By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 9 at 5:37 pm ET The cost overruns and schedule delays of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are widely known, yet Congress, in its final FY12 appropriations bill, gave NASA more than what it originally asked for—$530 million versus the requested $374 million—for the program. However, the language in the conference report for that bill included provisions for a cost cap and regular reports on the program’s progress from the GAO. Moreover, a hearing earlier this week by the House Science Committee suggested that Congress has, in effect, put the program on double secret probation: one more misstep and it may be done.
“Not too many years ago, NASA’s stakeholder community would not be overly surprised with cost and schedule slippage,” said Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chairman of the full committee, in the opening statement of a hearing by the committee on JWST. He added that while he supports the telescope, that tolerance for delays and overruns has run our. “In my view, NASA’s latest replan for the James Webb Telescope is the agency’s last opportunity to hold this program together.”
The witnesses, which included the NASA and Northrop Grumman managers for the project and two astronomers, expressed a mix of contrition about the past problems and confidence that the program was now on track. “We at NASA recognize that we made your already difficult task of funding important programs in these distressed fiscal times even more difficult through our poor past performance on JWST,” Rick Howard, NASA’s JWST program manager, told the committee. He went on to say that that the program’s recent restructuring has improved its performance: of 21 major milestones planned for JWST in fiscal year 2011, he said later in the hearing, 19 were met on ahead of schedule and one was a month later; the remaining milestone was deferred because of a planned redesign of a component.
“NASA has actually done a very good job on this replan,” said Garth Illingworth, a Univ. of California Santa Cruz astronomer who served on an independent panel last year that reviewed the state of JWST. “I’m highly encouraged by what I have seen over the last six to nine months on this program.”
“The Webb telescope represents a capability beyond anything attempted by NASA, our nation, or anywhere,” said Northrop Grumman vice president Jeffrey Grant. “The Webb telescope has a clear path forward and we have evidence that the current plan is proceeding on track.”
While some committee members appeared satisfied with those explanations, as well as a reiteration of the scientific importance of the telescope, others were more skeptical. “I hat to be the skunk at the lawn party, but somebody’s got to be the skunk,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) as a prelude to questions about the cost of JWST. (Later, he invoked the movie The Money Pit.) At one point he asked Howard what would happen if JWST, like Hubble, was found to have a flaw after launch. Howard explained they have done, will continue to do, extensive testing before launch. “We know we only have one chance to get this right,” he said, because JWST will be located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, beyond the range of any foreseen servicing options. “So we are taking every step we can to mitigate the risks.”
“You’ve just increased my skepticism,” Sensenbrenner responded.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) also had some strong words for the witnesses, asking Howard what programs would be “totally defunded” to pay for JWST’s increased costs. (Howard noted that, at least for FY12, the increased JWST cost would be split evenly between NASA’s other science programs, exluding Earth science, and the Cross Agency Support budget, details of which will be included in the agency’s operating plan that will be released next month.) “Who has been reprimanded or fired from NASA for this?” Rohrabacher asked. Howard responded that the senior managers involved with the project at NASA Headquarters and Goddard Space Flight Center have all been replaced, but reassigned and not fired (to the apparent disappointment of Rohrabacher.)
“If you keep having cost overruns, you’re going to be the laughingstock of the federal budget process, because we will know that we can’t count on what you’re telling us,” Rohrabacher warned NASA. That might be a bit of hyperbole, given the cost overruns experienced by many other programs outside NASA, but additional cost overruns with JWST might not be met with laughter but instead the slicing sound of a budget-cutter’s scissors.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 8 at 1:01 pm ET Last month, NASA officials offered a bit of good news about plans to restart production of plutonium-238 (Pu-238), the isotope used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that power some NASA deep space missions, including the recently-launched Mars Science Laboratory. In a hearing about the future of NASA’s planetary exploration program, NASA’s Jim Green said the agency was moving ahead with plans to restart production in cooperation with the Department of Energy (DOE), using $10 million allocated in the final FY12 appropriations bill for that purpose.
