By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 13 at 11:39 am ET Friday afternoon’s hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee on the effects of the shutdown on various agencies under its purview, including NASA, didn’t yield may new insights about the effects of the shutdown or a solution to it; at times, it was primarily a platform for committee members to vent about the shutdown (particularly since, for much of the hearing, attendance was dominated by Democratic members as Republican senators were returning from a meeting at the White House.)
During the hearing, committee chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV (D-WV) released a report discussing the effects of the shutdown on those agencies. The NASA section of the report discussed the potential delays the shutdown could cause for satellite programs, including the scheduled launch next January of the next TDRS data relay satellite, as well as financial difficulties some NASA contractors are facing. The section on NOAA’s weather satellite program warns the shutdown will exacerbate a projected gap in weather satellite services by delaying the next-generation satellites under development.
Marion Blakey, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), also outlined the effects the shutdown of most NASA activities was having. “NASA is operating… with a skeleton crew,” she said. Work by various companies on “high visibility” NASA programs has been largely unaffected by the shutdown, she said, “due to very smart prior planning on the part of industry and NASA,” but warned they are “on borrowed time” and work will slow or stop if the shutdown continues. She added that the shutdown has also delayed the processing of launch license applications at the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. “This is burdening companies that are already risking their own capital to restore America’s launch leadership and help NASA become independent of Russia for crew launch.” Her prepared statement goes into some greater detail on the shutdown’s effects on NASA in particular.
While Blakey and other witnesses called for an end to the shutdown, her comments weren’t enough for one member of the committee. After Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) saids that he appreciated “the restraint of the panel” of witnesses as they described the effects of the shutdown, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) chimed in. “I don’t appreciate the restraint of the companies,” he said, arguing that they weren’t putting enough pressure on key members of Congress to resolve the shutdown. He singled out Blakey and the members of her industry association. “When I have talked to your CEOs, and have asked them if they have gone and talked to the members of Congress who are causing the shutdown, they haven’t,” he said, asking if she had talked to members to ask them if they knew the impacts the shutdown was having.
“The short answer is yes,” she said, noting that the AIA had a delegation of industry officials, including some from small businesses, who met with members of the House and Senate recently. “I can’t, of course, account for every one of our CEOs’ appointments up here on a daily basis, but I can also testify that they are spending a great deal of time making certain that people understand” the effects of the shutdown.
Nelson, though, pressed for more action from Blakey and her organization’s members. “I met with two of your CEOs last week, and they were not ready to step up and go talk to the leadership in the House of Representatives that were allowing this shutdown to continue,” he said. “Where are the people that are so affected at the Johnson Space Center in Houston? Where are they going to the congressional delegation and talking to them… You need to put a fire under your executives.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 13 at 10:51 am ET There seems to be very little Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House agree on these days, as the government shutdown that started October 1 continues. But members of both the majority and minority caucuses of the House Science Committee did find common ground, issuing releases late last week on the passing of Scott Carpenter, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts.
“As one of the pioneers of our space program in Project Mercury, Commander Carpenter helped to lead the way for our future human endeavors in space,” said committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) in a statement late Thursday. “The memory of his bravery, courage and the sacrifices he made for our nation will live on. He truly had ‘the right stuff.’”
Those comments were echoed in a statement issued Friday (but not yet posted on its website) by the committee’s Democratic leadership. “Scott Carpenter always advocated for a robust space program. He once said when referring to the Mercury 7, ‘We stand here waiting to be outdone,’” said ranking member Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX). “I believe that the best way we can honor his legacy is to continue to invest in our space program and build on that legacy of exploration.” Added Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking member of the committee’s space subcommittee, “I hope we build on his accomplishments and honor his life by ensuring that his wish [that more people could experience spaceflight] becomes a reality for many more American astronauts.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 11 at 8:16 am ET The Senate Commerce Committee, whose oversight includes NASA, is holding a hearing Friday at 1 pm EDT titled “The Impacts of the Government Shutdown on Our Economic Security”. Among the scheduled witnesses for the hearing are Marion Blakey, the president and CEO of the Aerospace States Association; and Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, best known as the publisher of the journal Science.
