Doug Loverro has no regrets about the actions he took that led to his sudden departure last night as the head of NASA’s human spaceflight program. The news shocked the NASA community just two days before a pivotal review in preparation for the first launch of astronauts from American soil since 2011.
Doug Loverro, the head of NASA’s human spaceflight program, abruptly resigned last evening. In a message to colleagues, he assured them it was not about their performance, but about his own.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for May 17, 2020: ULA launches X-37B; new competition for Space Command HQ; new members for Space Council Users’ Advisory Group; Roscosmos wants NASA to stop by. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 17-23, 2020 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate is in session this week. The House will meet in pro forma session on Tuesday; the schedule thereafter has not been announced.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine took China to task today after debris from the reentry of the core stage of its Long March-5B rocket fell in Africa. Calling it “really dangerous,” he used it as an example of why the Artemis Accords unveiled today are necessary to ensure safe operations on the Moon. In a statement, he said space exploration should “inspire hope and wonder, not fear and danger.”
NASA unveiled a set of principles today that it expects countries to adopt if they want to partner with the United States in exploring and utilizing the Moon. Called the Artemis Accords after the name given to NASA’s program to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will begin formal discussions with potential partners today.
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken entered quarantine yesterday in preparation for their flight to the International Space Station (ISS) scheduled for May 27. It will be a new era for NASA — the first launch of astronauts from American soil since 2011 and the first crewed flight in NASA’s effort to develop crew space transportation systems as public-private partnerships where it is just a customer, not the owner of those systems.
The second day of a two-day NASA advisory committee meeting was much like the first. After detailed briefings by NASA officials on its human spaceflight program, committee members had to ask themselves how best to advise NASA on the path forward. The consensus today was that the 2024 deadline for putting Americans back on the lunar surface is unrealistic. Instead of saying so directly, however, they chose to offer guidance on what must be done for NASA to have the best chance of success and ensure safety is paramount.
A much anticipated meeting of a NASA committee that advises the agency on its human spaceflight program today left many questions about how the agency is moving forward to meet the Trump Administration’s goal of landing astronauts on the Moon in 2024. A credible architecture for the Artemis program still seems elusive with only four-and-a-half years to go.
NASA signed a deal today to pay its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, for one more seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to take a NASA astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. NASA has been paying Russia to ferry crews back and forth for years, but with new U.S. systems getting ready to fly, the era of paying for those seats is coming to an end. In the future, Americans will still fly on Soyuz, and Russians on the U.S. systems, but the plan is there will be no exchange of funds.