The original intent was to split the costs of Pu-238 production evenly between NASA and DOE, but Congress has failed to provide any money for that purpose in the separate DOE funding bill, saying that DOE funds should not be used for a program that primarily benefits NASA. This week, as House and Senate conferees work on an omnibus spending bill for various government agencies, including DOE, the American Astronomical Society (AAS) is making one final push to win DOE funding for Pu-238 production. In an “action alert” issued earlier this week, AAS asked its members to contact Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee, and ask them to add Pu-238 funding. The AAS notes than even if production is restarted immediately, there will be a five-year gap in Pu-238 supplies. Any additional delay, the organization warns, “will push back the proposed planetary space missions that would require Pu-238. We cannot afford to delay production any longer.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 7 at 1:22 pm ET The head of United Launch Alliance (ULA) would like to see NASA speed up the timetable for downselecting a company or companies to develop commercial crew systems, Florida Today reports. ULA CEO Michael Gass, speaking at a press conference Tuesday marking the joint venture’s fifth anniversary, noted that ULA has agreements with three commercial crew developers—Blue Origin, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada—to provide launch services for their proposed commercial crew vehicles. (Those companies account for three of the four firms with funded second-round Commercial Crew Development, or CCDev-2, awards from NASA; SpaceX, which proposes to use its own Falcon 9 rocket, is the fourth.) While those agreements would appear to be ringing endorsements of ULA’s launch capabilities, Gass said it hinders ULA from taking steps to support any single company, including investing in them.
“Why would you continue to invest when one of three of your investments could only be the potential winner?” Gass asked, according to the report. He added it would be “helpful” if NASA made a decision earlier on the vehicle or vehicles it will support full-fledged development of. Gass was also critical of the limited funding provided for the program in FY 2012, with its original request of $850 million cut by more than half to $406 million. “We talk about wanting to close the gap and not be dependent on foreign sources only, but then we don’t fully fund the capability.”
At least some in Congress support the desire of Gass to speed up a vehicle decision. Language in the conference report for the final FY12 “minibus” appropriations bill suggested that NASA consider “an accelerated down-select process that would concentrate and maximize the impact of each appropriated dollar.” NASA has not indicated any changes in their commercial crew development plans, although NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Monday they agency was studying “the most effective and efficient way we can bring it into being” without going into greater detail.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 6 at 7:26 am ET
One word has been on the lips of official Washington the last two weeks, and also inhabiting its nightmares: sequestration. It’s the official term for the automatic budget cuts scheduled to be triggered in fiscal year 2013 after the failure of the “supercommittee” last month to come up with its own deficit reduction plan. One of the few people in Washington who doesn’t appear to be openly worried about sequestration, though, is NASA administrator Charles Bolden.
“I don’t talk about sequestration because I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Bolden said in response to a question about any NASA planning for sequestration during a Space Transportation Association luncheon on Capitol Hill Monday. He said he’s optimistic that Congress will find a solution in the coming months that will prevent the automatic cuts from going into effect. “We are not planning for sequestration. We are not budgeting for sequestration. We are in the normal budget process” of working with the administration on the agency’s FY13 budget request, he said.
Bolden said his focus was instead executing on the FY12 budget, which was enacted last month. He called getting that budget passed “a huge deal” in a positive way. “The proposal and the disposition ended up being pretty doggone close,” he said, referring to how the final budget was close to the administration’s original budget request. “So we’re happy.”
One discrepancy between the original proposal and the final budget was in the agency’s commercial crew program, for which the administration requested $850 million but received only $406 million. “We’re going to continue to look at the commercial crew program to find out the most effective and efficient way we can bring it into being,” he said when asked about any potential changes in the program given the reduced funding. “We’re going to continue to work on that.” He did not disclose any specifics about potential changes, including whether NASA will proceed as previously planned with an RFP for the Integrated Design Phase, the next phase of the program.
Bolden did emphasize the importance of commercial crew during his talk. “We’re committed to having American companies, with sufficient oversight to ensure human safety, send our astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, rather than continuing to outsource this work to foreign governments,” he said. “I’m trying to be very, very, very, clear, and it’s important for me to say that in these halls.” He noted it costs NASA $450 million a year to buy Soyuz seats, a figure he said would likely increase in the future. “So we can either choose to either continue to pay that, or we can foster what we know can be a successful industry here in the United States.”
On another topic, Bolden confirmed it remains NASA’s long-term plan to send astronauts to Mars first on an orbital mission and then, at some later date, perform a human landing on the Red Planet, a slower rate than what one member of Congress suggested in a press release last week. “Ideally you would want to land them in the decade that you orbited,” he said, declining to provide a specific schedule given the uncertainties involved in planning such a mission at this time. “The big challenge right now for us is developing the technologies, the capabilities we now know we don’t have” but are needed for such a mission.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 4 at 2:27 pm ET Since becoming the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee at the beginning of this Congress, Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) has issued a number of press releases congratulating NASA, and administrator Charles Bolden in particular, on various space agency milestones. An example is one release linked to the launch of the final shuttle mission, where Fattah notes he congratulated Bolden in a phone call “shortly after Atlantis soared from the launch pad”. Fattah’s Philadelphia-area district doesn’t have much in the way of NASA ties; in the release above Fattah did note that the mission’s commander was a Philadelphia native and a Drexel alum, but previous releases, like one linked to the STS-134 launch in May, have no such local connection. Fattah’s series of releases, then, may be an effort to publicize his position on that appropriations subcommittee, or simply an expression of personal interest in the subject.
