What’s Happening in Space Policy September 22-28, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 22-28, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

It’s a busy week in space, on Capitol Hill, and elsewhere. It all starts today when Suni Williams takes command of the International Space Station as crew exchanges continue. Also today House Appropriators are expected to introduce a new FY2025 Continuing Resolution (CR) after a first attempt to pass a CR failed last week. Tomorrow the House will take up the 2024 NASA Authorization Act and there are plenty of interesting meetings and conferences in the U.S. and around the world all week long.

After one year on the ISS, Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub get to go home tomorrow along with NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson who’s been there for six months. Kononenko will turn over command of the ISS to Suni Williams at 10:15 am ET this morning. NASA will provide coverage on NASA+.  Williams arrived in June on the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test along with Butch Wilmore. NASA decided to keep them on the ISS rather than return on Starliner because of concerns about the propulsion system so they are becoming part of Crew-9 and she will be the new ISS commander. It’s her second time in that job. This is her third long duration mission on the ISS and she was commander on her second in 2012. Peggy Whitson was the first woman to command the ISS in 2007-2008 and she did it again in 2017. Two other women have been commanders: Shannon Walker in 2021 and ESA’s Samantha Cristoforetti in 2022. All the other commanders over the almost 24-year history of the ISS have been men.

Kononenko, Chub and Dyson will depart early tomorrow (Monday) on Soyuz MS-25. NASA will provide coverage of farewells and hatch closing at 12:45 am ET, undocking at 4:37 am ET, and landing in Kazakhstan at 8:00 am ET. Their replacements arrived last week on Soyuz MS-26 so there are 12 people on the ISS right now. That will briefly go down to nine with their departure, but two more are scheduled to launch on Thursday on NASA/SpaceX Crew-9 — NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’s Aleksandr Gorbunov. They arrived at Kennedy Space Center yesterday. Only two are on this flight instead of the usual four because Williams and Wilmore need the other two seats to come home with them in February. Once they’re aboard, the ISS contingent will be up to 11 until the four-person Crew-8 departs after an approximately 5-day handover to Crew-9. The ISS will finally be back to its usual 7-person complement after that.

Russian and American crew members routinely launch on each other’s spacecraft to ensure there is always at least one person from each country aboard the ISS to operate the interdependent Russian and U.S. segments.

Crew-9 will be the first human spaceflight to launch from SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), adjacent to Kennedy Space Center. SLC-40 is routinely used to launch satellites and SpaceX and NASA decided some time ago it would be useful to upgrade SLC-40 to be able to launch crews as well. That provides more flexibility with the launch cadence for both satellites and crews increasing. It’s come in handy right now because the launch date for Crew-9 kept slipping as NASA decided what to do about Starliner, but KSC’s Launch Complex 39A, usually the site for crew launches, was tied up first with Polaris Dawn and now getting ready to launch NASA’s Europa Clipper mission on October 10.

Tomorrow’s a busy day for NASA on Capitol Hill, too. The House will take up the bipartisan 2024 NASA Authorization Act, which was approved unanimously by the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee in July. The bill essentially reaffirms support for NASA’s broad portfolio of human spaceflight, science, aeronautics, and technology activities and for facilitating the growth of the U.S. commercial space sector.

Authorization bills set policy and can recommend funding levels, but do not actually provide any money.  Only appropriators have money to spend, but in this case the authorization recommendation ($25.225 billion) is pretty much in line with what the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee approved ($25.178 billion), a one percent increase over FY2024. That’s less than President Biden requested ($25.384 billion), a two percent increase that would merely have brought NASA back up to its FY2023 level. Like many agencies, NASA is being hit pretty hard by the spending caps set by last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Congress has not passed the FY2025 CJS appropriations bill or any of the other annual appropriations bills. FY2025 begins on October 1. A CR needs to pass by then or there will be a partial government shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wanted a 6-month CR (through March 28, 2025) that incorporated the SAVE Act (see our September 8-14 What’s Happening), but could not get enough of his own Republican colleagues to vote in favor of it.  The bill failed 202-220, with two voting present (both Republicans), on September 19.

Some opponents objected to the CR because of its duration since it would leave agencies (especially DOD) in limbo for six months not knowing how much money they’d have and unable to start new programs or end old ones. Conversely, others think government spending is excessive and don’t want funding levels currently in force to continue for six more months. And then there are those who oppose inclusion of the SAVE Act.

