What’s Happening in Space Policy September 1-7, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 1-7, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess until September 9 except for pro forma sessions.

During the Week

The week begins tomorrow (Monday) with a federal holiday, Labor Day, which marks the unofficial end of summer although Congress won’t be back for another week.

We’ll publish a recap of where appropriations and other legislation stands before they start work. No question with the looming elections it’ll be a grind to get anything done. First in line is a Continuing Resolution to keep the government operating after September 30, but as always there are those who would be just as happy with a shutdown if they don’t get exactly what they want in return.  We’ll see what happens.

Which means we should enjoy this upcoming relatively quiet week in space policy. While there aren’t a lot of events, what’s happening is BIG NEWS.

On Friday, Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test will come to an end two months later than planned. As we’ve recounted over the weeks, problems with the propulsion system led NASA to decide not to use Starliner to return Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth.  They’ll stay on the ISS and become part of the next regular crew rotation, Crew-9, and return with them in February.

Starliner will autonomously undock from the ISS on Friday at 6:04 pm ET and ground controllers will direct it onto the reentry path, landing at White Sands, New Mexico at 12:03 am ET Saturday. That’ll be 10:03 pm Friday local (Mountain) time. This will be the third Starliner landing at White Sands. The two uncrewed test flights, OFT in 2019 and OFT-2 in 2022, also landed there. A nighttime landing won’t be as colorful as OFT-2’s, but NASA usually gets great airborne infrared imagery during descent and there are sure to be a lot of floodlights as it touches down.

NASA will hold a pre-departure news conference on Wednesday at noon ET.  Undocking coverage begins at 5:45 pm ET on Friday and deorbit and landing coverage resumes at 10:50 pm ET. A post-landing news conference is set for 1:30 am ET Saturday.

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission may get off this week, too. The four-person crew was ready to go last Monday, but the launch was delayed from Monday to Tuesday for additional pre-launch checkouts, from Tuesday to Wednesday because of a ground-side helium leak, from Wednesday to no earlier than Friday due to weather, and that’s where it stands now. SpaceX had to briefly stand down from all Falcon 9 launches due to a landing failure, but they were back in business two days later, so that’s not an impediment.

Polaris Dawn is not visiting the International Space Station, so there is no safe haven for resupplies if the weather turns bad at the end of the trip.  Their goal is to reach the highest altitude of any Earth-orbiting crew and conduct the first commercial spacewalk. Both the launch weather and the reentry weather five days later have to be good before they liftoff.  Quite a challenge in Florida in the summer. We’ll post whatever information we get about when they’ll go.

We’re also keeping an eye on any announcements from NASA about who responded to the RFI regarding VIPER. The responses are due by midnight tomorrow.

NASA intends to cancel the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover because of cost overruns and schedule delays even though the rover is completely built and almost through pre-launch testing.  NASA has spent $450 million on it already, and expects to save just $84 million by cancelling it, but is worried the cost might increase further if the lander that was to be provided by lunar lander company Astrobotic isn’t ready by the end of next year. Commercial and international partners have been invited to respond to the Request for Information if they would be interested in taking it over as long as there is no additional cost to NASA.

Another lunar lander company, Intuitive Machines, is making no secret of their interest in doing that. During a second quarter 2024 financial results telecon last month, IM CEO Steve Altemus said they’d submitted an expression of interest already, praising VIPER’s scientific importance and IM’s ability to get it to the Moon with their new heavy-class lander Nova-D. Nova-D can land 1,500 kilograms on the Moon. VIPER is 500 kg, so they could sell the remaining 1,000 kg of mass to other customers to get the money to fly the mission according to Altemus.  IM Chief Technology Officer Tim Crain posted on X that they submitted their response to the RFI on Friday.

Just submitted our VIPER RFI response. VALOR: VIPER-Augmented Lunar Operations and Reconnaissance. We’ll see what happens next! #adlunam

— Tim (@CrainTim) August 30, 2024

IM landed their first Nova-C lander, Odysseus, on the Moon in February and while it was hardly trouble-free NASA and the company count it as a success. They have another mission coming up later this year and NASA just awarded them a third task order last week. All of those are separate from VIPER, but it is all part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative where NASA buys lunar landing services from companies rather than building lunar landers itself. The companies design, build, launch, and own the landers. NASA pays them for delivery services and provides payloads. Some are small, like a lunar retroreflector, and some are massive, like VIPER.  The companies are expected to find non-NASA customers to close the business case.

It’ll be interesting to see who else might have responded and what NASA does next.  NASA made clear that while it is their “intent” to kill the program, they must wait to hear from Congress before doing that. Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) is urging her Senate Appropriations Committee colleagues to find a way to repurpose the lander.

One other event we’ll highlight is on Friday. George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute and the Aerospace Corporation will hold a seminar on “Commercial Developments in LEO: Challenges and Opportunities.”  NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce Director Richard DalBello will give a keynote, followed by a government panel and then an industry panel discussing “Commerce in Low Earth Orbit.” A final panel will explore the challenges and opportunities.  There’s a virtual option.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning.  Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our Calendar or changes to these.

Monday, September 2

• Labor Day (federal holiday)

Tuesday, September 3

• Final Launch of Arianespace’s Vega Rocket, Kourou, French Guiana, 9:50 pm ET

Wednesday, September 4

• Boeing Starliner CFT Pre-Departure News Conference, JSC, 12:00 pm ET (NASA+)

Thursday, September 5

• NASA Advisory Council Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee (NAC-TIE), virtual, 8:30 am-5:00 pm ET

Friday, September 6

• Commercial Developments in LEO: Challenges and Opportunities (SPI/Aerospace Corp), GW Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street, NW, Washington, DC, 10:00 am-4:00 pm ET

Friday-Saturday, September 6-7

• Starliner Crew Flight Test Return to Earth
  • Friday, 6:04 pm ET, undock (NASA+ begins 5:45 pm ET)
  • Friday, 10:50 pm ET, NASA+ coverage of deorbit burn and landing resumes
  • Saturday, 12:03 am ET, touchdown
  • Saturday, 1:30 am ET, post-landing news conference