House appropriators who oversee NASA’s budget offered effusive praise yesterday for NASA’s space science, technology and exploration programs and aeronautics research, but pressed hard on the need to control cost overruns and schedule delays. As was true at the companion Senate hearing two weeks ago, Bechtel’s performance building Mobile Launcher 2 for the Artemis program was a particular target of concern.
Colorado Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet met with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall today to push back on findings from two reports that the decision to site U.S. Space Command headquarters in Alabama was justified. They insist the Trump Administration’s “untested” decision process ignored national security and cost concerns.
Four years after President Trump assigned civil space situational awareness responsibilities to the Department of Commerce, Congress has yet to formally authorize the Department to take on that task. Based on a hearing last week, House Democrats and Republicans still have many questions. A Senate bill is slowly inching forward as part of the innovation and competition act, but what can get done in the limited legislative time remaining in this election year is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Earth orbit gets more and more congested every day. SpaceX alone launched 106 more Starlink satellites this weekend.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 15-21, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel cautioned against any rush to launch the Crewed Flight Test of Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew spacecraft after the uncrewed test, OFT-2, scheduled for next week. A “tremendous amount of work” remains to be done between the two tests including determining if the propulsion valves must be redesigned. ASAP also is keeping an eye on International Space Station safety including the spacesuits astronauts wear to work outside as well as NASA’s plans for Human Landing Systems to get astronauts back on the Moon.
DOD’s Inspector General has released the long-awaited results of its investigation into how the decision was made to base U.S. Space Command in Huntsville, AL. Allegations have been swirling that President Trump awarded it to Alabama as a political favor. The IG concluded the process complied with law and policy, but the sections of the report describing what happened in the meeting with Trump days before the end of his term are heavily redacted, so the public record does not answer that question.
The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is getting closer and closer to beginning science operations. NASA released another engineering image today to illustrate the clarity JWST will bring to our understanding of the universe, but it is still another two months until everything is ready to deliver scientific-quality data.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 8-14, 2022 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
Three astronauts from NASA and one from ESA returned to Earth early this morning after almost six months in space. Splashdown was in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, FL. The geopolitical situation on Earth changed dramatically during their residency on the International Space Station with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the relationships between the ISS astronauts and cosmonauts and their support teams on the ground appear to be unaffected.
NASA officials said today they plan to try again in June to complete the Wet Dress Rehearsal test for the Artemis I mission. The test was scrubbed three times in April before the agency decided to return the Space Launch System rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs while fixes were made by a contractor to a gaseous nitrogen supply line. The launch date for Artemis I will not be set until the test is complete.