One organization has already looked at the economic impact of NASA-related elements of the government shutdown. The Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership (BAHEP) issued a white paper this week warning of serious and growing effects of the shutdown on Houston economy. “Indeed, the situation is dire,” the BAHEP document concluded. It found that, in addition to the civil service employee furloughs, 20% of 11,000 contractors are currently laid off, a number BAHEP estimates will grow to 60% by mid-month and 90% by November 1 if the shutdown continues. “For the NASA community, the shutdown price is quite high. The impact to the business community will be irreversible.”
Outside of NASA, the effects of the shutdown continue. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) is making plans to close down telescopes it runs at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and furlough employees if the shutdown is still in effect at the end of next week. NOAO facilities in Chile will remain open, according to Nature, because of Chilean laws that forbid involuntary unpaid leave. The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) says that other telescopes and facilities it manages, including the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Gemini Observatory, should remain operational at least through the end of the month.
In a bit of good news, though, one radio telescope that previously was expected to furlough employees by the middle of this month now plans to remain open. In a statement posted on its website, Arecibo Observatory director Robert Kerr said that although the situation is “difficult, and confused,” the telescope and its visitor center would remain open during the shutdown; a 50th anniversary symposium planned for late October remains on as well. Last week, Kerr said in a Washington press conference that the observatory would have to furlough its staff by the middle of the month because of a lack of funds due to the shutdown.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 10 at 12:30 pm ET As reported over the weekend, some scientists are angry with NASA and/or Congress for preventing Chinese nationals from attending next month’s Second Kepler Science Conference on the grounds of NASA’s Ames Research Center. That issue has attracted the attention of the member of Congress who put into legislation limitations on NASA cooperation with China, provisions he now says NASA is misinterpreting.
In a seven-page letter released by his office Tuesday, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) wrote to NASA administrator Charles Bolden about the news, first reported by The Guardian, that Chinese scientists are not being allowed to attend the conference. In the letter, he argues the provision in the fiscal year 2013 continuing resolution that funded NASA, and similar provisions dating back two years, don’t prohibit NASA from hosting Chinese scientists at scientific meetings like the Kepler conference.
The law, he said, “primarily restricts bilateral, not multilateral, meetings and activities with the Communist Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies. It places no restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese nationals unless those nationals are acting as official representatives of the Chinese government.” Any interpretation of the law to block all Chinese visitors to NASA centers, as a NASA official stated in a message included in The Guardian article, “mischaracterizes the law and is inaccurate.”
The relevant section of the FY2013 CR includes these provisions:
Sec. 535. (a) None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company unless such activities are specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of enactment of this Act.
(b) The limitation in subsection (a) shall also apply to any funds used to effectuate the hosting of official Chinese visitors at facilities belonging to or utilized by NASA.
While Wolf writes that the restriction “primarily restricts bilateral, not multilateral, meetings,” the language of subsection (b) above appears to cover all “official Chinese visitors” at NASA facilities, regardless of the nature of the visit. What constitutes an “official Chinese visitor” isn’t defined: presumably an individual from the Chinese space agency or other government organization would qualify, while, say, a Chinese student would likely not.
Wolf believes that the conference instead ran up against a blanket moratorium on visits to NASA centers by Chinese (and some other) nationals put into place by NASA in March after security concerns. Wolf added that he understood the moratorium had already been lifted by NASA.
If true, that’s not the message that conference organizers got. In a message Tuesday, members of the conference’s scientific organizing committee (SOC) said they heard about the moratorium only in late September, when six Chinese participants had their registrations denied—timing that would presumably have been after the moratorium had been lifted, in Wolf’s view. “Had we been aware of this possibility at the onset of planning KSC2, alternate venues to NASA/Ames would have been pursued,” said a statement Tuesday by members of the SOC.
