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On a day already chock full of space news -- release of the FY2014 budget request and a hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids -- Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) decided to reintroduce his RE-asserting American Leadership in Space Act, or REAL Space Act.  

The bill was introduced in the last Congress.  No action was taken, but that clearly did not dissuade Posey and eight other Republican and Democratic House members from trying again this year.  Co-sponsors include Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA.   The legislation would direct NASA to develop a plan for returning to the Moon and establishing a human presence there.

Posey argues that a "moon presence offers us the ability to develop and test technologies to cope with the realities of operating on an extraterrestrial surface."

As reported by Jeff Foust at SpacePolitics.com last week, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden continues to stress that NASA has no plans to return humans to the Moon.  Foust quotes Bolden as saying "I don't know how to say it any more plainly...NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio and we are not planning for one" and if the next administration tries to change course again "in the lifetime of everyone sitting in this room, we are probably never again going to see Americans on the Moon, or Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration."

President Obama sent his FY2014 budget request to Congress today, nine-and-a-half weeks late.   The $1.058 trillion request includes $17.7 billion for NASA.  Highlights will be discussed during a NASA media telecon at 3:00 pm ET this afternoon. An earlier media briefing, at 1:30 pm ET, will discuss the overall budget request for federal research and development, including NASA, NOAA, NIH and NSF.

The President continues to oppose sequestration and his FY2014 budget does not take it into account.  Consequently, NASA's FY2014 budget request is about the same as its FY2013 request following the flat-line spending plan it assumed last year. 

NASA's documentation accompanying the FY2014 request does not allow comparisons to what Congress appropriated for FY2013 -- the current fiscal year -- because the request was formulated prior to Congress completing action on the FY2013 budget.    The numbers in the tables accompanying NASA's request are based on the first Continuing Resolution (CR) that passed Congress last September, not the second CR that became law in March and ultimately set government spending levels for this year.  That law cut NASA's FY2013 funding from the $17.771 billion requested to something in the neighborhood of $16.6 billion.  NASA has not publicly stated even the total that it received for FY2013.   That and details of how it will be spent at the account and program, project and activity (PPA) level apparently will not be revealed until NASA submits a congressionally-required operating plan to Congress on May 10.

Leaving aside questions about current year spending, the FY2014 request includes three major changes.

• A new Asteroid Retrieval Initiative, with $105 million requested for FY2014, to study the feasibility of capturing a 7-10 meter diameter, 500 ton asteroid, bringing it to the Earth-Moon system using a robotic probe powered by solar electric propulsion, and sending astronauts to explore it perhaps as early as 2021.  The $105 million is split among three tasks:
  • Identify:  additional $20 million (on top of existing $20 million) for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) to augment ground-based efforts to identify and characterize asteroids with the goal of identifying a candidate asteroid for this mission by 2016;
  • Redirect:   $45 million for the new Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) to accelerate development of high-power solar electric propulsion;
  • Explore: $40 million for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) to study how the Orion spacecraft could rendezvous with the asteroid and how astronauts could interact with it.
• Two significant changes to the Earth Science portfolio
  • NASA will assume responsibility for climate sensors that were to be incorporated onto NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).   Congress has strongly encouraged NOAA to focus on its weather forecasting mission.
  • NASA will take the lead on determining how to ensure the continuity of the satellite land remote sensing data set tht began with the first Landsat satellite in 1972.   Landsat 8 (also called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, or LDCM) was launched earlier this year and planning must begin for the next in the series to avoid any gaps in data acquisition.  The Obama Administration wanted to transfer the program to the U.S Geological Survey (USGS), which operates the Landsat satellites and is knowledgable about the user community for that data.  Congress rejected the idea because of concern that the cost would overwhelm over USGS priorities.
• Impacts on NASA's education portfolio due a government-wide restructuring of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs.   The White House is consolidating most of the government's STEM projects that are currently in 13 agencies into three agencies:  the Department of Education (K-12 programs), the National Science Foundation (undergraduate and graduate programs), and the Smithsonian (informal and in-situ education).   NASA's FY2014 education request of $94 million will fund NASA-specific efforts such as Space Grant, EPSCoR, MUREP and GLOBE.  The $94 million includes "$67.5 million for high-performing existing programs, and an additional $26.8 million previously distributed throughout the agency's mission directorates" according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  OMB also says that $47.5 million of NASA's education programs were "redirected" to the other agencies.  NASA's "education" budget request last year was $100 million, but it is difficult to compare that with the $94 million requested this year since that budget did not include the funding in the mission directorate accounts.

