A team of scientists scouring 21 year old data from NASA’s Galileo probe has found evidence further supporting the idea that Jupiter’s moon Europa ejects plumes of material into space from a liquid ocean under its icy crust. Until now, only images from the Hubble Space Telescope have hinted at these geysers, though the mere possibility that they exist has fueled intense interest in sending probes there to investigate.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 13-19, 2018 and any insight we have about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
The first launch of “Block 5” of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was aborted just under 1 minute before liftoff today at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The Block 5 is the final version of the Falcon 9 and this inaugural launch will place Bangladesh’s first communications satellite into orbit. SpaceX has rescheduled the launch for tomorrow afternoon. [UPDATE, May 11: The launch was successful at 4:14 pm ET today.]
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine reassured advocates of sending humans to Mars that the agency is still working towards that goal even though the current focus is the Moon. NASA is pursuing the two goals “in tandem,” he told participants in the annual Humans to Mars (H2M) conference this morning.
The House Appropriations Committee released the draft FY2019 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) funding bill, which will be marked up at subcommittee level later this week. The draft bill would fund NASA at $21.546 billion, $810 million more than its current level and $1.6 billion more than requested by the Trump Administration. [UPDATE: The subcommittee adopted the bill without amendment on May 9. The bill now goes to the full committee for markup. The date was not announced.]
At an “industry day” for companies interested in providing commercial lunar payload services, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine thanked them for their interest in moving the country forward in lunar exploration. Noting that past efforts to send astronauts back to the Moon faltered, he insisted that times have changed and “this won’t be Lucy and the football again.”
Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for May 7, 2018: rescission package sent to Congress; ULA workers on strike; Ellen Ochoa joins National Science Board. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) will mark up the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Wednesday. One of the proposals in the draft bill, H.R. 5515, is to create a U.S. Space Command within the U.S. Strategic Command, which also was proposed last year. The bill has other provisions that underscore the committee’s concerns that the United States be ready and able to counter perceived Russian and Chinese threats to U.S. operations in space. [UPDATE, May 10: The committee approved the bill at 12:37 am this morning after more than 14 hours of debate. The committee defeated by voice vote a Turner amendment to allow DOD to waive the U.S. Space Command requirement.]
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of May 6-12, 2018 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in the session this week.
NASA’s InSight spacecraft successfully lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA on time this morning at 7:05 am ET (4:05 am Pacific) despite a foggy forecast. InSight will land at Elysium Planitia on Mars on November 26, 2018.