While the SOC said any prohibition, by law or NASA policy, is “deplorable,” they admitted there’s little they can do so close to the conference (scheduled to start November 4), and with NASA personnel involved with the conference furloughed. “With no registration fee, and complete lack of ability to communicate with colleagues at NASA/Ames, seeking options for an off-site venue in the Bay Area is challenging,” the SOC writes, adding they’re looking into unspecified ways to allow all interested people to participate in person or remotely. (The conference already had plans to webcast sessions, with the ability of those watching the webcast to ask questions.)
In his letter to Bolden, Rep. Wolf did not single out agency leadership for criticism. He spent more than a page criticizing NASA Ames specifically, calling it “a rat’s nest of inappropriate and possibly illegal activities that appear to have occurred with the concurrence of the center’s leadership.” He also called out scientists who said they planned to boycott the meeting, asking if they “will draw a similar line when it comes to cooperation with Chinese government funded agencies and programs due to their systemic human rights abuses.” And, of course, there was criticism of China itself, both for its human rights record and “prolific Chinese cyperattacks and espionage.”
The situation has been criticized by Chinese officials. “We think that these academic meetings should not be politicized,” a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry told the South China Morning Post. However, among the general public in China, the news has gotten a mixed reaction, according to Bloomberg News. While some are angry that Chinese participants were rejected from attending the conference, others said they understood the rationale for doing so. “I believe it’s our bad record in regard to intellectual property that makes NASA overcautious,” one person said in comments to a Chinese article about the situation. “So, in light of China’s poor record on intellectual property protection, the act of NASA is reasonable.”
Update 6:35 pm: NASA administrator Charles Bolden has provided a brief response to Wolf’s letter, according to a two-paragraph email from Bolden to Wolf provided by Wolf’s office to selected media. In it, Bolden blamed the barring of Chinese participants for the Kepler conference on “mid-level managers at Ames” acting on their interpretation of NASA rules and without consulting with NASA Headquarters. Bolden said that any individuals barred from the conference could have their applications reconsidered once normal operations resume at Ames and attend, provided they meet “the clearance requirements in place for foreign citizens.” It’s worth noting, though, that the registration deadline for foreign participants, regardless of nation, was September 20, so it may be too late even if the shutdown ends in time for the early November conference to take place.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 8 at 7:14 am ET While the Johnson Space Center (JSC) had the most employees excepted from furlough of any NASA center, most NASA employees there still have been furloughed: about 95%, according to a memo detailing NASA’s shutdown plans issued in late September. Nonetheless, the congressman whose district includes the center claims that most JSC employees that have contacted his office support the shutdown that, for the time being, leaves them out of work and without pay.
“Our calls from JSC employees tjhis [sic] week are about nine to one in favor of standing strong against Obama’s budget,” said Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) in a release issued Monday by his office. (The release contained several typos, perhaps the result of furloughs of the congressman’s own staff.) “With a wife who is a JSC employee I know better than most how important full NASA funding is and how many hits JSC employee [sic] have taken under Obama.”
Most of the release details Stockman’s desire to “fully restore” NASA funding, particularly for JSC-related programs. “We get more return on NASA than nearly any other agency and we need expand out investment in it,” Stockman said in the statement. That includes “working to overturn Obama’s closure of JSC’s arc-jet facility, restore manned space flight, increase NASA’s budget, extend use of the International Space Station to at least 2028, restore Mars missions and expand planetary probes,” according to the statement. He does not detail how much these efforts would cost, or how he would pay for them.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 7 at 9:20 pm ET As the federal government shutdown enters its second week, the focus of the space-related impacts of the lapse in appropriations has been on NASA, who was forced to furlough about 97 percent of its employees and, temporarily, suspended preparations for the time-sensitive launch of the MAVEN Mars orbiter. Those furloughs have forced NASA to maintain radio silence, even as another mission, LADEE, successfully entered lunar orbit early Sunday.
