NASA heralded another signatory to the Artemis Accords yesterday when the Netherlands joined during a ceremony in Washington, DC. To the surprise of many, that made Netherlands the 31st country, not the 30th, to join the non-binding principles of responsible behavior on the Moon. With no public fanfare at all, Iceland had joined in October.
SpaceX’s Starship is another step closer today to getting an FAA license to attempt a second orbital flight test. The FAA announced the company has completed all the required corrective actions following its first failed launch in April. Environmental regulators still need to give their approval, however.
The three-man Shenzhou-16 space station crew is back on Earth after 5 months on Tiangong-3. Their replacements arrived a few days ago, continuing China’s practice of keeping Tiangong-3 permanently occupied by crews rotating on 5-6 month schedules just like the International Space Station. This is new for China, but the ISS is about to celebrate 23 years of permanent occupancy.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com in the last week, October 23-29, 2023, 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 plus a day of October 29-November 5, 2023 and any insight we can offer about them. The Senate and House are in session this week, though the House doesn’t begin work until Wednesday.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel made it crystal clear today that building a tug to deorbit the International Space station is “not optional,” budget constraints notwithstanding. The panel has been urging NASA for years to provide a U.S. deorbit capability and NASA finally requested the first tranche of funding in FY2024, but ASAP worries it may fall victim to congressional cuts. That cannot be allowed to happen, they warned, or catastrophe could ensue.
China launched a new crew to the Tiangong-3 China Space Station this evening EDT. The three-man Shenzhou-17 crew will replace three others who have been aboard since May, continuing their new practice of rotating crews on roughly six-month schedules to keep the space station permanently occupied like the International Space Station.
After three chaotic weeks, House Republicans elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as the new Speaker of the House. The fourth to win a majority vote within the Republican Conference, he was the first with enough support to get a majority of the whole House. Today he won with all 220 Republicans present voting for him. Deep divisions remain within the Republican party and between Republicans and Democrats, but as Johnson said today, at least the House is back in business.
NASA is bracing for a period of budgetary belt-tightening as House Republicans demand deep cuts to nondefense discretionary spending, the category that includes NASA. The effects will be felt across the agency, but recent meetings of NASA advisory committees highlight how science programs will be impacted. Astrophysics is a case in point. While the popular Hubble Space Telescope is not in danger of being terminated, the almost $100 million a year spent on operations may have to slim down. The Chandra X-ray telescope is in the same boat.
Here are links to all the articles published on SpacePolicyOnline.com in the last week, October 16-22, 2023, including our “What’s Happening in Space Policy” for this coming week. Click on each title to read the entire article.