Here is our list of space policy events for the week of June 11-16, 2017 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

This week it’s DOD’s turn to talk to authorizers and appropriators about the FY2018 budget request. Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford are the witnesses at each of the four hearings on successive days beginning tomorrow (Monday). It’s not clear whether military space programs will come up to any great extent, but the hearings should provide some sense of where space activities sit in DOD priorities. Mattis and Dunford testify to the House Armed Services Committee tomorrow, Senate Armed Services on Tuesday, Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Wednesday, and House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Thursday.

On Monday, Orbital ATK and NASA will hold a briefing at Wallops Island, VA, home to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), the launch site for Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket. The briefing will provide an update on the next Orbital ATK cargo mission on a Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), which will launch on Antares from MARS at Wallops. The launch is currently expected in September. Orbital ATK has launched Cygnus on both Antares from Wallops and United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral. At first, Orbital ATK used ULA’s Atlas V while it was getting Antares back to flight after an October 2014 failure. Antares returned to service in October 2016, but the company’s most recent Cygnus mission used the Atlas V again reportedly at NASA’s request. Atlas V can lift more mass than Antares.

Orbital ATK officials have said they are happy to use either rocket depending on the customer’s requirements, but with this briefing, clearly are trying to highlight Antares and the MARS facility, which is located at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, but owned and operated by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (“Virginia Space”). NASA Wallops Director Bill Wrobel and Virginia Space Executive Director Dale Nash will join Orbital ATK’s Frank Culbertson and Kurt Eberly for the briefing, which will be livestreamed. The briefing will take place one day after the most recent Cygnus mission ended. After about six weeks attached to ISS and one week in independent flight, the S.S. John Glenn fired its engines for a last time today and descended into the atmosphere and disintegrated, as intended. Only one of the ISS cargo resupply spacecraft is designed to survive reentry, SpaceX’s Dragon.

SpaceX’s most recent Dragon arrived at the ISS last Monday and Russia will launch its next Progress cargo resupply mission this Wednesday (with docking on Friday if all goes well). All these cargo spacecraft comings and goings illustrate the challenges of sending people on lengthy trips beyond low Earth orbit. Tough enough to provide all the needed supplies and equipment when they are close to home. It’s going to take a lot of technology development for life support and other systems, and many logistics flights, to support such missions.

NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) is meeting Monday-Wednesday at Goddard Space Flight Center. Michele Gates is on the agenda on Tuesday for 15 minutes to talk about the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which consumed a lot of SBAG’s attention for the past couple of years. Presumably her task at this point is just to inform SBAG that the Trump Administration has terminated ARM, but two aspects of it — high power solar electric propulsion development and asteroid hunting — will continue nonetheless. NASA’s Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green and Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson are also on the agenda along with many other presentations that sound quite interesting, including two by representatives of asteroid mining companies. The meeting is available remotely through Adobe Connect.

Those and other events we know about as of Sunday morning are shown below. Check back throughout the week for others that we learn about later and add to our Events of Interest list.

Monday, June 12

Monday-Wednesday, June 12-14



Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (Adobe Connect)

Monday-Friday, June 12-16 (continued from last week)

Tuesday, June 13

SASC DOD Posture Hearing, G-50 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 9:30 am ET (webcast)

Wednesday, June 14

Launch of Progress MS-06 Cargo Mission to ISS, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 5:20 am ET (3:20 pm local time at the launch site), NASA TV coverage begins 5:00 am ET

Senate Appropriations Defense Sbcmte Hrg on FY2018 DOD Budget Request, 192 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 10:30 am ET (webcast)

Thursday, June 15

House Appropriations Defense Sbcmt Hrg on FY2018 DOD Budget Request, 2359 Rayburn House Office Building, 9:00 am ET (webcast)

Friday, June 16