The effects of the shutdown, though, go beyond shuttered websites and furloughed workers at NASA. Several conferences and meetings were forced to scramble after NASA and other federal employees were unable to attend because of the shutdown. According to reports, about 10 percent of the estimated 600 registered attendees of this week’s American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences conference could not attend due to the shutdown (more may have wanted to attend but couldn’t register at all due to earlier sequestration-related restrictions). That forced organizers to, among other things, revamp the “agency night” during the conference since none of the planned NASA or NSF speakers could attend. The “other” AAS, the American Astronautical Society, has also had to make changes to its Von Braun Symposium this week in Huntsville after NASA speakers had to back out. (The first morning of the conference, on Tuesday, will be webcast.)
While most NASA centers have all but closed, with only a handful of essential personnel reporting for work, JPL remains open as its staff are employees of Caltech and not NASA. JPL will be reassessing its situation on a weekly basis as the shutdown continues. On Friday, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which had kept its federally-funded radio telescopes open for the first few days of the shutdown, closed its telescopes in New Mexico and West Virginia and its Virginia headquarters. And management of the giant Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is planning to furlough all its employees in the middle of this month if the shutdown continues. The HiRISE experiment on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), run out of the University of Arizona, said today via Twitter that the spacecraft has enough funds on hand to operate through the end of the month. “Don’t know what happens after that if shutdown not resolved by then.”
The shutdown has also forced the FAA to cancel this week’s meetings of its Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee in Washington. While the COMSTAC webpage has not been updated since the shutdown began, COMSTAC chairman Mike Gold of Bigelow Aerospace confirmed late Monday that twice-yearly meeting won’t take place this week. COMSTAC, he said, would wait until after the shutdown ends before evaluating what kind of replacement meeting, if any, they would hold.
The shutdown’s effects are making their way into businesses. On Friday, Lockheed Martin said it would furlough 3,000 employees on Monday because of the shutdown, adding that additional employees would be furloughed as the shutdown continued. Lockheed Martin revised that number on Monday down to 2,400 employees, most of which work on unidentified “civilian agency programs.” On Monday, the Aerospace Corporation announced it was furloughing almost 60 percent of its 3,500 employees because of stop work orders imposed by the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center.
Other than those furloughs, most military space programs have been largely unaffected by the shutdown because of their essential nature. On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced most furloughed civilian workers would return to work this week provided their activities “contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members.” There have been a few other effects: late last week DARPA postponed an industry day for its Experimental Spaceplane program that was scheduled to take place Monday.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 6 at 2:29 pm ET Despite the federal government shutdown, the US Naval Institute proceeded with a history symposium titled “Past, Present, and Future of Human Space Flight” at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, on Thursday. “The conference IS NOT AFFECTED by the government shut down,” the conference website stated, but that was only partially accurate. The shutdown in particular caused some changes to the lineup of speakers, as NASA personnel who had scheduled to participate were no longer able to.
This could be seen clearly in the midday panel about the International Space Station, which was to feature four NASA astronauts, including a video link to astronauts Mike Hopkins and Karen Nyberg on the station. That live link wasn’t possible, but the organizers were able to get a brief recorded video message from the two astronauts. Another scheduled participant, astronaut Chris Cassidy, was actually at the event but could not be on the panel because of the agency’s interpretation of the shutdown rules. However, it did not prevent Cassidy, a Naval Academy graduate and active duty Naval officer, from talking to a crowd of midshipmen during a break in the conference.
