SpaceX is targeting March 14 for the next Starship Orbital Flight Test pending FAA approval. It will be the third flight of the gigantic rocket in less than a year and will fly a different trajectory. The first two attempts did not attain orbit, but were to land near Hawaii if they did. This time Starship will head to the Indian Ocean. SpaceX says it will allow more types of tests along the route.
The Senate passed the Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2024 yesterday to keep the FAA authorized for another two months instead of expiring tomorrow. The bill also extends the “learning period” under which the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is prohibited from promulgating new commercial human spaceflight regulations until May 11. The legislation passed the House last week and now goes to the President for signature.
The House finally passed the first set of FY2024 appropriations bills today, more than five months after FY2024 began. Six of the 12 regular appropriations bills, including those that fund NASA, NOAA and the FAA, are bundled together into a single “minibus” — a smaller version of an “omnibus” appropriations bill that incorporates all 12. It still must pass the Senate and be signed into law by midnight on Friday to avoid a lapse in funding. Agreement on the other six, including DOD, is pending with a March 22 deadline.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has scheduled House consideration of the first package of FY2024 appropriations bills tomorrow, March 6. The collection of six bills, called a “minibus,” includes Commerce-Justice-Science that funds NASA and NOAA, and Transportation-HUD that funds the FAA and its Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The bills must be enacted by Friday midnight or their funding will run out.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com over the past two weeks, February 19-March 4, 2024, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.
Weather finally cooperated for the NASA/SpaceX Crew-8 to lift off late Sunday evening on their way to the International Space Station. Docking is expected about 3:00 am on Tuesday.
House and Senate appropriators released their final agreement on six FY2024 appropriations bills today including the one that funds NASA, Commerce-Justice-Science. The agency will get $24.875 billion, half a billion less than its FY2023 spending level of $25.384 billion and more than $2 billion less than President Biden’s request of $27.185 billion. Support for the Artemis program remains strong along with Mars Sample Return, but funding will be a challenge for both.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus a day of March 3-10, 2024 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week starting Tuesday.
Sundown has returned to the area of the Moon where two small lunar landers — one Japanese, one American — have been collecting imagery and data. Both are powered only by solar cells, so when the Sun sets the surface and the landers literally go dark. They are not designed to survive the bitter cold 14-day lunar nights, but Japan’s SLIM beat the odds and returned to life for a few days this week. Time will tell if it can do that again and if the U.S. lander, Intuitive Machines’ Odyssesus, or Odie, will wake up later this month.
The House and Senate passed a new Continuing Resolution today extending the deadlines for passing the 12 FY2024 appropriations bills further into March. Without the new CR, funding for departments and agencies in four of the bills would have run out tomorrow night and the rest a week later. This new legislation buys a bit more time. Now six of the bills will expire on March 8 and the others on March 22. The House also passed an extension of the FAA’s authorization, including extending the “learning period” prohibition on new commercial human spaceflight regulations until May.