NASA and the communications satellite company Iridium shared a ride to orbit today on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff of the “ride-share” launch was on time at 3:47 pm ET from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. NASA’s GRACE-FO twin Earth science satellites and Iridium’s five Iridium-NEXT communications satellites were all successfully deployed after launch.
Jim Bridenstine announced several personnel changes today as he settles into his new job as NASA Administrator. Among them is permanently appointing Steve Jurczyk as Associate Administrator — the highest ranking civil servant at the agency. Jurczyk has been in that position on an acting basis since March.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 20-26, 2018 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week. [We’ve updated this twice to reflect the successful launches of China’s Queqiao last night (Sunday) and Orbital ATK’s OA-9 early this morning.]
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is developing plans for extending human space exploration into deep space in cooperation with NASA. JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi shared JAXA’s current thinking at a series of appearances in Washington, D.C. last week, including the Humans to Mars (H2M) conference. JAXA is one of the partners in the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS) and sees ISS as a testbed that will lead to the Moon and, in the longer term, Mars.
The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee tackled the issue today of the future of the United States in low Earth orbit (LEO). Committee members and witnesses agreed that the United States needs to have a presence in LEO, but the questions are how long to maintain operations of the International Space Station (ISS) and when the commercial sector will be ready to assume the primary role of LEO operations to support human spaceflight. No easy answers emerged.
The House Appropriations Committee today approved its FY2019 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill, which funds NASA and NOAA, by a vote of 32-19. Space activities at NASA and NOAA were not controversial, but Republicans and Democrats battled over other provisions in the bill, which also funds the Departments of Commerce and Justice.
The House Appropriations Committee released its draft report to accompany the FY2019 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill today. The CJS subcommittee marked up the bill last week. The full committee will act on it tomorrow. The outlines of the committee’s proposal were known last week, but the report provides much more detail on how it wants NASA to spend the $21.546 billion it recommends.
Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) made it absolutely clear at a hearing today that Congress, and only Congress, will decide when to end U.S. government support of the International Space Station (ISS). Arguing that the Trump Administration’s proposal to end government funding for ISS in FY2025 was merely a political decision by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), both insisted that ISS has a lot of life left and should not be abandoned until it is certain that a commercial alternative will be there to replace it.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for May 15, 2018: FAA space office to get boost in House appropriations bill; apply by June 12 to head the FAA space office; a helicopter for Mars? Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for May 14, 2018: Johnson Space Center gets a new Director; Australia gets a new space agency and interim head. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.