By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 15 at 7:11 am ET Yesterday, President Obama signed into law HR 6586, one of a number of bills from the end of the last Congress he signed. The bill started out as a simple two-year extension of commercial launch indemnification but was transformed in the Senate into the “Space Exploration Sustainability Act,” with a one-year indemnification extension. The additional provisions included extending NASA’s waiver to provisions of the Iran North Korea Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) from mid-2016 to the end of 2020, allowing it to continue buying goods and services from Russia to support ISS operations; and a resolution calling for balanced support for both the SLS/Orion and commercial crew programs.
In a normal budget environment, we would be less than a month away from the release of the fiscal year 2014 budget proposal, wich would be released on the first Monday in February. But we’re not in a typical budget environment, and Space News reports NASA and other federal agencies have yet to receive “passbacks” from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding their FY14 budget proposals. This suggests that the release f the FY14 budget proposal will be delayed, perhaps into March. The White House has since confirmed that they will miss the early February deadline for providing the budget proposal, but offered no revised date other than that they are “working diligently” on it.
Yes, that White House petition demanding the government build a Death Star was pretty goofy, but give the administration credit for a clever response that highlighted some more realistic aspects of space policy. As noted here before, such petitions are not an effective tool of space advocacy, but it doesn’t seem to stop people from starting new ones (or the media from covering them), such as one calling for development of nuclear thermal rockets: it’s garnered fewer than 2,000 signatures since its introduction on January 3.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 15 at 6:47 am ET When NASA announced last month that it had selected a rover similar to Curiosity for a mission slated for launch in 2020, it raised some concerns among planetary scientists that exploration of the rest of the solar system was getting shortchanged in favor of what they perceived as an overemphasis on Mars. The head of the agency’s planetary science division is now making the rounds in the community explaining that the money planned for the Mars mission was not available for any other mission.
Jim Green, head of the Planetary Science Division within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told attendees of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) meeting in Washington on Monday that money in the outyears projections of the FY2013 budget proposal for what was at the time an undefined Mars mission had to be used for Mars. “We were given the opportunity—the challenge, if you will—to define strategically what that mission was to be, or we would potentially lose the money,” he said. NASA was given about a year to develop a mission that would take the place of NASA’s previously-planned participation in ESA’s ExoMars program. “If we were not able to come up with a major match in this particular area, we would lose the funding.”
NASA, of course, was able to develop a proposed mission based on the Curiosity rover, and got approval for from NASA leadership, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by early December, Green said, when NASA publicly announced it at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
The funding for the 2020 Mars mission, Green said, is not coming at the expense of other programs, or research and analysis (R&A) funding used to support scientists working on data from various missions. “The concept that we were robbing R&A money in this fiscal year for a rover in 2020, that’s not the case at all,” he said. “We’re working hard to clarify any misconceptions.”
Green acknowledged, though, that there are problems with the NASA planetary sciences budget that make it not compliant with the recommendations of the planetary sciences decadal survey report released nearly two years ago. At the time the FY13 budget proposal was released, he said, there were three main issues: no long-term Mars program, a decreased cadence of smaller Discovery-class missions from every two years to every five years, and no long-term outer planets flagship mission.
The first program has been solved, he said, with decision on the 2020 rover mission, but the other two problems remain. “The only way we’re going to be able to solve that is with an influx of funding,” he said. It didn’t appear that he expected such an influx any time soon, but said he would continue to advocate for those programs. “We all know that we’re in tough budget times, we all know that we’re going to have to make some sacrifices,” he said. “But we’re on a track for ten years that’s well delineated in the planetary decadal, and we’re going to everything from my perspective possible to make that a reality. That means there’s going to be a lot of work involved.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 10 at 9:33 am ET On Wednesday evening, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) hosted a “Space Science and Public Policy” event as part of its conference this week in Long Beach, California. The featured speakers were two members of Congress: Reps. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Their comments on policy issues for space science and related issues were markedly different and, in Rohrabacher’s case, generated some controversy.
Chu, whose new district now includes the city of Pasadena, spoke primarily in general terms about supporting NASA and science research. “I do not believe that research and development in science or space exploration is a luxury. It should never be an afterthought” even in current austere fiscal times, she said. “That’s why I’m deeply committed to protecting the funding for NASA this year and many years to come.”
