In a letter released by the committee Thursday morning, [...]]]> A day after NASA announced that the first SLS may not be ready for launch until as late as November 2018, two key members of the House Science Committee asked NASA for details on both the schedule and funding levels of the SLS and Orion programs.

In a letter released by the committee Thursday morning, Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Steven Palazzo (R-MS), the chairmen of the full science committee and its space subcommittee respectively, asked NASA administrator Charles Bolden for details about reports that both SLS and Orion were in danger of missing the planned December 2017 launch date for EM-1, the first SLS/Orion mission. The letter does not mention the KDP-C review that NASA announced Wednesday, but an earlier GAO report on SLS cost and schedule risks and recent comments by Orion program manager Mark Geyer that he will be “challenged” to make that December 2017 date.

In the letter, Smith and Palazzo suggest that NASA and the Obama Administration have not properly funded SLS/Orion development. “The Administration continues to submit insufficient budget requests for these vital programs,” they write. “Despite numerous statements over several years that these two national priority programs are sufficiently funded, it now appears that this may not be the case.”

Smith and Palazzo pose several questions to Bolden in the letter, including, “Will NASA be able to fly the SLS for Exploration Mission-1 in calendar year 2017?” If NASA isn’t able to, they ask what’s changed since previous testimony to the committee, including whether Bolden knew about the slip when he testified before the committee in March. (It’s worth noting that, in his prepared statement to the committee in March, Bolden said that “NASA is pressing forward with development of SLS and Orion, preparing for a first, uncrewed mission in FY 2018.” While that would include December 2017, fiscal year 2018 runs until September 30, 2018.)

“In fact,” Smith and Palazzo write, “despite NASA’s best efforts to keep these programs on track, it appears as though the Administration is starving these programs of funding and preventing important development work with the goal of pushing back schedules.” They seek responses to their questions from NASA by September 10.

NASA announced Wednesday that the SLS passed its Key Decision Point C (KDP-C) review, an assessment of the [...]]]> An announcement Wednesday by NASA that the first launch of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket could slip by nearly a year has led one key senator to suggest the program needs some budgetary help.

NASA announced Wednesday that the SLS passed its Key Decision Point C (KDP-C) review, an assessment of the program’s technical and programmatic progress. The result of the review was an estimate of the program’s development cost ($7.021 billion from February 2014 to first launch). It also provided an estimate of when SLS would be ready for its first launch: no later than November, 2018. That’s nearly a year later than the currently scheduled date of that first launch, designated EM-1, of December 2017.

In a teleconference with reporters Wednesday afternoon, NASA officials tried to emphasize that the November 2018 date was not a firm launch date, but instead the result of the 70-percent joint confidence level model used for the review. . “If we don’t do anything, we basically have a 70-percent chance of getting to that date,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, adding that he was pushing his team to have SLS ready before then. “We will be there by November of 2018, but I look to my team to do better than that.”

However, he also admitted it was unlikely the SLS would be ready in December 2017 as previously planned. “It’s probably sometime in the 2018 timeframe,” he said, “but we don’t want to get too specific now.” NASA will have a better handle on the launch date for the EM-1 mission after completing KDP-C reviews for SLS ground systems later this year and Orion early next year.

SLS had been on a roller coaster in recent months. In July, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned of cost and schedule risks because of insufficient funding that could delay the EM-1 launch by six months. Earlier this month, though, SLS program manager Todd May said the GAO report was based on “obsolete” funding data and that the program had several months of slack on its critical path.

Part of May’s comments were based on additional funding Congress provided to SLS for the current fiscal year and House and Senate appropriations bills fiscal year 2015 that would also increase SLS funding above the administration’s request. But with the potential for a slip in the SLS program, could some members seek more funding for the program?

One senator thinks that, at the very least, the program’s current funding needs to be protected. “Technically things look good,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), in a statement provided by his office late Wednesday. “But we need to keep the budget on track so NASA can meet an earlier readiness date – which I think can be done.”

In an interview with the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call Wednesday in Philadelphia, Rep. Paul [...]]]> With no sign of progress on appropriations bills stalled in the Senate, the House is making plans to pass a “clean” continuing resolution that will keep the government running at least into December, a top House member said this week.