The Asteroid Retrieval Initiative is likely to be the focus of attention, although NASA officials stress that the agency must first complete a feasibility study before offering details.  A Mission Concept Review is expected to be completed this summer.   The concept was outlined in a 2012 Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) report that estimated the total cost of such a mission at $2.6 billion.   NASA officials caution against using that as a cost estimate for what the agency might do, arguing the cost might be lower because much of the work is already underway for other purposes.  The total request for this initiative in FY2014 is $105 million, but NASA categorizes only $78 million of that as "mission" funding.

The overall President's budget request for the U.S. Government for FY2014 was officially released at 12:30 pm ET today.

Details of NASA's FY2014 budget request will be posted on the agency's website at 1:00 pm ET. 

NASA Administrator Bolden will be one of the participants in a press conference at 1:30 pm ET.  The press conference is led by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and will be webcast by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on its website.   The other participants are the heads of NOAA, NIH and NSF, all of whom will join the President's Science Adviser and Director of OSTP John Holdren.

A House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and meteors whose orbits bring them close to Earth, called Near Earth Objects (NEOs), is scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm.  One of the witnesses, Don Yeomans, is from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but it is not clear how much information he will provide about the Asteroid Retrieval Initiative in NASA's budget request.   He is the manager of NASA's ongoing effort to track and catalogue NEOs.  The hearing will be webcast on the committee's website.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a media teleconference on the FY2014 budget request at 3:00 pm.  It will be broadcast on the agency's news audio website.

President Obama will submit his FY2014 budget request to Congress tomorrow, Wednesday, April 10. 

Word is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will hold a press conference at 12:30 pm ET to formally release the budget request.   NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a media teleconference at 3:00 pm ET that will be available on NASA's news audio website.

NASA will post details of its request on the NASA budget website at 1:00 pm ET.

Unless it's a short hearing, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will be in the middle of part two of its hearings on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to Earth (collectively called Near Earth Objects or NEOs), at that time.   The hearing is set to begin at 2:00 pm ET.   The budget request reportedly will include funds to further studies of the idea of sending a robotic probe to capture an asteroid, bring it to the Earth-Moon system, and send astronauts to study it.  Hopefully the hearing will elucidate what NASA has in mind.   JPL's Don Yeomans is one of the witnesses. 

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a media teleconference to discuss the agency's FY2014 budget request on Wednesday, April 10.

The telecon will be held at 3:00 pm ET and anyone who wishes may listen in at NASA's news audio website.   NASA's budget materials will be posted on the agency's budget website at 1:00 pm ET that day.

Word that the budget request includes about $100 million for work on the concept of robotically capturing an asteroid and bringing it to the Earth-Moon system for study by astronauts has heightened interest in this year's request.  

Bolden's media teleconference will take place while the House Science, Space and Technology Committee is holding its second hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids.  That hearing begins at 2:00 pm ET.  The hearing should be available via webcast on the committee's website.

In its annual assessment of major defense acquisition programs, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) laid out the cost growth affecting many of those programs, including space programs.  The Space-Based Infrared System High Component (SBIRS-High) leads the pack for space programs with a nearly 300 percent cost growth, with Wideband Global Satcom not far behind.

A table at the end of the report shows the cost changes for each of the Department of Defense's (DOD's) major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) in 2012.    The table compares the "current estimated total acquisition cost" to the "first full estimated acquisition cost" in three ways:  the change since that first estimate was made, the change over just the past year, and the change over the past five years.   Focusing only on the change since the first estimate was made, GAO reports the percent change for each space program in its list as follows:

• Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communications satellite program: 119.2 percent (from $6.556 billion to $14.372 billion)
• Global Broadcast Service:  104.9 percent (from $593 million to $1.215 billion)
• Global Positioning System (GPS) III:  4.5 percent (from $4.056 billion to $4.239 billion)
• Mobile User Objective System (MUOS):  4.6 percent (from $6.917 billion to $7.234 billion)
• Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS):  27.9 percent (from $7.415 billion to $9.483 billion)
• Navstar GPS Space & Control:  23.8 percent (from $6.397 billion to $7.917 billion)
• Navstar GPS User Equipment:  54 percent (from $1.018 billion to $1.567 billion)
• Space-Based Infrared System High Component (SBRIS-High):  298.8 percent (from $4.731 billion to $18.868 billion)
• Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS):  235 percent (from $1.229 billion to $4.116 billion)

The table also lists the canceled National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) that, not surprisingly, shows a cost reduction since it was, in fact, terminated.

The cost growth in those space programs are not the highest of all the MDAPs.  The MQ-9 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Reaper's cost increased 359.8 percent (from $2.714 billion to $12.476 billion); the MQ-1C Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Gray Eagle grew 354.2 percent (from $1.045 billion to $4.745 billion); the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke Class Guided Missile Destroyer's cost is up 335.7 percent (from $15.629 billion to $103.166 billion); and the Tactical Tomahawk Block IV grew 239.9 percent (from $2.178 billion to $7.402 billion).  None of those begins to compare, however, with the 1581.1 percent increase of the C-130J Hercules military transport aircraft program (from $977 million to $16.418 billion).