One space topic she spoke specifically about was restoring funding for NASA’s Mars program. “This is one area where there is bipartisanship. It was very, very interesting to see how people from both parties did embrace this particular cause,” she said. The originally proposed cut, she said, “shows we have a public relations job to do about space exploration, about the Mars program, and about NASA as a whole.” Later, she argued that if the public knew more about the technological spinoffs from NASA, “I think that they would definitely be enthusiastic about funding for space exploration.”
Rohrabacher offered a very different message to attendees about funding. The growing national debt “is part of our life, and those who choose to ignore are going to face some serious consequences,” he warned. Scientists, he said, can’t expect to get “a little bit more” each year in the future. “That doesn’t work anymore for the scientific community or any other community that relies on federal funds. What we have to do now is find out how we can do the job that’s necessary more cost effectively, and eliminate things that are not necessary.”
If that message wasn’t clear, he was more blunt a short time later. “Saying ‘NASA deserves more money’ ain’t going to cut it,” he said. “The fact is, NASA does not have a good track record” in managing major programs. He expressed particular opposition to plans for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket, claiming it will cost at least $30 billion to develop. “This is going to defund every other space and science program that you can imagine. It’s up to you to know the sad details that we can’t afford everything.”
Rohrabacher covered some familiar ground later in his talk, supporting increased commercialization and international partnerships as ways for NASA to be more efficient, and promoting concepts such as orbital debris cleanup, planetary defense, and propellant depots. His comments, through, probably weren’t that familiar to many of the scientists in the audience, who reacting with varying degrees of bewilderment as he went on. He also ruffled some feathers when he said NASA shouldn’t be tasked with “feel-good responsibilities” like education. “NASA’s job is not to educate the children of the United States,” he said. Later, when he claimed that many scientists had doubts about global warning, the audience reacted with groans. (On top of that, the brief question-and-answer session that followed was dominated by a couple of people representing 21st Century Science and Technology, a magazine affiliated with Lyndon LaRouche.)
After the talk, I asked Rohrabacher about one particular issue of interest to those attending the AAS meeting: the James Webb Space Telescope. He indicated he wasn’t confident that the program was back on track after cost and schedule overruns. “We will hold hearings on that early on, and we’ll find out” how well it’s doing, he said, referring to the House Science Committee, of which he is the new vice-chairman.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 9 at 9:04 am ET Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) will return as chairman of the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the full committee announced Tuesday. Palazzo chaired the subcommittee in the last Congress as well. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) will serve as the vice-chair of the subcommittee. On the full committee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who lost out on the committee chairmanship to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), will serve as vice-chairman. Democrats have not announced their leadership selections beyond Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), who will return as ranking member of the full committee. Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL), who was the top Democrat on the space subcommittee in the last Congress, has retired.
In the Senate, it appears that another senator with an interest in space issues will take a leadership position on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Although there’s been no formal announcement by the committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) announced via Twitter several days ago he will be the ranking member of the full committee:
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has already been picked as the chairwoman of the full committee, succeeding the late Daniel Inouye last month. Both Mikulski and Shelby have shown an interest in space issues, and also have a record of working together despite their different political affiliations: Shelby even helped support a fundraiser for Mikulski in Huntsville in 2009.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 8 at 11:25 am ET This week, about 3,000 astronomers are gathered in Long Beach, California, for the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Just one day into the four-day meeting, there have already been major announcements, ranging from a new set of potential extrasolar planets found by Kepler to some of the first results from the NuSTAR x-ray telescope. That excitement, though, it tempered by uncertainty about future budgets both in the near and long term, and what effects those budgets will have on access to spacecraft and telescopes, as well as grants to support research.
At a meeting Sunday of three program analysis groups (PAGs) chartered by NASA to provide community guidance to its astrophysics programs, Paul Hertz, head of NASA’s astrophysics division, argued that the situation facing astronomers today was actually a good one. “It’s a time of opportunity for us in astrophysics,” he told a standing-room-only audience. He said the NASA astrophysics budgets were at a “high level” with a fleet of missions active today or under development. “If we, as a community, complain about how bad things are, we will look foolish.”
However, he acknowledged near-term concerns, since the fiscal year 2013 budget has yet to be completed, more than three months into the year. “The budgetary future is uncertain,” he said, citing the continuing resolution in place through March and the lack of resolution about potential budget cuts from sequestration.
The near-term challenge is managing development of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), whose increased costs have put a squeeze on other science programs at NASA. Hertz noted that, counting JWST, there is actually more money in NASA’s astrophysics program now, and planned for the next few years, than what the most recent astrophysics decadal survey, published in 2010, projected. “But, in parallel with the budget going up, the requirements to complete successfully JWST have increased substantially” beyond previous plans, he said. “That’s the biggest thing that leads us with less money to put on other things in this decade.”