The shutdown also prevented NASA administrator Charles Bolden from participating in the last panel of the day, featuring representatives of companies developing commercial cargo and crew systems. Bolden, though, did provide a statement that the panel’s moderator, Commercial Spaceflight Federation president and former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, read at the beginning of the session. In it, Bolden emphasized again the need for full funding of NASA’s commercial crew program. “Any reduction to the proposed level of funding for the commercial crew program will result in a delay” from the planned 2017 date for beginning those flights, according to the statement. “We are not helped by the current shutdown and will likely threaten our ability to make the already-delayed operational readiness date for commercial crew.”
One of the three commercial crew companies currently funded by NASA has already experienced some effects of the shutdown. Mark Sirangelo of Sierra Nevada Corporation said that the good news in the development of his company’s Dream Chaser vehicle is that they were able to anticipate many of the issues they faced in preparing the Dream Chaser engineering test article for its upcoming first glide flight at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. “The bad news is that I didn’t anticipate everything I needed to anticipate. No one told me that, in the event of a US government shutdown, that the gates of Edwards Air Force Base would be locked and I can’t get to my space vehicle,” he said. “Assuming the government does get its act together and they un-padlock the gates, we will be flying the first test flight of our vehicle here very shortly.” Sirangelo said afterwards that the Dream Chaser was effectively ready for the test flight when the shutdown started, but that they need the NASA and Air Force personnel and resources currently unavailable during the shutdown to carry out the flight.
The agenda changes caused by the shutdown, though, offered some different, and no less interesting, insights from replacement speakers. The revised ISS panel replaced the active-duty NASA astronauts with some former astronauts, as well as former NASA administrator Michael Griffin. In his comments, Griffin said that the greatest long-term value of the station is its multinational partnership. He suggested, though, that this international partnership wasn’t alone sufficient to keep it operational. “The current administration hasn’t found any difficulty in canceling multinational programs,” he said, referring to the Constellation program. When pressed on this by the panel’s moderator, Miles O’Brien, Griffin confirmed that he considered Constellation, whose key elements—the Ares 1 and 5 rockets, Orion spacecraft, and Altair lander—were all planned to be developed by NASA, a multinational effort. “It was a multinational effort… It was fully intended to be.”
Later in the panel, Griffin endorsed continued operation of the ISS through at least 2020, if not beyond. “We spent all this effort, all this political capital, all this fiscal capital to built the space station, why would you think about anything other than trying to keep it functioning as long as you possibly could?” he said. “I don’t know of another large capital project on Earth that somebody puts a sunset on like that.” Of course, during Griffin’s tenure as administrator, NASA had committed to using the space station only through 2015.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 5 at 5:34 pm ET Does NASA want to find ways to cooperate more with China in space, despite current legislative restrictions? Or is NASA using those restrictions to blunt the free flow of information among scientists? Both, depending on what you read.
On Monday, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that NASA administrator Charles Bolden met with the president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences last week when Bolden was in China for the International Astronautical Congress. The two “exchanged frank opinions on pragmatic co-operation in relevant fields in the future,” the paper said, quoting a statement by the academy. (That statement does not appear on the academy’s Chinese-language website.) Bolden reportedly said he was “highly serious” about greater cooperation with China, particularly in the area of earth observation.
One obstacle to that cooperation, though, is law that has been in place for over two years prohibiting NASA (along with the Office of Science and Technology Policy) from using any funds for bilateral programs with China or to host Chinese nationals at NASA facilities. That language was added to the full-year continuing resolution that funded NASA for FY 2011. There was similar language in the FY 2012 appropriations bill that funded NASA, preventing the use of funds for cooperation with China and hosting Chinese nationals at NASA facilities, although that bill included a clause allowing exceptions when NASA certifies, and notifies Congress at least 14 days in advance, that there is no risk of technology transfer. That language was included in the continuing resolution for FY 2013, with the addition of a provision that any exception must demonstrate that any such interactions will not involve Chinese individuals known “to have direct involvement with violations of human rights,” and requiring at least least 30 days advance notice to Congress.
