What’s Happening in Space Policy September 8-14, 2024

Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of September 8-14, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Congress is back from its summer break with a hefty to-do list for the next three weeks before they recess again until after the November elections.

Top of the priority list is passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operating after September 30 when FY2024 ends. A few of the FY2025 appropriations bills have passed the House, but none have passed the Senate. No one really expected them to, especially in an election year when who will control the House, Senate and White House next year is up in the air. The only question is how long the CR will last. Some want it only until December so the new folks won’t have to deal with old business right off the bat. Others want it until March so the new folks have a say in the outcome. Ultra-conservative House Republicans who are confident Trump will win the White House and they will keep the House and win the Senate want March so they can be in charge of the final decisions.  Other Republicans disagree because even if they win all three levers of power they don’t want the year to begin with funding fights.

Setting politics aside, the longer a CR lasts the more uncertainty for all the affected departments and agencies that don’t know how much money they’ll have to spend in FY2025 and can’t begin new programs or terminate old ones.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has already put out his version of the CR and went with the ultra-conservatives in his party. The end date is March 28, 2025. The bill is expected to be voted on this week. Democrats are expected to oppose it regardless of the deadline because it incorporates the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or SAVE Act that Republicans know many Democrats oppose. Even if Johnson can get it through the House, it almost certainly will not pass the Senate. The SAVE Act requires documentary proof of citizenship when anyone registers to vote. Citizenship is already required to vote, but not everyone has documentary proof readily available. Existing law requires an attestation under penalty of perjury that one is a citizen.

That debate is far beyond the remit of this space policy website, but the point is that once again getting a CR passed will be a grind. We’ll see if they can get it done by midnight September 30. At this point both the House and Senate are scheduled to adjourn before that so they have an incentive.

Also on the Hill this week, the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday to discuss “Risks and Rewards: Encouraging Commercial Space Innovation While Maintaining Public Safety.” According to the hearing charter, they’ll cover “ongoing efforts to streamline licensing for launch and related activities as well as to evaluate the appropriate structure for regulating commercial space activities outside the purview of the current regulatory structure.”

Kelvin Coleman, FAA Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, will be joined at the witness table by David Cavossa, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, Mike French, who recently left Aerospace Industries Association and now has his own consultancy, Space Policy Group (which is not at all affiliated with us), and Pamela Meredith, chair of the Space Law Practice at KMA Zuckert LLC.

Meanwhile down in Florida, the Polaris Dawn crew is STILL waiting for the weather to cooperate for their private astronaut trip to orbit. They’re going to try to set a record for highest altitude for an Earth-orbiting human spaceflight mission and conduct the first commercial spacewalk. They won’t visit the International Space Station so can only stay in space as long as their supplies last — five days. There’s no safe haven. They have to know before they launch that they’ll be able to splashdown off the coast of Florida five days later. Florida weather is notoriously unstable in the summer. The four-person crew was ready to go on Monday, August 26, 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, and ever since then (August 28) because of the weather. Some observers have been checking the FAA’s operations site for NOTAMs (Notice to Air Missions) to see if there’s a new launch date, but Mission Commander Jared Isaacman posted on X that those are not actual launch dates. He advises checking the SpaceX and Polaris Dawn X accounts for the best information.

People jump on NOTAM’s that are filed, but really that is about preserving the option should the weather cooperate. Recommend following the @SpaceX and @PolarisProgram accounts for official updates. Of which, we are still waiting for that good wx window.

— Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) September 3, 2024

The crew is staying fit and ready while they remain in quarantine including by formation flying around the launch site. Maybe they’ll get good news this week. [UPDATE, SEPT 8, 11:00 pm ET: SpaceX says they now are targeting Tuesday, Sept. 10, 3:38 am ET, for launch, but launch weather is only 40% favorable and landing weather “is a watch item.”]