If sequestration or other budget cuts go into effect in the near term, Hertz believed JWST might be insulated from them given its status as an agency priority. NASA and key members of Congress have previously identified JWST as one of NASA’s three top objectives, alongside development of the Space Launch System and Orion, and utilization of the International Space Station. “My interpretation of that is that even if we have sequestration, or flattening of the budget or reduction of the NASA bottom line, successfully executing JWST to its plan will remain a priority, which means JWST will not participate in the budget reduction,” he said, adding that this was his own interpretation and not based on guidance from NASA leadership. Other astrophysics programs, though, could face cuts, he warned.
JWST’s funding priorities have made it difficult for NASA to implement missions recommended in the decadal survey, but Hertz said that should change around fiscal year 2017, when the budget for JWST ramps down as it approaches completion. That would open up a wedge for new missions, including the top priority large mission identified in the 2010 report, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). Several studies are underway on various options for WFIRST, including one that would make use of one of the 2.4-meter telescopes donated to NASA last year by the NRO, as well as other, smaller mission concepts. Those concept studies are due to be completed by 2015 to provide time for NASA to make a decision on what mission to request a new start for in the FY17 budget proposal.
WFIRST, in some form, would be the frontrunner if the budget is there for it, but Hertz cautioned the experience of JWST could make Congress or the White House wary about another large-scale mission. “If we can start start a large mission, that large mission is WFIRST,” he said. “We cannot assume that, when we get to 2015, we will get signals from the people who hold the gateways to our budget that they are comfortable with us starting another large mission so quickly after JWST.”
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is also facing budget pressures with its smaller astrophysics program: about $235 million in FY12, which it uses to support several ground-based observatories and fund research grants. That budget is being stressed, though, by increased operational costs for its observatories and budgets not matching pace with the projections in the astrophysics decadal report. To address that mismatch, the NSF commissioned in 2011 a “portfolio review” of its programs and facilities. The review’s final report, released last August, recommended NSF divest itself of several existing observatories, including the Green Bank radio telescope and several telescopes at Kitt Peak.
At an NSF town hall meeting at the AAS conference Monday, NSF officials didn’t have much new information about either the budget or the status of implementing the review’s recommendations. “We have to decide what to do by essentially the end of the calendar year 2013 if we’re going to realize any significant savings, any redistributions, by about 2017,” one of the goals of the review, said James Ulvestad, director of the NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences. “No decisions have been made by NSF to date.”
Ulvestad noted that the NSF “divesting” these observatories doesn’t necessarily mean they would close, if other organizations are willing to take over operations. Unlike the report, which only considered complete divestment of these observatories, he said the NSF would be open to continuing partial support of some of them if other organizations could handle most of the costs of running them.
Ulvestad said he received criticism from the community that the two budget scenarios in the portfolio review were too pessimistic. One, “Scenario A,” had a near-term 10% drop that gradually rose back to 2012 levels by the end of the decade; the other, “Scenario B,” featured a 20% cut followed by flat funding. Scenario A, he said, “is effectively the best we’re going to do” in the current budget environment. “We can’t just operate on hope.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 4 at 6:53 pm ET Earlier this week President Obama formally signed into law the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization act. This means that the satellite export control reform provisions included in the bill are now law, much to the relief of the satellite industry and other proponents of reform. However, it was not the only—or even, necessarily, the most controversial—space-related provision in the overall bill.
The most controversial part of the bill might well be Section 913, titled “Limitation On International Agreements Concerning Outer Space Activities.” That section addresses the administration’s interest in an international “code of conduct” for outer space activities, one that has generated some opposition among some Republican members of Congress. The section requires, among other things, that the administration, should it sign such a code, to provide “a certification that such agreement has no legally-binding effect or basis for limiting the activities of the United States in outer space” and also that it “have no militarily significant impact on the ability of the United States to conduct military or intelligence activities in space.”
That section was one of several cited by the President in his signing statement for the bill on Thursday. It and several other sections “could interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct the foreign relations of the United States,” President Obama stated. “In these instances, my Administration will interpret and implement these provisions in a manner that does not interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct diplomacy.”
The debate about the code of conduct provisions may be little more than academic, though. As noted here last month, there’s been little progress on developing a code, and some think the concept, at least in anything like its current form, may be dead.
