NASA has chosen three companies to participate in the first phase of developing, building and operating Lunar Terrain Vehicles as part of the Artemis campaign. Eventually one of the three — Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, or Venturi Astrolab — will be chosen to build an LTV that can be used both autonomously and with astronauts.
DOD issued its first Commercial Space Integration Strategy today, emphasizing the growing role it sees for commercial space companies in supporting national security space activities. DOD worked closely with the commercial sector in developing the strategy and ensured it is unclassified in order to be transparent about what it is trying to achieve and to hold itself accountable in coming years. The U.S. Space Force is expected to release its own commercial strategy soon.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wants to establish standards for determining what time it is elsewhere in the solar system. A White House policy issued today starts with the Moon, directing NASA and other government agencies to develop a lunar timing standard it calls Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) by the end of 2026 to support operations on and around the Moon. They also are to work with the international community to make it the international cislunar standard.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com over the last week, March 25-31, 2024, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of March 31-April 6, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.
As NASA copes with the significant cut it received in FY2024, experts on the civil space budget are warning that FY2025 could be even worse. Caps imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act remain in effect in FY2025 and the budget “tricks” used to lessen the pain in FY2024 will not be available this time. On top of that, NASA will be competing with other national needs like policing and preparations for the next census. One NASA program that still appears to be in comparatively good shape is Artemis.
The Japanese space agency’s SLIM lunar lander defied the odds again, surviving not just one, but two bitter cold lunar nights and sizzling hot lunar days. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has sent back another new image from its navigation camera two months after a sporty landing that initially suggested its lifetime would be sharply limited.
NASA is inviting the public to participate in collecting science data during the April 8 solar eclipse through its citizen science projects. Weather permitting, everyone in the contiguous United States will see at least a partial eclipse and those in 15 states will see a total eclipse. The space agency is also reminding everyone NEVER to look directly at the Sun unless wearing special protective glasses.
George Abbey, another NASA legend, died yesterday at the age of 91 following an illness. His death comes just one week after the passing of former astronaut Tom Stafford and a month after former astronaut and NASA Administrator Richard Truly passed away, all marking the end of an era. Abbey was not an astronaut, but as director of flight crew operations decided which astronauts got to fly and when. His influence on the agency went far beyond that over many decades as an advisor at NASA Headquarters, Director of Johnson Space Center, and Senior Fellow at Rice University after his retirement.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com over the last week, March 18-24, 2024, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.