By Jeff Foust on 2013 June 14 at 8:07 am ET The House Science Committee’s space subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for the morning of Wednesday, June 19, titled “NASA Authorization Act of 2013.” The two scheduled witnesses are familiar faces for the committee: retired Lockheed Martin executive Tom Young and Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres, who also chairs the NASA Advisory Council. The House version of a new NASA authorization bill is not yet publicly available, but its introduction is said to be imminent and presumably will be available by the time of Wednesday’s hearing.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 June 11 at 7:57 am ET The National Academies’ Committee on Human Spaceflight is continuing its congressionally-mandated study on the US human spaceflight program, with meetings of two of its panels planned for next week in California and Washington, DC. (The public and stakeholder opinions panel meeting in DC next week is primarily closed to the public, likely for good reason but not without some degree of irony.) While some of its deliberations take place behind closed doors, the committee is soliciting public input in the form of brief white papers. The papers, not to exceed four pages, are supposed to address questions on the key benefits of and challenges to government human spaceflight, as well as “the ramifications and what would the nation and world lose if the United States terminated NASA’s human spaceflight program.” The papers are due July 9.
The committee is making the papers submitted available for public viewing, and those already submitted range the gamut one might expect when opening comment to the public. Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt has submitted a paper on “Deep Space Exploration: An American Imperative”, where he focuses on a return to the Moon lest China “take over the exploration of the Moon from the United States and the free world.” Joseph Kerwin, who flew on the first Skylab mission 40 years ago, submitted a brief letter arguing that “nothing useful will happen in space as long as NASA churns out studies, spends millions on unneeded facilities and projects peripheral to its duties under the Space Act.” But there’s also the submission of what appears to be nothing more than an odd illustration by a Mr. Alfredo Aguilar Jr., with the summary, “No this is not a joke. This is the the new shape of air to space flight.” Okay…
By Jeff Foust on 2013 June 10 at 6:31 am ET Space News reported Friday that a long-awaited fiscal year 2013 operating plan for NASA will make some funding adjustments for several key programs, including commercial crew development and planetary science. The plan, not publicly released yet by NASA, would fund commercial crew at $525 million, effectively undoing the effects of sequestration and rescission on the program. Planetary science, which received additional funding even after sequestration and rescission compared to the administration’s request, would lose that funding: it would go back to $1.2 billion, the amount originally requested by the administration for FY13. The funds cut from planetary would be redistributed to the James Webb Space Telescope and to earth sciences.
Neither change is that surprising. Back in April, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations Bill Gerstenmaier told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington that NASA would try and recover funding lost by commercial crew due to sequestration and rescission. “We can repair some of this with an ops plan change with Congress, so we’ll probably make some movement to try and fix commercial crew a little bit,” he told the committees at the April 4 meeting.
Last month, planetary scientists warned that the increase provided to NASA’s planetary science program was in danger of being rolled back by the operating plan. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a staunch supporter of planetary science and a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Space News he “will be working with my House and Senate colleagues to push back on these cuts.” It’s unclear if there’s enough support among his colleagues to reject the operating plan and force NASA to undo those changes to planetary science funding.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 June 4 at 7:54 am ET The full House Science Committee will host a hearing today at 2 pm EDT to examine the Obama Administration’s proposed restructuring of federal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, consolidating programs at NASA and other agencies. Among those slated to testify at the hearing is Leland Melvin, NASA’s associate administrator for education.
When NASA rolled out its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal, it said there would still be a strong emphasis on education at NASA as other agencies would seek to make use of NASA’s unique capabilities under the restructured STEM education effort. However, the drop in NASA education funds—from $136 million in fiscal year 2012 to $94 million in the FY14 proposal—concerned many, as well as potential disruptions to ongoing successful STEM education efforts within NASA.
A recent statement by the American Astronomical Society opposed the potential elimination of education and public outreach (EPO) programs within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in the restructuring. “The proposed budget reorganization would dismantle some of the nation’s most inspiring and successful STEM education assets,” the statement read, adding the the society recommends that those EPO programs “that have demonstrated success with implementing evidence-based educational methods and have robust assessment outcomes” be exempted from the overall federal STEM education restructuring.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 June 2 at 9:46 am ET As previously noted here, Friday’s relatively close (cosmically speaking) flyby of asteroid 1998 QE2 provided NASA and the Obama Administration an opportunity to promote the agency’s asteroid initiative, including plans for an asteroid retrieval mission. That outreach did achieve one benchmark of effectiveness: the asteroid flyby made it into Friday’s White House press briefing, when a reporter asked deputy press secretary Josh Ernest if President Obama had been briefed on the flyby:
Q Josh, your website says you’re hosting a discussion this afternoon about this asteroid that’s going to be passing fairly close to Earth today. Has the President been briefed about the asteroid?
