Glenn loses another Congressional advocate

NASA’s Glenn Research Center is already losing a strong supporter in Congress with the departure of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who lost the Democratic primary for his redrawn district against another incumbent, Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Now it appears the center will lose another advocate: according to multiple reports, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Rep. Steven […]

NASA still not worried about sequestration

A top NASA official said Thursday that the agency remained confident that budget sequestration could be avoided, even though they were starting to think about the potential effects should those automatic budget cuts take effect. “If you talk to the leadership in the administration or Congress, most people believe it’s not going to happen,” said […]

House committee to look at suborbital spaceflight and astronaut artifacts next week

Next week, just before the House is scheduled to recess until after the nominating conventions, the House Science Committee is planning to take up a couple of space-related issues. On Wednesday, August 1, the committee’s space subcommittee will hold a hearing on “The Emerging Commercial Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle Market”. Representatives of three suborbital vehicles […]

Panel to examine the threat of sequestration on the space industry

With each passing day, people in both government and industry are becoming increasingly concerned about the prospect of sequestration, the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts that would go into effect at the beginning of calendar year 2013 unless Congress comes up with an alternative deficit reduction strategy (or otherwise overrides those planned cuts.) This has been […]

Senate committee to examine ISS utilization

The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing this morning at 10 am EDT on “The International Space Station: A Platform for Research, Collaboration, and Discovery”. The purpose of the hearing, according to the brief description, is to “examine research progress, the potential for scientific breakthroughs, and any impediments to maximizing the utilization of this […]

President, Congress react to Sally Ride’s passing

On Monday, Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, passed away after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Her death, which came as a surprise to many, led to an outpouring of reaction, including from the White House and members of Congress.

“Michelle and I were deeply saddened to hear about the passing of […]

Posey: “Going to the moon should be a goal”

Sunday’s edition of Florida Today features excerpts of an interview with Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), including some discussion of space policy issues. Posey doesn’t break much new ground here, defending his vote on an appropriations bill that included language calling on NASA to immediately downselect to one or two commercial crew providers. He compares it […]

Congressman interviewing Congressmen on planetary science

The above is a video posted by the account of Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), dated June 29th but largely ignored until last night, when the congressman tweeted the link to it to a couple of people:

@badastronomer I gave shoe-shine letters 2 Reps Wolf & Schiff/their response youtu.be/CYwl3avGJD4 I’m a better Congressman than videographer

[…]

Pluto, no. Mars, yes. Alien life, definitely.

Last week, after astronomers announced the discovery of a fifth moon orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the web site The Capitol Column openly pondered the effect that discovery would have on the NASA budget: “It may have taken the discovery of a new moon to finally get members […]

Outsourcing and the space program

With all the debate in the presidential campaign to date about outsourcing jobs to other nations, it was only a matter of time before space policy got pulled in. Appearing on CNN on Monday, John H. Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor and national co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, brought up the issue and […]