The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. The House and Senate both return to work after a two-week recess.

During the Week

Weather permitting, Tuesday is the day the space shuttle Discovery will make its last trip aboard the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft as it moves from Kennedy Space Center to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport, VA just outside of Washington for permanent exhibition. NASA is anticipating spectacular views of Discovery’s arrival as it is flown over national landmarks in the Washington area. Details on where to get the best view are on the Smithsonian’s website as well as NASA’s.

If all goes according to schedule, you can watch Discovery arrive and then hop up to Capitol Hill for the Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee markup of the FY2013 budget requests under its jurisdiction, which include NASA and NOAA. It is at 2:30 pm in 192 Dirksen. This is the first markup of the FY2013 appropriations season that affects NASA and NOAA. It is followed one hour later with the markup of the T-HUD bill that includes the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

Of course it’s not clear how many of the space policy community will be in Washington on Tuesday since the National Space Symposium is being held this week (Monday-Thursday) in Colorado Springs, CO.

Those are just a few of the space policy-related events coming up this week. See below for a complete list.

Monday, April 16

Monday-Thursday, April 16-19

National Space Symposium, Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, CO

Tuesday, April 17

Wednesday, April 18

House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on North Korea, 10:00 am ET, 2172 Rayburn

Friday, April 20