MR. EARNEST: It’s my understanding that scientists have concluded that the asteroid poses no threat to Planet Earth. I never really thought I’d be standing up here saying that. (Laughter.) But I guess I am. So since it doesn’t pose a threat to Planet Earth, I’m not sure it necessitated a briefing to the President.
The discussion the reporter referred to was the “We the Geeks” Google+ hangout held Friday afternoon that featured, among others, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, and hosted by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The announcement of the discussion noted that the administration’s 2014 budget proposal “calls for increased efforts by NASA to detect and mitigate potentially hazardous asteroids,” which the reporter then pressed Earnest about:
Q Does the President have any views about spending more resources on what your website calls “hazard mitigation†in respect to asteroids?
MR. EARNEST: I’m not aware of that reference. I know that the President does believe that scientific exploration and that the study of these kinds of asteroids is a worthwhile endeavor. And certainly we’re taking advantage of the opportunity — maybe there’s a spike in interest in the asteroid to facilitate a discussion on matters related to space. So it should be an interesting discussion. I would encourage you to tune in if you’re interested. But I don’t know — I’m not aware of any details related to hazard mitigation.
Meanwhile, that asteroid initiative is the subject, in part, of the cover story of the latest issue of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, featuring a cartoon of a spacesuited President Obama planting an American flag—or, at least, attempting to plant a flag—on an asteroid. “Obama’s Asteroid”, by P. J. O’Rourke, sees the proposal as the latest evidence of the “decline of NASA” since the glory days of the 1960s, when even then it was a challenge to develop a compelling rationale for spaceflight. “President Obama’s space entree is the same serving of vagaries, hold the pizzazz” as a half-century ago, he concludes.
O’Rourke is not moved by arguments for going to an asteroid for the sake of planetary defense. “Threat? Destruction of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk,” he writes. “Opportunity? Destruction of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.”
While O’Rourke is not enthused about asteroid missions, even for the sake of protecting the Earth, a more positive view of the administration’s asteroid initiative comes from Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida. In an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel, DiBello describes the various scientific and technical benefits of an asteroid retrieval mission. “[I]t will result in more launches, and sooner, of American astronauts beyond low Earth orbit,” he writes, “and it shrewdly taps into a growing public and scientific interest in near-Earth objects and planetary defense.”
DiBello also brings up another issue, though: property rights in space. Before private investment in space “can begin returning profits, paying taxes, and generating American jobs, the sticky issue of property rights in space will need to be addressed,” he writes. “This asteroid strategy enables this issue to come to the attention of the international community sooner rather than later. If the U.S., or a consortium of nations under our leadership, moves an asteroid from one location to another, how is it not now our property?” Space lawyers may have their own opinions, though…
By Jeff Foust on 2013 May 30 at 9:22 am ET With NASA’s plans for an asteroid retrieval mission not currently winning widespread approval, particularly in Congress, as seen as a recent House Science Committee hearing, the space agency and the administration appear to be stepping up their efforts to build support for the mission.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy announced this week plans to host a Google+ “hangout” this Friday on asteroids. NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver will participate, along with The Planetary Society’s Bill Nye, Ed Lu of the B612 Foundation, Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis, and Jose Luis Galache, an astronomer at the Minor Planets Center. The news hook for this hangout is Friday’s flyby of Earth by the asteroid 1998 QE2, a near Earth object 2.7 kilometers across that poses no impact risk to the Earth for the foreseeable future. However, the OSTP announcement also refers to the asteroid initiative in the president’s 2014 budget request, including an asteroid retrieval mission.
On June 18, NASA is hosting a half-day workshop on the asteroid initiative in Washington, which will include the release of a request for information (RFI) “to seek new ideas for mission elements” from the community. The agenda features a variety of senior NASA and OSTP officials. “We will describe our upcoming planning timeline and clearly identify opportunities and processes for providing input into our planning,” the NASA announcement reads. For those who can’t be there in person, the event will be broadcast on NASA TV. That workshop could address one of the frequent criticisms about the agency’s asteroid initiative: the lack of details about mission’s cost, schedule, and so on, at least by explaining when those details will be better known.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 May 25 at 9:14 pm ET Last week, a Commerce Department official said that the administration’s long-awaited revisions to Category XV of the US Munitions List, which covers satellites and related components, would be published in draft form soon for public review. Those lists appeared as planned: Friday’s Federal Register includes both the draft revised Category XV list as well as a separate list of items that will now be on the Commerce Control List. The draft Category XV list follows the proposed the proposal for a revised Category XV in last year’s “Section 1248″ report.