A new “clean” bill that lasts until sometime in December — after the elections, but before the new Congress begins in January — and without the SAVE Act is expected to be introduced today. [UPDATE, Sept 22, 6:15 pm ET: the new CR is out, with an expiration date of Dec. 20, 2024, and no SAVE Act.]  Under House rules, members must have 72 hours to read a bill before it is voted on, so the sooner it’s released the sooner it can be considered on the floor. Then it has to go to the Senate, which has its own rules. They typically need about three days to get a bill like this through. The House and Senate are scheduled to recess on Friday until after the elections, so they have an incentive to get this done by then. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is working on his own bill in case the House can’t pass one expeditiously. While there are some politicians, including former President Trump, who support a government shutdown if the CR doesn’t include the SAVE Act, most members of Congress are expected to reject that approach on the brink of an election.

There’s much more as the week progresses. We’ll highlight just two.

U.S. Space Command Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting will join a who’s who of military space leaders at U.K. Space Command’s Defence Space Conference in London and online Tuesday-Wednesday. U.K. Space Command Commander Maj. Gen. Paul Tedman, German Space Command Commander Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, Australian Space  Command Commander Maj. Gen. Greg Novak, Deputy Commander of 3 Canadian Space Division Col. Frédéric Guénette, and Director of the Chilean Space Directorate Gen. Luis Saez are just a few of the speakers on the agenda along with many from industry.

Looks really interesting.  The time zone difference is a challenge, of course. The conference begins each day at 09:30 British Summer Time, which is 4:30 am EDT.  Whiting is a keynote speaker on Wednesday at 10:00 BST (5:00 am EDT) and then on a panel with Tedman, Traut, Novak, Guénette, and Saez at 10:50 BST (5:50 am EDT).

Here in the D.C. area, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Chandra X-Ray Telescope on Wednesday evening at the Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport. It’ll air on YouTube as well.  Chandra is operated by the Center for Astrophysics|Harvard & Smithsonian (formerly the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory).  Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science and Research Ellen Stofan (formerly head of the NASM and NASA’s Chief Scientist before that) will moderate a panel that includes former NASA astronauts Eileen Collins and Cady Coleman, Director of NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Center Patrick Slane, and Chandra “visualization scientist and emerging technology lead” Kimberly Arcand. Collins commanded STS-93, which put Chandra into orbit in 1999. Coleman was a mission specialist on that flight.

NASA is planning deep cuts to Chandra’s budget that could lead to its termination. NASA Astrophysics Division Director Mark Clampin told an advisory committee in July that a final decision would be announced at a Town Hall meeting in September, so that could happen this week. Stay tuned.

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 22

• ISS Change of Command Ceremony, Earth orbit, 10:15 am ET (watch on NASA+)

Monday, September 23

• Return of Soyuz MS-25, Kazakhstan (watch on NASA+)
  • 12:45 am ET, NASA coverage of farewells and hatch closing
  • 4:37 am ET, undocking (NASA coverage begins 4:00 am ET)
  • 7:05 am ET, deorbit burn; 8:00 am ET, landing (NASA coverage begins 6:45 am ET)

Monday-Wednesday, September 23-25

• SpaceBound 2024 Conference (Space Canada), Ottawa

Tuesday, September 24

• Space Capitol Forum 2024 (Payload), Embassy of Australia, 1601 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC, 10:00 am-7:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 24-25

• U.K. Defence Space Conference 2024 and U.K. Space Command Industry Forum, IET London/online

Tuesday-Thursday, September 24-26

• Committee on Solar and Space Physics Fall Meeting (National Academies), Beckman Center, Irvine, CA

Wednesday, September 25

• China and India’s Beyond Earth Human Spaceflight Programs (BEI), virtual, 12:00-1:30 pm ET
• Crew-9 Pre-Launch Briefing, KSC, 3:00 pm ET (watch on NASA+)
• Seeing in X-Ray Vision: 25th Anniversary of Chandra Space Telescope (Smithsonian), National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, VA/YouTube, 8:00-9:00 pm ET

Wednesday-Saturday, September 25-28

• Brijuni Conference on Space Safety (Adriatic Aerospace Assn), Brijuni Island, Croatia

Thursday, September 26

• Launch of Crew-9 to ISS, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL, 2:05 pm ET (NASA+ coverage begins 10:00 am ET)
• Crew-9 Post-Launch Briefing, KSC, 3:30 pm ET (watch on NASA+)

Thursday-Friday, September 26-27

• Space Logistics Conference (SAE Media Group), Hilton Arlington, 950 North Stafford St., Arlington, VA

Friday, September 27

• Continuing Challenges in Military and Commercial Space Law (Univ of Nebraska), Army & Navy Club, 901 17th St., NW, Washington, DC, 8:00 am-12:30 pm ET
• Cosmic Governance: Charting the Future of International Space Law (American Univ Intl Law Review), American University Washington College of Law, 4300 Nebraska Ave, NW, Washington, DC, 9:00 am-1:00 pm ET
• Sustainable Lunar Environment: The Next Challenge (IAF/MVA), virtual, 9:00-9:45 am ET