Other sections of the bill dealing with space issues are less controversial. Section 914 addresses the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) office, whose future appeared to be in jeopardy last year. The section revises the office’s organization and structure somewhat, placing it within the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, or SMC (although not to be co-located at the SMC headquarters.) The bill also creates an “executive committee” to provide oversight of the ORS Office; this committee, led by the Defense Department’s executive agent for space, includes the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, commander of US Strategic Command, and Air Force, Army, and Navy officials.
The bill also includes “commercial space launch cooperation” language that was in the House version of the bill and previously proposed as a standalone bill by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) earlier last year. It allows the Defense Department to enter into agreements to make investments into its launch site infrastructure to support commercial as well as government activities.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 3 at 1:07 pm ET Just hours before her final term in the Senate ended, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) congratulated the House for passing the amended version of HR 6586 that includes an extension of commercial launch indemnification as well as additional provisions extending NASA’s INKSNA waiver and a resolution calling for balanced development of both government and commercial crew transportation systems.
“This action by Congress reaffirms the intent of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which reflected a hard-fought Congressional and Administration consensus for the future of NASA in the post-shuttle era,” she said in a statement released Thursday morning by the Senate Commerce Committee, where she had served as its ranking member. “I am delighted that this will be one of my final acts as a U.S. Senator and is in cooperation with my good friend and colleague, Senator Bill Nelson.”
The statement provides a clue why the Senate-amended version only extends launch indemnification for one year, instead of two in the original version the House passed in November. The shorter extension will keep the current system in place “while the Federal Aviation Administration conducts a review of the underlying formula for calculating probable levels of loss.” That’s a reference to a critique last year by the Government Accountability Office, which argued that the FAA should use more sophisticated models for determining the third-party maximum probable loss (MPL) that launch providers must be financially responsible for, with the government indemnifying any losses above the MPL level up to approximately $2.7 billion.
The statement also indicated that Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who will again chair the committee’s space subcommittee in the new Congress, will be working with Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) as the subcommittee’s ranking member. “I am grateful to, and will miss, Sen. Hutchison, and I look forward to working with Sen. Boozman as we lead the space subcommittee in 2013,” Nelson said in the statement. Boozman was the ranking member of the space subcommittee in the previous Congress, but was often overshadowed by Hutchison, ranking member of the full commerce committee.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 3 at 7:26 am ET The Senate did not consider on Wednesday HR 6612, a bill to rename NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong. The House passed the bill 404-0 on Monday, but the Senate did not bring the bill up for a vote, or passage by unanimous consent, on either Tuesday or Wednesday. With the Senate adjourned until the 113th Congress convenes for the first time at noon on Thursday, backers will have to start over and reintroduce the bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 2 at 12:59 pm ET The House today agreed by unanimous consent to the Senate-amended version of HR 6586, a bill originally intended to provide a two-year extension to commercial launch indemnification. As noted yesterday, the Senate effectively replaced the House bill with a scaled back version of the Space Exploration Sustainability Act that Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) introduced last month. This bill provides only a one-year extension to commercial launch indemnification, but also includes an extension of NASA’s waiver to provisions of the Iran North Korea Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) through the end of 2020, allowing the space agency to continue to purchase goods and services from Russia for operation of the International Space Station. The revised bill also includes a “Sense of Congress” provision supporting development of both the Space Launch System and Orion vehicles as well as commercial crew systems.
The bill may be the last passed by the House in the 112th Congress. Immediately after dispensing with the bill (a process that took about 30 seconds, according to the Office of the Clerk of the House), the House adjourned until 11 am Thursday, just before the 113th Congress will be sworn in.
Update 1:10 pm: The Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF) swiftly issued a release about the passage of the legislation, which now awaits the president’s signature. The industry organization is understandably pleased with the bill’s passage, but hints at work to come later this year since the indemnification extension only runs through the end of 2013. “We will continue to work toward a long-term risk-sharing provision that would provide certainty to a growing industry,” CSF executive director Alex Saltman said in the statement.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 1 at 10:10 am ET While the Senate dealt with the fiscal cliff (and launch indemnification), the House took up a number of other bills, including HR 6612, legislation to rename NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong. (The Dryden name would instead be attached to the Western Aeronautical Test Range used by the center.) The bill, taken up under suspension of the rules, passed easily in a roll call vote Monday evening, 404-0. The bill still has to be passed by the Senate before new Congress convenes on Thursday.
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