The 115th Congress will draw to a close in about eight weeks. Congress is currently scheduled to be in session for roughly half that time, just four weeks. Many pieces of legislation, including several significant space funding and policy bills, are still awaiting action in the House, Senate, or both. Those that do not get enacted before the 116th Congress gavels into session will have to go back to the starting gate.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for November 12, 2018: election update; Rocket Lab success; JAXA tests reentry capsule from ISS. 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 November 11-17, 2018 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate return to work on Tuesday.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for November 8, 2018: CONFERS conference; and science at the Gateway. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
Sen. Bill Nelson’s seat in the U.S. Senate is still undecided and may remain that way for a while. As votes continue to be counted, the margin between Nelson and his opponent, Governor Rick Scott, is narrowing. Anger mounted today on the Republican side as national and state-wide races they thought they won, including the Senate seat, are now in dispute as uncounted ballots are discovered in two Florida counties. Scott has filed a lawsuit against one of them and directed Florida’s law enforcement department to investigate possible “rampant fraud” by elections officials.
Votes were still being counted at press time, but the top level results of the 2018 mid-term elections are in: Democrats have wrested control of the House from Republicans, but Republicans not only retained control of the Senate, but increased their majority. As for the three key space policy related races we previewed yesterday, one was reelected, one lost, and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) has announced that he wants a recount.
Election Day is tomorrow, Tuesday, November 6. Polls have been predicting who will win control of the House and Senate, but it is impossible to know until the votes are counted — turnout is the key. In the meantime, here are SpacePolicyOnline’s two cents worth on what to watch from a space policy perspective. Space issues may be largely bipartisan, but there are a few exceptions and funding issues are sure to be contentious next year no matter what.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of November 4-10, 2018 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess (except for pro forma sessions) until after the elections.
Russia’s Roscosmos space agency today released dramatic video of the October 11 Soyuz MS-10 launch failure and confirmed that it was caused by a malfunctioning sensor. It also confirmed that the next International Space Station (ISS) crew, Soyuz MS-11, will launch on December 3, earlier than originally planned.
Russian space agency official Sergei Krikalev told a Russian audience today that the Soyuz MS-10 launch failure was caused by a malfunctioning sensor and the next crew may launch to ISS on December 3. His remarks were reported by Russia’s official news agency, TASS, which also said Roscosmos has set November 16 as the date for the launch of the next Russian cargo resupply mission, Progress MS-10.