scheduled for Thursday.  NASA sponsored four of the 13 cubesats that will tag along on the launch and funded a fifth in conjunction with NRO.  The remainder are NRO’s.

Elsewhere in the world, pre-meetings begin for the annual International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which will be held in Jerusalem, Israel next week.  The IAC combines meetings of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and International Institute of Space Law (IISL).  IAC officially begins next Monday (October 12), but the associated 3-day Space Generation Congress starts this Thursday and the IAA has meetings over the weekend.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are listed below.  Check back throughout the week for any additional events we learn about and post to our Events of Interest calendar on the right side of SpacePolicyOnliine.com’s main page.

Monday-Tuesday, October 5-6

• NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Planetary Science Subcommittee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC

Tuesday, October 6

• MIT Washington Seminar Series, meeting 1 (featuring John Logsdon), Maggiano’s Little Italy, Washington, DC (one must sign up for the entire once/month 6-part series)

Tuesday-Friday, October 6-9

• LunarCubes Workshop, San Jose, CA

Wednesday, October 7

• NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 12:00-1:30 pm Central Time (1:00-2:30 pm ET)
• Two NASA Briefings on Upcoming Launch of Cubesats, Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA, 1:00 and 2:00 pm ET (10:00 and 11:00 am local time)  Watch on NASA TV
• Aerospace Corp/ISU-DC Space Cafe with NASA’s Donald James, the Brixton, 901 U Street, NW, Washington, DC, 7:00 pm ET (note different location than usual)

Wednesday-Thursday, October 7-8

• International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS), Las Cruces, NM

Thursday, October 8

• Hosted Payload and Small Satellite Conference, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC

 Thursday-Saturday, October 8-10

• Space Generation Congress, Jerusalem, Israel
• National Academies Committee on Astrophysics Decadal Survey Progress, NAS Building, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW. Washington, DC (open sessions on Thursday and Friday; other sessions are closed)

Friday, October 9

• House SS&T Space Subcommittee Hearing on Deep Space Exploration: Examining the Impact of the President’s Budget, 2318 Rayburn, 9:00 am ET

Clarification:  The vote on Thursday for a new Speaker of the House is within the House Republican Conference for who the Republicans will advance as their candidate for the official election of a Speaker by the full House on October 29.