What’s Happening in Space Policy September 15-21, 2024

What’s Happening in Space Policy September 15-21, 2024

By Marcia Smith | Posted: September 15, 2024 8:20 pm ET | Last Updated: September 15, 2024 9:19 pm ET

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 15-21, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

The week began early this morning with the splashdown of the Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission. They had a busy five days including the first commercial spacewalk. That goes down in the history books, but Anna Menon’s reading of her children’s book “Kisses from Space” and Sarah Gillis’s compelling musical performance of John Williams’ Rey’s Theme with an orchestra and children around the globe will certainly compete for the most memorable moments.  If you missed Gillis’s performance, here it is. Their Crew Dragon is named Resilience and the performance is called Harmony of Resilience.

It certainly has been a busy couple of weeks with human spaceflight activities. We get a break this week before the Soyuz MS-25 crew heads home from ISS on September 23 and Crew-9 launches on September 25 (a one-day delay from the previously announced schedule). The ISS is in the middle of crew rotations so it’s quite the do-si-do up there. Twelve people are there right now. Two Russians who arrived on Soyuz MS-24 a year ago (Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub) and an American who arrived on Soyuz MS-25 in March (Tracy Dyson) will go home on September 23. Three Americans (Mike Barratt, Matt Dominick, and Jeannette Epps) and one Russian (Aleksandr Grebenkin) who arrived on Crew-8 in March will go home at the end of the month after Crew-9 arrives. Crew-9 will have only two replacements, NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, instead of four because Starliner CFT astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will now round out the Crew-9 contingent. The four of them will stay until next spring with the Soyuz MS-26 crew (Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit) who just arrived on September 11. Here they all are. It’s so crowded in whatever part of the ISS they’re in that we can hardly see Jeannette Epps over there on the left just in front of Suni Williams (red shirt).

The 12 astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station on September 11, 2024. The new arrivals on Soyuz MS-26 are in front: NASA’s Don Pettit and Roscosmos’ Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner. Screengrab

Down here on Earth, it’s a busy week in space policy.  On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is trying to figure out how to get a Continuing Resolution (CR) passed before September 30.  Enough of his Republican colleagues made clear last week that his original plan — a six-month CR that incorporates the SAVE Act — was a no-go that he’s trying to come up with something else. Most Democrats and quite a few Republicans in the House and Senate want a clean CR that lasts only until December. No CR is listed on this week’s schedule at the moment, but it says “an item related to government funding may be considered.”  We’ll keep you posted.

One space-related bill is on the schedule for consideration under suspension of the rules on Tuesday, the Launch Communications Act, S. 1648 (Schmitt/Hickenlooper). A House version of the bill (H.R. 682) passed in July 2023, but the Senate passed its own version on October 31, 2023. The House will vote on that one this week. The bill would streamline the process for getting spectrum for launch and reentry of space vehicles.

Off the Hill, there are quite a few conferences and meetings, far too many to highlight here unfortunately. For brevity’s sake we’ll pick just four, but the others are really good, too.

Keynote speakers at this week’s AMOS conference: Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, USSF Space Systems Command; Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, JAXA; Pam Melroy, Deputy Administrator, NASA.

The 25th Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS) is Wednesday-Friday on Maui, Hawaii (officially it starts Tuesday, but the conference sessions begin Wednesday). It’s the premier conference for space situational awareness/space domain awareness discussions. A virtual option is available though the time zone difference (Hawaii is 6 hours behind EDT) can be a challenge.

It’s got a splendid set of sessions and keynotes, including an “SSA Policy Forum” each morning. The keynotes are by Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, Commander of USSF’s Space Systems Command on Wednesday; Hiroshi Yamakawa, President of JAXA, on Thursday; and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy on Friday. The SSA Policy Forum sessions are “Sustainable Operations in the Space Environment: The Role of Orbital Carrying Capacity and Other Tools” on Wednesday;  “SSA in the Asia-Pacific: Where We Are, Where We Are Going” on Thursday; and “Space Weather and SSA—What’s Needed Next?” on Friday.

Two of the witnesses at last week’s commercial space hearing will be at tomorrow’s COMSTAC meeting: FAA’s Kelvin Coleman (first on the left sitting at the table) and COMSTAC Vice-Chair Mike French (third from left).

Here in D.C., the FAA’s  Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) meets all day tomorrow (Monday). Public participation is virtual only.  Last week’s hearing before the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee aired the many concerns the commercial space launch sector has about the new Part 450 regulations. COMSTAC Vice Chair Mike French was one of the witnesses.  It’ll be interesting to hear what the committee has to say, as well as Kelvin Coleman, the FAA’s Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, who also was a witness at the hearing, about what transpired.

Over in Europe, the annual World Space Business Week conference is taking place in Paris. It’s the place to be for “deal-making and intense discussions shaping the future of the industry.” Announcements of major business deals often are made at WSBW and while we can’t be there in person, we’ll be keeping an eye on what’s happening there. Historically WSBW was organized by Euroconsult. It merged with SpaceTec Partners and now is Novaspace. They’ve added another conference, the Space & Defense Security Summit, that’s being held in conjunction with WSBW and features senior U.S. and European military space and business leaders.  The summit “serves as a platform uniting global leaders of the space defense and security sectors for a comprehensive two-day discussion, specifically focused on addressing the sector’s primary challenges and opportunities.”

The late Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) introduced the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act and it was signed into law in 2019. On Wednesday, the medals will be awarded in a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

Finally we’ll mention the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony on Wednesday that honors four of the “Hidden Figures” of the early years of NASA. Medals will be awarded in honor of Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson for their service as mathematicians (“computers” before the electronic devices were invented) and engineers during an era when women, especially women of color, received little if any recognition for their critical contributions to the space program. Another Gold Medal will be awarded “in recognition of all the women who served as computers, mathematicians, and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA between the 1930s and the 1970s.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will make remarks. NASA says it will be livestreamed on House Speaker Johnson’s YouTube channel, but apparently not on NASA+. The late Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) introduced the Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act in 2019 when she chaired the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. It was signed into law that year, but it’s taken until now for the awards to be made.

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.

Sunday, September 15

Sunday-Tuesday, September 15-17

  • Emer-Gen (AMOS and Space Generation Advisory Council), Maui, Hawaii (in conjunction with AMOS)

Monday, September 16

  • COMSTAC, public participation virtual only, 9:00 am-4:00 pm ET

Monday-Wednesday, September 16-18

Monday-Friday, September 16-20

Tuesday, September 17

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 17-18

Tuesday-Thursday, September 17-19

Tuesday-Friday, September 17-20

  • AMOS, Maui, Hawaii/virtual  (conference sessions September 18-20)

Wednesday, September 18

Thursday, September 19

Thursday-Saturday, September 19-21

Friday, September 20

Friday-Saturday, September 20-21

 

Last Updated: Sep 15, 2024 9:19 pm ET

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