It’s been a relatively quiet period for space policy issues recently, so now’s a good chance to catch up on some legislation and resolutions that have been discussed here in the past:
- H.Res. 550, the House resolution calling for an independent evaluation of NASA’s decision to cancel the last shuttle servicing mission to Hubble, now has 47 cosponsors. The resolution itself has made no visible progress within the House towards passage, but given that NASA has already agreed to have the National Academy of Sciences review the decision, one can argue it’s a moot point.
- HR 3813, the George R. Brown Near-Earth Object Survey Act, was introduced in February by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. The bill was referred to the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, which Rohrabacher chairs. One expects that Rohrabacher will hold a hearing on the bill at some point, although nothing has been announced to the best of my knowledge.
- As we noted earlier this month, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) recently announced plans to introduce the “Studying and Prevention Asteroid Collisions with Earth (SPACE) Act” that would be a scaled-down version of HR 3813. At that time there was no sign that Rep. Weiner had introduced the bill and, as of Thursday night, there was still no sign of the bill. Moreover, although one newspaper report claimed that he issued a press release about the bill, the release hasn’t appeared yet on his web site.
