What’s Happening in Space Policy September 29-October 5, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 29-October 5, 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

It’s another busy week that starts today with the docking of Crew-9 to the ISS at 5:30 pm ET. They launched yesterday afternoon, the first crewed launch from SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station adjacent to Kennedy Space Center.

We’ve noticed that some media outlets curiously are referring to this as a “rescue mission.” They mustn’t follow the space program very closely or they’d know this is a long-scheduled crew rotation mission. They take place about every six months. Yes, there are only two people aboard this Crew Dragon on the way up because the other two members of the crew are already aboard the ISS and will come back with them in February. The two already on ISS — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — are not being rescued. They’re perfectly safe and could return to Earth at any time, as could anyone aboard the ISS. NASA and Roscosmos always have enough seats in spacecraft that are docked to the ISS to evacuate the station in an emergency. There was a change of plans because of concerns about Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft that delivered them to the ISS. NASA decided to return Starliner to Earth empty and reassign Butch and Suni to be part of the next crew increment, Crew-9. They are staying for eight months instead of eight days, but extended missions are not unique for either U.S. or Russian crews. Three have been extended from six months to a year in the past three years for a variety of reasons (Mark Vande Hei and Pytor Dubrov; Frank Rubio, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin; and Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub). Butch and Suni have each been on long-duration ISS missions before and are enjoying their extended stay. Suni is the new ISS commander, her second time in that role. All is well. No one needs to be rescued.

Crew-9 is replacing Crew-8, which has been there since March. NASA is targeting October 7 for Crew-8’s return after a several-day handover period. Then the ISS will be back to its normal crew complement of seven: Butch and Suni who arrived on Starliner in June, NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’s Aleksandr Gorbunov who are arriving on Crew-9 today, and NASA’s Don Pettit and Roscosmos’s Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner who arrived on Soyuz MS-26 on September 11.

Another especially interesting launch is on tap on Friday, the second certification mission (“Cert-2”) for United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Vulcan rocket. The launch window is open from 6:00-9:00 am ET.

A successful Cert-2 launch is needed before DOD is willing to place its most precious satellites on the new rocket. The first test flight, Cert-1, was a complete success in January. This launch was supposed to go in April carrying Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser on its first cargo resupply mission to the ISS, but delivery of Dream Chaser has been repeatedly delayed. Two DOD payloads are awaiting launch by the end of this year so in June ULA made the tough decision to go ahead with Cert-2 with only “an inert payload and demonstrations associated with future Centaur V technologies.” Centaur V is Vulcan’s upper stage. ULA will livestream the launch.

Coincidentally, Friday is October 4, the anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. The United Nations established World Space Week as October 4-10 every year to commemorate that milestone and the entry into force of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty 10 years later on October 10, 1967.  The theme this year is Space & Climate Change.

Among the interesting meetings this week is the first gathering of the NOAA Office of Space Commerce’s (OSC’s) new Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space (ACES) on Thursday. It replaces the Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing (ACCRES) reflecting OSC’s expanding role in commercial space regulation. The committee’s non-governmental membership accordingly is much broader than ACCRES, but most are familiar names.

The committee members are meeting at DOC’s main office in Washington, but public participation is virtual only. Pre-register to get the webinar link and/or if you want to offer comments during the afternoon public comment period.

OSC Director Richard DalBello will give an overview of his office’s activities in the morning. OSC is part of NOAA which is part of the Department of Commerce (DOC). DOC Deputy Secretary Don Graves and Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere/NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad will speak in the afternoon. The committee will discuss licensing of private commercial remote sensing satellites in the morning and commercial space mission authorization in the afternoon. The latter is a topic of years-long debate between Congresses and administrations dating back to Obama. Legislation was approved by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee last November, but on a partisan basis in part because the White House sent up its proposal — completely different from the committee’s draft bill — less than an hour before the markup started. The Senate hasn’t introduced a bill, but Senate Commerce Committee members appeared skeptical of the White House proposal at a December hearing. It will be interesting to hear what the ACES committee members have to say as the clock ticks down to the end of the 118th Congress with no resolution in sight (at least publicly).

Commercial remote sensing is the other ACES topic and it also will be discussed two days earlier at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event where a new report will be released: “Gold Rush: The 2024 Commercial Remote Sensing Global Rankings.”  According to CSIS, it “produces a ‘Top 3’ ranking of the world’s best commercial space-based remote sensing systems across several categories of performance …  [and] explores the policy issues shaping this sector and the implications for U.S. leadership and global competitiveness.”  It has a top-notch group of speakers from industry and former high ranking government intelligence officials. There are too many to list here, but they include Susan Gordon, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (DNI); Gary Dunow from the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF); Robert Cardillo, former Director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA); Kevin O’Connell, former Director of of OSC (DalBello’s predecessor) and now with Space Economy Rising; Mark Mozena from Planet; Matt Timan from Satellogic; and Todd Master from Umbra Space. The in-person event will be livestreamed.

The final event we’ll highlight is Tuesday’s Yvonne C. Brill lecture taking place at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in D.C. The biennial lecture is sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in honor of Brill, a trailblazer for women in aerospace engineering who passed away in 2013 after a remarkable career. She was a member of the NAE and only the second woman to be elected as an Honorary Fellow of AIAA.

The recipient of the 2024 Brill Lecture is Penina Axelrad, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, also a member of the NAE and an AIAA Fellow. An expert on astrodynamics and satellite navigation, she will speak about “The Evolution and Impact of Global Navigation Satellite Systems.”  The event is 11:00 am-2:00 pm ET, but the lecture itself is the first half of that and will be livestreamed. The other half is a reception for those attending in person. The lecture is in conjunction with the NAE’s annual meeting.

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

Sunday, September 29

• Crew-9 Arrives at the International Space Station
  • 3:30 pm ET NASA+ coverage begins of rendezvous and docking
  • 5:30 pm ET, docking
  • 7:15 pm ET, hatch opening
  • 7:40 pm ET, welcome ceremony

Monday, September 30

• ISU-DC Space Café with MoonDAO’s Justin Park, 1020 N. Highland St., Arlington, VA, 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Tuesday, October 1

• 2024 Yvonne C.  Brill Lecture Featuring Penina Axelrad, National Academy of Sciences Building, 2101 Constitution Ave, NW, Washington, DC/online. 11:00 am-2:00 pm ET
• Gold Rush: The 2024 Commercial Remote Sensing Global Rankings (CSIS), 1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW, Washington, DC/online, 1:00-5:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, October 1-2

• NASA Advisory Council, public participation virtual only
• 18th ESPI Autumn Conference, Vienna, Austria

Thursday, October 3

• NOAA Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space (ACES), Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Ave.,  NW, Washington, DC (public participation virtual only), 9:00 am-5:00 pm ET
• The NRO Story: A Conversation with Chris  Scolese (CSIS), 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW, Washington, DC/online, 1:00-2:00 pm ET

Friday, October 4

• Second Certification Launch of ULA’s Vulcan Rocket (“Cert-2”), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL, launch window open 6:00-9:00 am ET (livestreamed)

Friday, October 4-Thursday, October 10

• World Space Week, global

 

This article has been updated.