Rep. Fattah’s may have taken his apparent enthusiasm for NASA a step too far, though. Late last week he issued another press release, this one congratulating NASA for the successful launch of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). He again noted having a conversation with Bolden, with the NASA administrator inviting Fattah to come to JPL in August “for a bird’s eye view” when MSL lands on Mars. “The men and women who work at NASA inspire us that we should not limit our imaginations to what is or what was but what can be,” Fattah said in the statement. “I am encouraged that by 2030 we will have a manned landing on Mars.”
NASA, of course, isn’t planning a human landing on Mars by 2030. Instead, the agency’s goals, as outlined by President Obama in his April 2010 speech at KSC, include a human mission to orbit—not land on—Mars by the mid-2030s, with a landing to follow soon enough for Obama (who turned 50 in August) to “expect to be around to see it”. It’s not clear whether Fattah misinterpreted previous statements from NASA and the administration, or if Bolden misspoke in that or other conversations. Of course, if he really wants to see a human landing on Mars in less than two decades, he’s in a position to help make it possible…
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 2 at 6:58 am ET Space Florida issued a press release Thursday summarizing a two-day “U.S. States and Federal Government Space Forum” it hosted in Orlando earlier this week. The release provides only top-level details about the closed-door event “to enhance working relationships” among various government agencies and companies. Attendees included Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll and Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell (who is also chairman of the Aerospace States Association), as well as unnamed representatives from several federal agencies, state legislators and industry representatives from eight states, and representatives from launch services companies (although the categorization of SES, a major satellite operator, as a launch service company alongside SpaceX and ULA looks odd.) A more detailed summary of the meeting will be released within 90 days by the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies, which facilitated the meeting; an “update” meeting is planned for April at the National Space Symposium in Colorado.
Legislation that would limit liability for commercial spaceflight providers in New Mexico was formally endorsed Thursday by a state senate committee, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported Friday. The bill would be similar to existing legislation in Florida, Texas, and Virginia that would protect companies from lawsuits stemming from accidents that resulted in the injury or death of spaceflight participants, with exceptions for those accidents caused by gross negligence. The legislation passed the finance committee of the New Mexico Senate on a 12-0 vote, and will be taken up by the full legislature in its next session in January. Similar legislation was introduced earlier this year but failed to pass.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 1 at 7:02 am ET (Updated Friday 5:30 pm with time change for hearing)
The full House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is holding a hearing this coming Tuesday, December 6th, from 10am-noon 2-4 pm, on “The Next Great Observatory: Assessing the James Webb Space Telescope”. NASA’s JWST program manager, Rick Howard, will testify, along with astronomers Roger Blandford and Garth Illingworth, as well as Jeffrey D. Grant, a vice president with Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for the telescope. The committee will likely scrutinize plans by NASA and Northrop Grumman to get the space telescope, which has encountered significant cost overruns and schedules, back on track. JWST got $530 million—more than $150 million above the administration’s original request—in the final FY2012 appropriations bill, but the that bill includes some other provisions about the telescope, including a formal development cost cap of $8 billion (NASA’s current cost estimate) and a requirement for regular JWST program reports by the GAO.
Before that hearing begins in room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, you can walk down the hall to room 2325 for a Women in Aerospace event on “U.S. Leadership in Astronomy: Space Telescopes Today, Tomorrow and Beyond”. That event will feature a different set of speakers, including former astronaut John Grunsfeld, the deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Nature reported last week that Grunsfeld was expected to be named the new NASA associate administrator for science, succeeding Ed Weiler, who retired at the end of September. (Note that the WIA panel event does advance registration and a fee.)
By Jeff Foust on 2011 December 1 at 6:47 am ET A Florida congressional redistricting proposal could cut the Space Coast region’s voice in Congess by half. Currently the region has two members in Congress: Rep. Bill Posey, whose 15th district covers the southern part of the region, including the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station; and Rep. Sandy Adams, whose 24th district covers the northern part, including Kennedy Space Center. Under the proposal released this week by the state senate, the 15th district would be redrawn to cover the entire region, from north of Titusville to far south of even the broadest definitions of the Space Coast. Adams’s 24th district would move inland, including portions of the Orlando area.