The publication of the drafts in the Federal Register initiated a 45-day public comment period. At last week’s meeting of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) in Washington, Mike Gold, chairman of COMSTAC and a leading advocate of export control reform, warned industry not to sit back and take for granted that these draft rules will be enacted. “If companies and organizations fail to submit positive comments” about the draft rules, he said, “don’t come back here and complain when export control falls apart or doesn’t go through. We’re not done here, folks. We need to submit positive stuff in the next 45 days.” Gold said that there are still critics of export control reform in Congress. “If they get few comments, or just negative comments, we could be back to square one.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 May 21 at 10:42 am ET The space subcommittee of the House Science Committee is holding a hearing at 2 pm EDT today on “Next Steps in Human Exploration to Mars and Beyond”. The focus of the hearing, based on the hearing charter, will be whether NASA’s plans to redirect a near Earth asteroid into lunar orbit, to be then visited by astronauts, is a better stepping stone to human Mars missions than human lunar missions currently not in NASA’s plans. “Is the proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM), a lunar landing mission, or another mission better as a precursor for an eventual human mission to Mars?” the hearing charter asks. “What things could we learn and capabilities would we develop from a Moon landing that we could not learn from the proposed Asteroid Retrieval Mission?”
Among the witnesses at the hearing are Lou Friedman, the executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society and co-lead on a 2012 asteroid retrieval mission study by Caltech’s Keck Institute for Space Studies that served as a blueprint of sorts for NASA’s own mission plans, as well as Paul Spudis, a planetary scientist and long-time proponent of human missions to the Moon. Also testifying are Steve Squyres, a Cornell University planetary scientist and current chair of the NASA Advisory Council; and former NASA associate administrator for exploration Doug Cooke.
Last week, Friedman’s own Planetary Society offered “conditional” support for the asteroid retrieval mission concept, while seeking additional details. The organization said it saw the mission as worthwhile if “a technologically-achievable, scientifically-valuable mission emerges in the coming months, and if appropriate levels of new long-term funding are provided to implement it.”
One Mars mission advocate who is not testifying today but holds strong views on the utility of an asteroid retrieval mission is Robert Zubrin. In a Space News op-ed this week, he leaves no doubt about where he stands on the mission, starting with his title: “NASA’s Asteroid Absurdity”. He claims that “the entire purpose of the initiative is to find a way to shirk the challenge of human interplanetary flight,” finding little scientific, technical, or other utility in the mission. “It thus represents an enormous waste of time and money that could prevent NASA’s human spaceflight program from achieving anything worthwhile for decades. Congress must not accept this.” We may get a clue today how much some key members of Congress are willing to accept this asteroid mission on the basis of supporting human missions to Mars.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 May 19 at 1:29 pm ET Speaking at the meeting Wednesday of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) in Washington, NASA administrator Charles Bolden made another pitch—this time to a rather sympathetic audience—for the agency’s commercial crew program.
“If NASA had received the president’s requested funding for this program then,” Bolden said, referring to the rollout of the program three years ago, “we would not have been forced to recently sign a new contract with the Russians for Soyuz transportation.” Those earlier cuts, he said, have pushed back commercial crew to 2017, “and even this delayed availability is in question if Congress does not fully support the president’s 2014 request for our commercial crew program.”
“Further delays in our commercial crew program and the impact on our human spaceflight program are unacceptable,” he said. “That’s why we need the full $821 million the president has requested in next year’s budget to keep us on track for our 2017 deadline.”
The commercial crew program has frequently been seen as being in conflict with the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and Orion spacecraft for limited funding, particularly in the eyes of some members of Congress who think NASA is favoring commercial crew in favor of SLS and Orion. “The either-or debate exists one place that I know of, and that’s in the Congress,” he said. “And it is a a false debate that is built on my inability to convince critical members of Congress” that both commercial crew and SLS/Orion are essential aspects of NASA’s long-term plans. “The argument that it’s either heavy lift or commercial crew is a fallacious one.”