In an interview with the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call Wednesday in Philadelphia, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that he expected the House to take up a CR when it reconvenes in early September that will fund the government “until Dec. 11 is what we’re thinking.” That CR will be a “clean” one in the sense that it will not include any controversial policy provisions that could spark opposition from Democrats.

“We will pass a clean [continuing resolution], and if for some reason the Democrats don’t take that, then they will clearly have shut the government down,” Ryan told Roll Call.

A CR appeared likely when Congress recessed at the end of July without any sign of progress on several key appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) one that funds NASA and NOAA, in the Senate. The House passed its CJS appropriations bill at the end of May, but debate on the Senate’s version ground to a halt on the Senate floor in mid-June over non-NASA provisions of the bill. The Senate has yet to pass any of its appropriation bills for fiscal year 2015.

Ryan’s comments were intended to respond to claims that Republicans were planning to try and insert policy provisions into a CR that could lead to another government shutdown like the one last October. Ryan, in a new book due out next week (the tour for which brought him to Philadelphia), admitted the shutdown was a “suicide mission” for House Republicans. He added that, along with a CR, the House would support a short-term reauthorization of the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank through the end of the calendar year to allow more time to work out a long-term solution. Many conservatives have opposed any long-term reauthorization of Ex-Im, which, among other activities, has supported commercial satellite and launch sales.

Mark Geyer spoke at the Mars Society’s annual conference in Houston on Saturday, one day after SLS program manager Todd May [...]]]> In two separate public appearances last week, the manager of NASA’s Orion spacecraft warned that he is “challenged” to keep Orion on track for the first Space Launch System (SLS) mission in late 2017.

Mark Geyer spoke at the Mars Society’s annual conference in Houston on Saturday, one day after SLS program manager Todd May said his program had several months of schedule slack on its critical path to Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) inaugural launch. Asked about how much slack he had on Orion towards EM-1, Geyer was more cautionary. “We’re going to be challenged to make December ’17,” he said. “By the end of this fall, we’ll be able to define that” date after working through preliminary design reviews for the program.

Geyer said the challenges were rooted in two key issues. One was the decision to incorporate a flight test, designated EFT-1, slated for launch on a Delta IV Heavy this December without adding funding to the overall program. “That did affect my ability to start EM-1 as early as I wanted to,” he said. The other was bringing the European Space Agency into the program as the supplier of the Orion service module. “They’re doing a terrific job, but they had some challenges,” he said.

“We felt it was more important to build a flight unit and fly it because we’re going to learn so much about what the risks are,” he added about the decision to do the EFT-1 mission. “To us, it was worth the potential impact on EM-1.”

Earlier last week, Geyer offered similar warnings about the Orion schedule at the AIAA Space 2014 conference in San Diego. “We’re struggling to make December 2017, and I have a lot of challenges to make that date,” Geyer told Space News. He cited potential schedule issues with ESA’s service module as a key factor in that overall schedule challenge.

Other reports have suggested a delay—perhaps as much as nine months—is already in the works for EM-1. An article last month by NASASpaceFlight.com, citing an internal NASA document, claimed the schedule for EM-1 had slipped to September 2018. However, the same document also had EM-2 moved up from 2021 to the very end of 2020: December 31.

Speaking at the 17th Annual International Mars Society Convention in Houston, SLS program manager Todd May said the program [...]]]> NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket remains on track for a first launch in December 2017 despite warnings in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) about cost and schedule problems, the program’s manager said Friday.

Speaking at the 17th Annual International Mars Society Convention in Houston, SLS program manager Todd May said the program was at or ahead of schedule as it works through a series of critical design reviews (CDRs) for the SLS and its major systems. “We said four years ago we’d be at critical design review on the core [stage] this November. I’m glad to report that we actually completed that last month,” he said, a statement that generated an impromptu round of applause from the couple hundred attendees of the session. The CDR on the booster stages was completed just this week, he said, and the CDR for the full SLS is on track for the spring of 2015.

“Things are going pretty well. As far as the critical path, we’ve still got three to five months of slack” on the date the core stage is due to be delivered to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for testing, he said. “We’re just clicking off milestones.”

That rosy assessment stands in contrast to a report issued last month by the GAO that warned of cost and schedule risks to the program. “The SLS program office calculated the risk associated with insufficient funding through 2017 as having a 90 percent likelihood of occurrence,” the report stated, “furthermore, it indicated the insufficient budget could push the planned December 2017 launch date out 6 months and add some $400 million to the overall cost of SLS development.”