This has led to some concerns that the region will lose some of its clout in Congress, which could, in turn, affect space policy. Adams, for example, serves on the House Science Committee; whether she would continue to do so under her new district, or if Posey would seek a seat on that committee, is unclear. Florida state senator Thad Altman tells Florida Today that he’s confident Adams would continue to support KSC even after redistricting. What’s not mentioned in the article, though, is that both Space Coast representatives have largely had supporting, not leading, roles in recent space policy issues. Neither is an appropriator and their lack of seniority—Adams is in her first term and Posey his second—also limits their influence.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 November 29 at 7:02 am ET I hope you had a good Thanksgiving holiday. It’s been a quiet holiday in the space policy arena, as NASA and NOAA digest their final FY2012 budget and make plans for the next fiscal year. A few highlights from the federal and state level from recent days:
An amendment to a Senate appropriations bill would prevent the FCC from approving LightSquared’s plans for a terrestrial wireless network until any potential interference with the GPS system is resolved. Aviation Week reports that Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) introduced the amendment to the financial services appropriations bill, similar to one in the House version of the spending bill. Concerns that LightSquared’s terrestrial system—intended to augment its satellite system—would overwhelm the much weaker GPS signals in nearby regions of spectrum has led to an ongoing series of tests scheduled for completion this week.
Last week the office of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell released a report on potential improvements to the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Virginia. The report calls for more capital investment in the spaceport and a long-range strategy that includes making sure MARS is a “multi-use facility”. The Daily Press newspaper in Hampton Roads, Virginia, points out a lesser-known recommendation: that Orbital Sciences should no longer have a vote on the spaceport’s board of directors. Orbital is MARS’s biggest user, developing launch facilities for its Taurus 2 rocket, but the report found that the company’s seat on the board “is perceived as a conflict of interest by potential customers/potential competitors.” Orbital used to have two seats on the board, but is now down to one; that seat, currently held by what the Daily Press describes as “a very vocal Jeffrey Windland”, can’t be changed until MARS and Orbital amend their existing agreement about using the spaceport.
Representatives of a number of “space states” are in Orlando today and tomorrow for a closed-door meeting, Florida Today reports. The meeting is by invitation only and includes “experts and state and federal officials in the space sector”, although no list of attendees or agenda has been released by the host organization, Space Florida. The meeting is described as “a first-of-its-kind event”, although the report doesn’t note that representatives of space-minded states have met in the past through the Aerospace States Association and the now-defunct National Coalition of Spaceport States.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 November 22 at 6:36 am ET The FY12 budget was wrapped up and signed into law on Friday, but there are still some reactions to the bill filtering in. Last week Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) issued a joint statement about the bill, praising elements of the bill that support the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, in particular space technology. (The statement includes a quote from Bobby Braun, the former NASA chief technologist, who says the space technology funding “allows NASA to begin development of a suite of cutting-edge technologies that will accelerate the pace of our future in space while creating high-tech jobs and fueling American innovation at home.”) Rep. LaTourette also hailed the funding for the Space Launch System, which he called “the rocket that was envisioned under the Constellation program”, adding that “one day we will get America back into Space and back to the moon”.
The bipartisan cooperation of Sen. Brown and Rep. LaTourette got the attention, and praise, of the Cleveland Plain Dealer in an editorial Monday. “The fact that Brown is a Democrat and LaTourette a Republican ought to underscore both the value of bipartisan cooperation and the fact that shoring up NASA Glenn is a goal that transcends party labels,” it notes.
An editorial Sunday in the Orlando Sentinel is more pessimistic because of the reduced funding for NASA’s commercial crew efforts. “Now it’s the Russians who can celebrate,” it states, noting that the reduced funding it likely to delay the development of such systems and thus lengthen the time the US is reliant on Russian vehicles to access the ISS. “It’s penny wise and ruble foolish for Congress to extend such dependency by starving funding for shuttle successors.”
The editorial did see a bright side to the bill in the form of $484 million for KSC facility upgrades, something also cited by Florida Today columnist John Kelly on Sunday. He also points out the reduced commercial crew funding as well as the funding for the “boondoggle” James Webb Space Telescope. On JWST, he argues, “Congress missed an opportunity here to finally take a stand on NASA’s inability and apparent unwillingness to reform how it plans and runs big projects.”
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