After Bolden completed his talk and left, COMSTAC heard a different take on commercial crew from Capitol Hill. “I think there’s been some frustration on the Hill at how the commercial crew program over the last few years has unfolded,” said Tom Culligan, legislative director for Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA. “There wasn’t a clear vision and path and strategy laid out from day one, with buy-in from the Hill and with the stakeholders in the community, about how we were going to proceed on this program.”
That frustration, Culligan suggested, is because NASA hasn’t moved fast enough to select a company to develop a crew transportation system. “I think the decision early on to try and spread resources for crew to low Earth orbit to as many people as possible maybe wasn’t the best decision,” he said. “The Congress did not buy off on a program to provide development subsidies to a large number of entities out there. They bought off on a program to get American astronauts to low Earth orbit and Station as quickly as possible and as affordably as possible. And I think there was a disconnect there, maybe, between what people at NASA’s priorities were and Congress’s understanding of priorities were.”
“I don’t think today you find people on Capitol Hill who say we shouldn’t have this program, the way you did a few years ago,” he continued, but that there was “bipartisan concern” about how it’s being run. “I think you’ve got some people who are upset, maybe, at how the program was run, particularly the first couple of years. But now we’re all in it, we need to resolve it, we need to have that ability as quickly as possible.”
As for Bolden’s call for funding commercial crew at the requested level in 2014, Culligan did not sound optimistic. “Say, overnight, there was 100-percent consensus that we wanted to fund this at the President’s level. I’m not sure the resources are there. I don’t know where you find $300 million and change in this environment,” he said, referring to the approximate difference between the program’s 2013 funding ($525 million before rescission and sequestration) and the $821 million requested for 2014. At the same time, though, he said, Congress would not be happy with any delays beyond 2017 in bringing commercial crew into service. “NASA is going to have find a way to make it work with the allocation that we have and what we’re able to devote to it.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 May 17 at 9:55 am ET NASA’s operating plan for fiscal year 2013 will reportedly reverse the increases awarded to the agency’s planetary science program by Congress, according to a report. The Planetary Exploration Newsletter (PEN) reported Wednesday that the operating plan, which details any tweaks NASA plans to make to the final FY13 appropriations passed in March, will return planetary science to the approximately $1.2 billion in the original FY13 budget request. Congress has included $1.415 billion for planetary science (before an across-the-board rescission and sequestration) in its budget, but the operating plan would fund the program at $1.196 billion (post-rescission and sequestration, it appears), compared to an original request of $1.192 billion.
Moreover, some programs within planetary will feel sharper cuts, as the appropriations bill earmarked $75 million of planetary funding to study a Europa mission. NASA’s Discovery program would get a 33% cut over what Congress approved, while Mars exploration would be cut by 20% from the request. The numbers in the PEN report are based on drafts of the operating plan they obtained; the final version of the operating plan was due to Congress on May 10 but, as of earlier this week, had not been submitted (but was in final preparations, according to sources.)
The magnitude and timing (with just over four months remaining in the fiscal year) of the cuts worries many in the planetary community. “The next Discovery call will certainly be delayed” because of the cuts, wrote Mark Sykes of the Planetary Science Institute in the newsletter. “The impact to research programs will be severe – further reduced selection rates can be anticipated.” He called on the planetary community to contact key members of Congress and ask them to reject the operating plan if it is submitted with those cuts.
The news of the potential planetary cuts coincides with a visit by The Planetary Society to Capitol Hill earlier this week. Officials with the advocacy organization paid visits to members’ offices and also held a luncheon Tuesday talking about the achievements NASA’s planetary program has made, but also their concerns that its future is in peril. “We can do a nice, balanced mix of small Discovery-class missions, medium-scale New Frontiers missions, and a flagship or two for that billion and a half dollars a year over the next ten years,” said Jim Bell, president of the board of directors of The Planetary Society and a professor of planetary science at Arizona State University. That $1.5-billion figure is what NASA’s planetary program was funded at in 2012.
The consequences of failing to fund NASA’s planetary program at that level are severe, the organization’s representatives argued. “We are in the middle of the golden age of space exploration,” said Emily Lakdawalla, senior editor at The Planetary Society. “If we don’t keep NASA’s planetary sciences funding where it needs to be in order to keep producing these small, medium, and large missions to explore all over the solar system, then we are going to bring the golden age of planetary exploration to an end, at least in the United States.”
“The reason I took this gig a couple of years ago,” said Bill Nye, the CEO of the society, “is because we’re at this turning point. We don’t want to end up in a situation where we fall behind, we stop exploring.”
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