Our Civil Hearing Summaries

Two subcommittees of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on May 9, 2013 on "ExoPlanet Discoveries:  Have We Found Other Earths? "    Witnesses were Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute, John Grunsfeld, NASA Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate, and Jim Ulvestad, National Science Foundation Director of Division of Astronomical Sciences.   SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the hearing on May 9, 2013.

The Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing on NASA's FY2014 budget request on April 25, 2013.  The hearing was quite short, just 45 minutes, because of a briefing Senators needed to attend.  In that short time, the questions posed to NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden focused on funding for the Space Launch System versus commercial crew, the consequences for NASA if sequestration remains in place beyond FY2013, and the status of the James Webb Space Telescope.   Bolden said that if the sequester remains in force in FY2014, he would probably have to furlough civil servants and "all bets are off" for NASA's programs.  SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the hearing on April 25.

The Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on NASA's FY2014 budget request on April 24, 2013.  NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden was the witness.  SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the hearing on April 24.  Major topics discussed were

• NASA's new proposal for an asteroid retrieval mission;
• concerns about funding for the Space Launch System versus commercial crew;
• whether NASA will be given sufficient resources to pay for new responsibilities it has been assigned for building climate sensors, for operating a plutonium-238 production facility that for decades has been operated by the Department of Energy, and for initiating a new program to build a follow-on Landsat satellite that the Obama Administration had hoped to assign to the U.S. Geological Survey instead of NASA; and
• the proposed government-wide restructuring of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs that will see NASA's role in these programs sharply diminished.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on April 17, 2013 on the FY2014 budget request for federal research and development.  The witness was John Holdren, the President's Science Adviser and the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.   On April 18, 2013, SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the portions of the hearing that discussed NASA as well as separate comments by committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) the next day in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle.

On February 27, 2013, the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on the Space Leadership Preservation Act introduced by Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) in the 113th Congress (H.R. 823).   It is a revised version of legislation they introduced last Congress.   Both Congressmen testified at the hearing, as did A. Thomas (Tom) Young, Lockheed Martin (retired) and Elliot Pulham, CEO of The Space Foundation.   SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the hearing on March 1, 2013.

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on December 12, 2012 on NASA's future.  SpacePolicyOnline.com published a summary of the hearing on December 14, 2012.  The hearing included testimony by Ron Sega, who was vice-chair of a National Research Council (NRC) report on NASA's Strategic Direction that was released the week prior to the hearing.   The full list of witnesses include the following:

• Honorable Robert Walker, Wexler and Walker (former chairman of the House Science Committee)
• Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Ron Sega, former astronaut, currently University of Colorado and vice-chair of the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on NASA's Strategic Direction
• Marion Blakey, President, Aerospace Industries Association
• Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, University of Michigan Space Physics Laboratory
• Dr. Scott Pace, George Washington University

The House Approrpriations Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) held a hearing on June 21, 2012 on financial misconduct at the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that uses data from the nation's weather satellites.  SpacePolicyOnline.com published an article summarizing the hearing on June 25, 2012, with an update on June 28 adding information on subsequent action by the CJS subcommittee.   The witnesses were:

• NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco
• NOAA Deputy Administrator Kathryn Sullivan

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics held a congressional hearing on the economic benefits of NASA-derived technologies on July 12, 2012.   SpacePolicyOnline.com published an article summarziing the hearing that day.  Witnesses were:

• Mason Peck, NASA Chief Technologist
• George Beck, Chief Clinical and Technology Officer, Impact Instrumentation, Inc.
• Brian Russell, Chief Executive Officer, Zephyr Technology
• John Vilja, Vice President for Strategy, Innovation and Growth, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
• Richard Aubrecht, Vice President, Moog, Inc.

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of a June 20, 2012 hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on President Obama's science policies and priorities, including those for NASA's space program, was published on June 21, 2012.  Dr. Holdren was the only witness.   The space program was only one of many topics debated at the hearing.  The committee members who asked questions about NASA included:

• Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee
• Rep. Steve Palazzo (R-MS), chairman of the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee
• Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)]
• Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD)
• Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL)

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the June 20, 2012 Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Science and Space hearing on commercial space was published on June 20.   Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL), chairman of the subcommittee, John Boozman (R-AR), ranking member of the subcommittee, and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), ranking member of the full committee were present.  Witnesses were:

• Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations
• Pamela Melroy, FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (and a former NASA astronaut)
• Gerald Dillingham, Government Accountability Office
• Michael Gold, Bigelow Aerospace
• Michael Lopez-Alegria, Commercial Spaceflight Federation (and a former NASA astronaut)