Asked about the GAO report, May suggested that conclusion was based on information that was now out of date. “They saw some things a couple of years ago. Some of the data is now obsolete,” he said. Specifically, he said the funding SLS received in fiscal year 2014, and what it expects to get in 2015 when the appropriations process is completed, is above the original request. In 2014, the administration requested $1.385 billion for SLS, but received $1.6 billion. In 2015, the administration requested $1.38 billion, but House and Senate version of appropriations bills offer $1.6 and 1.7 billion, respectively, for SLS.

That additional funding, May said, has mitigated the risk identified in the GAO report, provided that level of support continues. “If you don’t receive the appropriated levels, you could see challenges,” he said.

As for schedule risks, May said Monte Carlo risk models widely used in such analyses aren’t always accurate. “To me, they don’t change a basic program management tenet, which is to hurry every chance you get,” he said. That approach, he said, has worked for planetary exploration missions that have to launch within narrow windows. “They don’t pay attention to those things. They hurry every chance they get. So far, that’s paying off for us.”

“I feel [...]]]> While NASA administrator Charles Bolden expressed skepticism earlier this week that a NASA authorization bill would make it through Congress this year, a leading member of the House Science Committee said in a recent interview she is more optimistic about the bill’s prospects, but less so about two other pieces of space-related legislation.

“I feel confident that the Senate is going to move forward on its authorization,” said Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking member of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, in an interview after her luncheon speech at the NewSpace 2014 conference in San Jose, California, on July 26. “I do hope that it’s one of those things that can be done by the end of this year.”

She said she expected the Senate’s version would, in many respects, “mirror the House authorization,” which would aid the conference needed to reconcile the likely differences between the House and Senate versions. One difference Edwards expected is that the Senate is interested in doing a multi-year authorization, while the House bill only covers the current fiscal year. “The Senate is looking at a multiple-year authorization which, I believe, we would be able to convince our colleagues in the House to support it,” she said. “I’ve long supported a multi-year authorization, so that’s not a problem for me.”

She was less optimistic about the prospects for passing an update to the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, although not because of any provisions in the legislation (yet to be introduced) to do that. “I think we could use another hearing or so, and I’ve expressed that to Mr. [Steven] Palazzo,” she said, referring to the chairman of the space subcommittee. “I just don’t know, frankly, if we have enough days yet to be able to do it. So it’s not because the two of us don’t want it.”

As previously noted here, she was skeptical about the chances of the ASTEROIDS Act, the bill introduced by Reps. Bill Posey (R-FL) and Derek Kilmer (D-WA), members of the House Science Committee, in early July that would grant property rights to resources extracted form asteroids. “We haven’t had any hearings on that,” she said. “I just think it’s bad policy to move policy forward when you haven’t done the investigation work it takes to do that. I’ve shared that with both Mr. Posey and Mr. Kilmer.”

On the issue of relations with Russia and their effect on space cooperation, Edwards said previous concerns had eased. “What I’ve learned since then is that there’s been actually quite a separation between going on at a political level versus what’s going on on a day-to-day basis in terms of our space operations and I think that’s a good thing,” she said. “I do feel more more confident, frankly, than I did a couple of months ago that the political devolution has not turned into a space devolution.”

She added, though, that she didn’t necessarily object to investing in development of an RD-180 replacement. “I haven’t come to a conclusion about that. I never think it’s particularly harmful for the United States to make certain that it has the independence of its own operations and capacity.”

She also expressed interest in enhancing cooperation with China in space, while recognizing there are obstacles to doing so. “China is less of a partner, and I think that needs to change,” she said. “It would be better to have them in fold in our civil development than not.”

“There are some issues with the Chinese that we have to get resolved, like the theft of intellectual property” before such cooperation would be possible. And when could that happen? “Not this Congress.”

Bolden, speaking at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, said he was more [...]]]> NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Wednesday he is not optimistic that Congress will pass a NASA authorization bill this year, and expects to start the 2015 fiscal year on a continuing resolution (CR).

Bolden, speaking at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, said he was more optimistic about the prospects of an authorization bill last month, when the House passed its version of the legislation on a 401-2 vote. “That was not lost on me,” he said of the margin of passage. “My naïveté caused me to believe that, boy, things are going to change.”