Needless to say, those restrictions make any kind of cooperation and interaction difficult, if not impossible. So it shouldn’t be surprising that this restriction has become an issue in next month’s planned Kepler Science Conference at NASA Ames. The UK newspaper The Guardian reported Saturday that scientists are upset that Chinese nationals, including those working at non-NASA institutions in the US, are being prevented from attending the conference. Several American scientists have decided to withdraw from the conference, the article reports, with noted exoplanet astronomer Geoff Marcy calling the restriction “completely shameful and unethical.”
While the article’s lede claims that “Nasa [sic] is facing an extraordinary backlash from US researchers,” the article is missing some details and nuance. The fault for any prohibition of Chinese participation in the conference lies not with NASA, but with the Congress that passed legislation with those provisions. Conference organizers could presumably get around this by moving the conference off the NASA Ames campus, but the additional expense in doing so would likely make that infeasible. Not noted in the article is the fact that, after sequestration went into effect in the spring, the Kepler project put plans for the conference on hold, reinstating them in the summer. The conference is also emphasizing remote participation because of restrictions on travel funding, allowing people to at least view the presentations and ask questions via the web. Presumably Chinese participants prohibited from attending the conference in person could still attend virtually—as many NASA and contractor scientists will have to do for budgetary reasons.
It’s also not the first time NASA has gotten entangled with this law. In March, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who pushed for the inclusion of the provisions in 2011, called out NASA for not excluding any Chinese participants from a meeting of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites scheduled to take place at NASA Langley. NASA had not submitted any certification to Congress that the meeting did not pose a national security risk at least 14 days before the meeting, so Wolf said NASA should cancel any Chinese participation. No Chinese officials attended that meeting, according to its official minutes.
Moreover, this restriction should have prevented any Chinese participation in the first Kepler Science Conference, which took place at NASA Ames in late 2011, after the law first went into effect. There was, at least publicly, no similar outcry from scientists about a ban on any Chinese participation. (The Guardian article also claims that there’s “a broader law passed in July which prohibits Nasa funds from being used to participate or collaborate with China in any way”; I could find no such provision in recent law.)
One British astronomer quoted in the article said he hopes “everyone boycotts” the conference until NASA moves the conference somewhere else. In the end, though, the debate may become a moot point: with non-essential NASA operations suspended during the ongoing federal government shutdown, the conference itself, scheduled to begin November 4, could be in jeopardy if the shutdown doesn’t end in the next few weeks.
(Update 10/6 2:30 pm: some astronomers are making an admitted “Hail Mary” attempt to find an alternate venue for the conference, thus sidestepping the restrictions on attendance caused by hosting it on the NASA Ames campus. “I realize that ~400 people is a very large number of attendees, and that we are within a month from when the meeting is supposed to happen, and that we do not have funds to offer, but I believe that science must go on and that makes it worth asking,” writes astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz. But, as noted above, the current shutdown, which has halted meeting preparations, may be a bigger threat to the conference than any prohibition on attendance.)
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 3 at 7:12 am ET One of the most widely-noted impacts of the government shutdown on NASA has been that the vast majority of its employees—about 97 percent—are furloughed. Despite some reports claiming that NASA is the hardest-hit federal agency, at least one has furloughed a larger percentage of its workforce: 99 percent of the NSF’s employees are furloughed, according to Government Executive.
Beyond that, though, many are worried about the effect the shutdown has on NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. The spacecraft was being prepared for a November 18 launch when the government shut down, suspending that work since it is not strictly deemed essential. The problem for MAVEN is that it has a narrow launch window: if it does not launch by December 7, it will have to wait until the next Mars launch window opens in early 2016. (There may be some flexibility in that December 7 deadline, but only on the order of days.)
“MAVEN is shut down right now, which means that civil servants and work at government facilities is undergoing an orderly shutdown,” a project spokesperson at the University of Colorado emailed yesterday. (Those working at non-government sites that have funding available can continue work, but that’s little help for spacecraft preparations themselves.) “We’ll turn back on when told that we can. We have some margin days built into our schedule, and the team is absolutely committed to launching at this opportunity.”