GAO picked 64 programs for a more detailed review.  They included programs in development or early production, future programs, and recently canceled programs.   Not all are included in the list at the end of its report.

Those 64 include the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program; Space Fence, a set of ground-based radars that will be used to track space objects (replacing the Air Force's Space Surveillance System), the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS) for space-based persistent tracking of ballistic missiles, and the Enhanced Polar System (EPS) of extremely high frequency (EHF) communications payloads on classified polar orbiting satellites.  

GAO said that the EELV program's cost is estimated at $69.6 billion for 150 launches through 2030.   That is $34.6 billion more than what DOD reported in its March 2012 Selected Acquisition Report, which estimated costs for 91 launches through 2020.   EELV program officials reportedly told GAO that the reasons for the cost growth included the extra 10 years and 59 launches, as well as "the inherently unstable nature of the demand for launch services, and industrial base instability."  A new acquisition baseline for the program was approved in early 2013, GAO states.

The report contains no recommendations.  Instead, GAO makes nine observations about DOD's acquisition of major weapons systems generally, not specific programs.  Among the observations is that, overall, the performance of DOD's major acquisition portfolio has improved since last year.

The following events may be of interest in the coming week.  The House and Senate both are in session, returning from their Easter/Passover break.

During the Week

The big event this week is the release -- at last -- of President Obama's FY2014 budget request.  It will be sent to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the same day the House Science, Space and Technology Committee has scheduled Part II of the committee's hearings on Near Earth Objects (NEOs).   Those are asteroids and comets that come close to, and may threaten, Earth.   The President's budget request reportedly includes funds for NASA to begin work on the idea of capturing an asteroid, moving it into the Earth-Moon system, and sending astronauts to study it.   Such a mission would respond to scientific interest in asteroids, human exploration goals, planetary defense (defending Earth from asteroids or comets that could cause significant destruction), and the plans of a couple of entrepreneurial companies that want to mine asteroids for their raw materials.  A study by the Keck Institute of Space Studies last year estimated it would cost $2.6 billion in FY12 dollars.  The request for FY2014 is said to be about $100 million.

Several congressional hearings are scheduled this week on the budget requests for the Department of Defense (DOD) and, separately, the Department of Commerce (DOC), which manages weather satellites.  The budget request usually is sent to Congress by the President in February and by this time of the year, most of the budget hearings are completed.  Everything is behind schedule this year, though, because of the extended debate over the sequester and funding for the current fiscal year (FY2013).

Monday, April 8

• IISL/ECSL Space Law Symposium, Vienna, Austria

Monday-Thursday, April 8-11

• Space Foundation's National Space Symposium, Colorado Springs, CO

Tuesday, April 9

• Georgetown Law School Space Law Panel, Hotung Building, Georgetown Law School, 4:00-5:00 pm ET

Wednesday, April 10

• President Obama Submits FY2014 Budget Request to Congress
• House SS&T Hearing on Near Earth Objects: Part II, 2318 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET

Thursday, April 11

• HASC Hearing on FY2014 DOD Budget Request, 2118 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
• Senate Approps CJS Sbcmte Hearing on FY2014 Dept of Commerce Budget Request, 192 Dirksen, 10:00 am ET
• NASA Advisory Council Earth Science Subcommittee Meeting, telecon, 12:30-3:00 pm ET
• House Approps CJS Sbcmte Hearing on FY2014 Dept of Commerce Budget Request, 2359 Rayburn, 1:30 pm ET

Friday, April 12

• HASC Hrg on FY2014 Air Force Budget Request, 2118 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET

Note:  The text of this article has been changed to reflect the fact that Wednesday's hearing on NEOs has been upgraded from a subcommittee hearing to a full committee hearing.

A House subcommittee will hold a third congressional hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets on April 10, the same day President Obama will submit his FY2014 budget request to Congress.   The hearings were catalyzed by the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February.

Asteroids and comets that come close to Earth collectively are known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs).  The April 10 hearing, before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology (HSS&T) Committee, will feature Ed Lu, former astronaut and current head of the B612 Foundation; Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's NEO Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Lab; and Mike A'Hearn of the University of Maryland who co-chaired a 2009 National Research Council study on the NEO threat.

Lu testified to a Senate Commerce subcommittee in March.   His B612 Foundation is trying to raise funds, primarily from philanthropists, to build a space-based inrfared telescope that would be placed in a special orbit around the Sun that affords a better view of NEOs in Earth's vicinity.  Ground-based telescopes and those in Earth orbit can only see sections of the sky and B612 wants to create a more complete catalog of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).    Yeomans is one of the world's leading authorities on identifying, tracking and cataloging NEOs as part of a NASA program that was mandated by Congress beginning in the 1990s.  The NRC study that A'Hearn co-chaired was requested by Congress in the 2008 NASA Authorization Act.   It looked at tracking and cataloging NEOs as well as how to mitigate the threat they pose to Earth.