Staying busy in quarantine with some formation flying, timeline review, staying fit and focused on the mission ahead. Grateful for the amazing team and this incredible opportunity. Big launch day is getting closer. https://t.co/273eEpwzII pic.twitter.com/OxkbhZYVNi

— Jared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) September 1, 2024

Also on the human spaceflight front, Russia will launch Soyuz MS-26 on Wednesday to begin their next ISS crew rotation. Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit will launch at 12:23 pm ET and dock about three hours later. They are replacing cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub who arrived on Soyuz MS-24 and have been there for one year, and NASA’s Tracy Dyson who arrived on Soyuz MS-25 on March 25. NASA will provide live launch and docking coverage on NASA+.  Kononenko, Chub and Dyson will depart on September 23, the day before the next NASA crew rotation mission, Crew-9, launches.

The head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Nicky Fox, and the Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Laurie Leshin, will hold a media telecon tomorrow (Monday) with an update on the Europa Clipper mission. Clipper will orbit Jupiter making more than 40 close flybys of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons that scientists believe has a liquid ocean under its icy crust. It’s a high radiation environment and the agency only recently learned that the transistors in the spacecraft may not be as radiation-hardened as they thought. The $5 billion spacecraft is already built and ready for launch. Changing anything at this point would be extremely expensive.  For now they’ve decided to go ahead and launch anyway, but tomorrow is the final decision point. The launch window is open from October 10-31.

There are several really good conferences here in the United States and overseas this week, too many to highlight unfortunately. The only other event we’ll take a moment to mention is the release of a National Academies report on “NASA at a Crossroads–Maintaining Workforce, Infrastructure and Technology Preeminence in the Coming Decades.” Study chair Norm Augustine will discuss their findings and recommendations at a webinar on Tuesday. The study committee is a veritable who’s who in the aerospace community starting with Augustine himself and including Betsy Cantwell, Ed Crawley, Hans Koenigsmann, Les Lyles, Dick Obermann, Mark Saunders, Kathy Sullivan, and Tom Young among others. Should be interesting.

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 — especially if Polaris Dawn gets a break.

Sunday-Friday, September 8-13

• Europlanet Science Congress 2024 (EPSC 2024), Berlin, Germany

Monday, September 9

• NASA Media Telecon on Europa Clipper, virtual, 4:00 pm ET

Tuesday, September 10

• UPDATE: Possible Launch of Polaris Dawn, KSC, 3:38 am ET (SpaceX webcast begins 3.5 hours in advance)
• House SS&T Space Subcommittee Hrg on Commercial Space Innovation, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 am ET (webcast)
• Report Release: “NASA at a Crossroads: Maintaining Workforce, Infrastructure and Technology Preeminence in the Coming  Decades” (National Academies), virtual, 3:30 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, September 10-11

• Global Aerospace Summit (U.S. Chamber of Commerce), Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC (September 10 focuses on aviation, September 11 on space)
• Outer Space Security Summit (UNIDIR), Geneva, Switzerland/online
• Space Sustainability Forum 2024 (ITU), Geneva, Switzerland/online

Wednesday, September 11

• Launch and Docking of Soyuz MS-26 at ISS
  • 11:15 am ET, NASA launch coverage begins
  • 12:23 pm ET, launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
  • 2:30 pm ET, NASA rendezvous and docking coverage begins
  • 3:33 pm ET, dock at ISS
  • 5:30 pm ET, NASA hatch opening coverage begins
  • 5:50 pm ET, hatch opening and welcome remarks
• OPAG Town Hall Meeting at EPSC 2024, Berlin, Germany, 12:00-13:30 local time

Wednesday-Thursday, September 11-12

• Space-Comm Expo Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland

Friday, September 13

• NOAA Space Weather Advisory Group, virtual, 11:00 am-2:00 pm ET

Saturday, September 14

• International Observe the Moon Night, global

Saturday-Sunday, September 14-15

• AFA 2024 National Convention, National Harbor, MD