The delay has also attracted the attention of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), whose office emailed a press release about the mission’s potential delay yesterday:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The economic woes created by the government shutdown are also grounding the nation’s space agency and even threatening an unmanned mission to Mars, a former astronaut and U.S. senator says.
In expressing concern about the far-reaching effects of the two-day-old shutdown, U.S. Bill Nelson (D-FL) today cited reports that there is only a narrow window ending mid-December for the planned launch of the unmanned MAVEN spacecraft. Today, Nelson talked with committee staff about the possibility of an exemption. If the schedule is thrown off beyond that because of the shutdown, then it could be 2016 before another launch window.
“A handful of extremist lawmakers are starting to do an awful lot of damage, from the interruption of vital government services to a reduction in anti-terrorism intelligence gathering to the grounding of NASA,” Nelson said. “Their behavior is irresponsible and reckless.”
The Florida Democrat on the Senate floor yesterday decried the fact that more than 97 percent of the space agency’s civilian workforce is being furloughed. Nelson is chairman of a Senate subcommittee overseeing NASA and he flew aboard the space shuttle in 1986 as a member of Congress.
He recently passed the plan for NASA that he coauthored and that involves NASA building a spacecraft to travel to deep space after being launched aboard a new monster rocket.
Regarding that reference to a statement on the Senate floor, Nelson did mention NASA in a floor speech on Tuesday, but only in passing, according to the Congressional Record: “Take, for example, NASA. NASA had to furlough 97 percent of its civilian workers in the space program.”
Update 6:20 pm: MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky announced late Thursday that MAVEN has been cleared to resume launch preparations. The reason: the spacecraft, in addition to its science mission, will also be used as a communications relay for current and future NASA landers. “Launching MAVEN in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today,” he writes, hence meeting the requirements to continue launch preparations during the government shutdown. Those launch preparations have already resumed, he said, and the project will know in the next few days if they need to make any schedule adjustments.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 October 1 at 7:29 am ET The good news was that President Obama mentioned NASA in a speech. The bad news: the speech was about the impending federal government shutdown and its effects on various agencies. “NASA will shut down almost entirely,” he said in a speech late Monday afternoon, after noting that many essential government functions will continue, “but Mission Control will remain open to support the astronauts serving on the Space Station.”
As noted here Friday, only a few hundred of NASA’s employees will remain on the job today, working mission control for the ISS and operating other spacecraft. Most other NASA activities will come to a halt, including the agency’s extensive public outreach work. As NASA’s History Office noted on Twitter early Tuesday:
NASA kicked off yesterday an “Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop” workshop in Houston, selecting almost 100 participants from the more than 400 who submitted papers to the agency’s request for information earlier this summer asking for ideas on how to carry out the agency’s asteroid initiative. The workshop was scheduled to continue today and tomorrow, but according to one participant, the rest of the workshop has been cancelled because of the shutdown.
The effects of the shutdown go beyond shuttered Twitter accounts and cancelled symposia. While NASA’s interpretation of shutdown rules allow it to continue operating existing satellites (albeit with skeleton crews and limited, if any, science operations), work on missions under development “will generally cease.” That means, The Planetary Society notes, that preparations for the launch of the MAVEN Mars mission will come to a halt, a month and a half before its scheduled launch. MAVEN’s launch window runs only to early December, so if there is an extended shutdown, it’s possible MAVEN will miss the window and have to wait until the next launch window in early 2016.
The shutdown also has varying impacts for other non-NASA space activities in the military at NOAA, and the FAA. The FAA noted that next week’s meetings of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee will be cancelled if the government is still in shutdown mode by midday on Monday, October 7 (the meetings are October 9 and 10.)
And, if you’re curious, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, run by a private organization, remains open even with most of NASA shut down. However, bus tours of KSC are cancelled.
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