The full HSS&T committee, which has led the charge over the past two deades in directing NASA to study NEOs, held the first of the three post-Chelyabinsk hearings on March 19.   Witnesses were Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren. Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. William Shelton, and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.   The next day, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee's Subcommittee on Science and Space held a hearing on space "threats" where Lu and Jim Green, Director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, testified about the threat from NEOs.   The April 10 hearing, back on the House side, will continue the discussion.

The House and Senate committees hope to pass a new NASA authorization bill this year that may well address NEOs again.  While congressional interest in NEOs has been rather limited in the past to certain members of the House committee, the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk on February 15 stimulated much broader concern.  Over 1,000 people were injured, mostly from flying glass as windows broke from the shock wave created by the meteor passing through the atmosphere.   Asteroids are rocks in space.   When they enter Earth's atmosphere, they are called meteors.  Any pieces that reach the ground are called meteorites.

In addition to tracking and cataloguing NEOs, NASA has sent robotic probes to study them.  The next U.S. probe, OSIRIS-Rex, is planned for launch in 2016.   President Obama also directed NASA to send humans to an asteroid by 2025.   A concept currently being promoted by a diverse array of groups as an alternative or adjunct is to capture an asteroid using a robotic spacecraft and tow it to a location close to Earth (perhaps placing it in orbit around the Moon) and send astronauts to study it there.    Aviation Week reports that the President's FY2014 budget request includes $100 million to continue studies of such a mission.

The asteroid hearing is at 2:00 pm ET on April 10 in 2318 Rayburn House Office Buildkng.  The committee usually webcasts its hearings.

Editor's Note:   One silver lining of the imbroglio over the New York Times's bungling of Yvonne Brill's obituary is that it has piqued people's curiosity about her.  There's no better way to learn more about her amazing career than to hear it in her own words.

On April 2, 2009, Yvonne gave the 32nd Astronautics and Aeronautics Department Lester D. Gardner Lecture at MIT, another one of the honors bestowed upon her.  The video is available on the Internet.  It is a technical presentation, mostly about communications satellites and their propulsion systems, but I think you'll feel like you've met Yvonne if you watch it.  She was 84 when she gave this lecture.

Sam Ting's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument was attached to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2011 and scientists have been eagerly awaiting results ever since.   Tomorrow, April 3, Ting and others will announce their findings to date at a NASA press conference.

AMS actually is not a NASA instrument.   It was primarily funded by a consortium of institutes in 16 countries brought together by Ting, a 1976 Nobel Prize winning physicist.  The U.S. portion of the project was funded through the Department of Energy (DOE).  NASA's role was to get it into space and give it home as part of the ISS complex.

AMS is a particle physics instrument that is being used to search for antimatter in the universe, as well as study dark matter and other cosmological mysteries.

Joining Ting at the press conference at NASA Headquarters tomorrow at 1:30 pm ET will be NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, DOE's program manager for AMS Michael Salamon, and NASA's AMS program manager Mark Sistilli.  The briefing will be broadcast on NASA TV.

Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, commented in her blog today about the tempest created by the newspaper's obituary of Yvonne Brill this weekend.   In response to a slew of negative comments from readers, the Times changed the opening line of the obituary to note that she was a brilliant scientist rather than praising her cooking skills.

The original obituary's opening line, recounted in Sullivan's story, was "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise her three children."  

The new opening sentence changes only the beef stroganoff remark.  It now begins "She was a brilliant rocket scientist" but following her husband and taking eight years off from work are still there.    As pointed out later in the obituary, that last statement is incorrect since Brill worked as a consultant during those years.

Sullivan interviewed her colleagues who wrote and approved -- and continue to defend -- the original version.  She also posts some of the reaction the paper received.  Her bottom line is that "The emphasis on her domesticity ... had the effect of undervaluing what really landed Mrs. Brill on the Times obituaries page:  her groundbreaking scientific work."

Editor's Note:   As I mentioned in my own post about Yvonne's passing, she was a dear friend and I think it's sad that the Times was, in my opinion, initially so demeaning about her scientific accomplishments.   I must say, however, that Yvonne was every bit as proud of her three children -- and their children -- as she was of her professional achievements.   I can't help but wonder if she would be dismayed that this has created such a ruckus.   She was one of the most unassuming people I have ever known.   I fault the Times for turning her passing into a news story about clueless obituary writers and can only recommend that they "stop digging," as the saying goes.