However, the Senate has yet to take up the House bill or even introduce its own version. “They have talked off and on about an authorization bill, but we don’t see any serious movement there right now,” he said, adding that Congress was about to go on its summer recess and not return until early September. “I am not optimistic that we will get an authorization bill until 2015.”

On the appropriations side, Bolden said that that the increase in funding offered in the House bill over the administration’s request “was a very pleasant surprise for all of us.” He added that he was “disappointed” the bill didn’t fully fund commercial crew, offering $785 million versus the requested $848 million, “but we’ll take it.” He added he was also concerned about cuts in the bill in the request for Space Technology.

The Senate’s version of the appropriations bill provides similar funding levels, but has stalled out on the Senate floor because of unrelated issues. “There’s a strong possibility that the federal government could be funded through a continuing resolution for a period of time during fiscal year 2015,” he said. (Reports suggest that a CR would fund the government at least past the November elections.)

That’s a setback after the progress made though last month indicated a chance the appropriations would become law before the fiscal year begins on October 1. “Once again, we’ve snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” Bolden said. “Everybody was really excited and looking forward to a really healthy budget.”

Bolden also offered a bit of news about the ongoing review of proposals submitted to the next round of the commercial crew program, Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap). “Our progress on commercial crew source selection deliberations has been evidently better than we anticipated,” he said. He said that those awards would come “much sooner than later this year,” but was not more specific. NASA officials have generally said over the last few months that the CCtCap contract or contracts would be announced in August or September.

The report, requested by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), warned that the flat [...]]]> In contrast to NASA and industry claims that work on the Space Launch System (SLS) is on track, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released Wednesday warned that tight schedules and budgets could delay the first launch of that heavy-lift rocket.

The report, requested by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), warned that the flat budget profile for development of SLS may be insufficient to keep the program on track for a first launch in December 2017. “The SLS program office calculated the risk associated with insufficient funding through 2017 as having a 90 percent likelihood of occurrence,” the report stated. “[F]urthermore, it indicated the insufficient budget could push the planned December 2017 launch date out 6 months and add some $400 million to the overall cost of SLS development.”

The development of the core stage, which is driving the overall SLS schedule, is compressed and much of its schedule reserve may already be spoken for, the GAO report found. “The SLS program is tracking threats to the core stage schedule that could take up as much as 70 percent of the 7 months of reserve,” it stated. “While these challenges are not overly complex from a technical viewpoint, resolving such threats to the schedule is critical because the element is in early development phases and still has several significant milestones and developmental activities ahead.”

That assessment contrasts with what NASA and industry have said about the status of SLS work, painting at time a rosy picture of progress on development of the rocket. In a discussion in May at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Ginger Barnes, vice president and program manager for SLS at Boeing, said the company was heading into the critical design review for the SLS core stage five months ahead of schedule.

The GAO report also addressed some other issues with the SLS, including the fact that its long-term missions, beyond the EM-2 mission in 2021 that will be the first to carry a crew, remain unclear. That uncertainty affects plans to develop upgrades to the SLS to incerase its payload capacity to 105 and eventually 130 metric tons. The GAO was also critical of plans not to compete a higher-performance upper stage for SLS, saying NASA’s rationale that Boeing won a competitive Constellation contract in 2007 didn’t reflect changes in the industry since then, including work by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences.

The GAO report cautioned that if the SLS suffered cost and schedule overruns, other NASA programs could be at risk if NASA decided to pay for SLS by taking money from them. “Although cost and schedule growth can occur on any project, increases associated with NASA’s most costly and complex missions— such as SLS, which makes up about 9 percent of NASA’s annual budget—can have dramatic effects on the availability of funding for NASA’s portfolio of major projects.”

NASA, in a response, suggested it would not seek additional funding or delay SLS in order to meet the desired 70-percent confidence level in the program’s cost and schedule estimates. “[D]elaying the SLS development schedule or diverting funding from other priorities to satisfy a schedule confidence level could jeopardize these goals and result in an increase in costs to the taxpayer,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, wrote in a response to the GAO included in the report. “Plans are in place to adjust schedule and minimize costs within the agency commitment if either funding levels decrease or technical problems arise.”