Air Force starts search for an RD-180 replacement

Although the supply of Russian-built RD-180 engines that power the first stage of the Atlas V do not appear to be in the same level of jeopardy as feared earlier this year—United Launch Alliance took delivery of two of those engines last week—the US Air Force is starting to lay the groundwork for development of […]

Congressman wants to know if NASA has too much infrastructure

While NASA is working to hand over many of the facilities it no longer needs at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) after the retirement of the Space Shuttle two years ago, one member of Congress wants to know if NASA should be divesting those assets even faster. The Orlando Sentinel reported late Wednesday that Rep. […]

Bolden defends commercial crew, asteroid mission, cuts to planetary and education

In a speech Thursday at a Capitol Hill luncheon organized by the Space Transportation Association (STA), NASA administrator Charles Bolden largely reiterated the agency’s support for commercial crew development and NASA’s new asteroid initiative, while defending cuts in the agency’s planetary sciences program and the reorganization of its education efforts.

As in testimony last week […]

House and White House at odds over code of conduct language in defense bill

The House of Representatives is debating today HR 4310, the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization act. The legislation covers a very wide of issues, many of which attracted the attention of the White House in its Statement of Administration Policy (SAP), which stated that if the bill passes as currently written, senior advisors will recommend […]

Today: hearings on LightSquared and ISS

Two House committees will be holding separate hearings on space-related issues this afternoon. At 1 pm, the House Small Business Committee will be holding a hearing on “LightSquared: The Impact to Small Business GPS Users”. LightSquared is a company planning a hybrid satellite-terrestrial communications network that, recent studies have found, could create significant interference with […]

More on Wolf, NASA, and China

As noted here yesterday, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, had some critical remarks about cooperation with China in a symposium on China’s space program held earlier this week. Wolf’s office has posted his prepared statement from that hearing, which goes into more details about his thoughts about […]

How will NASA plan to “win the future” in its budget request?

Later today the Obama Administration will release its fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, with NASA planning a press conference this afternoon to discuss details of its proposed budget, adopting the “win the future” theme that the president rolled out in his State of the Union address last month. The atmosphere this year is very different […]

Another bid to extend the shuttle (and more)

House legislation to extend the space shuttle program beyond its planned retirement this year may be joined by more a comprehensive Senate bill in the near future. At the symposium “Human Spaceflight and the Future of Space Science”, held yesterday in Washington by USRA and GWU’s Space Policy Institute, Jeff Bingham of the Senate Commerce […]

Space acquisition still broken

The Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing this afternoon on “space system acquisitions and the industrial base”. One of the witnesses scheduled to testify, Josh Hartman, the Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, gave a preview of his planned testimony yesterday in […]

Upcoming hearings

A couple of upcoming hearings by the House Science and Technology Committee:

Today at 10 am the energy and environment subcommittee is holding a hearing on “Continued Oversight of NOAA’s Geostationary Weather Satellite System”. The hearing will discuss a new GAO report on the progress of the next-generation GOES-R satellite program, and feature witnesses from […]