Washington Updates

In February, a team from the Space Foundation’s Washington, D.C., office visited Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va., and toured the mission control centers, as well as the spacecraft manufacturing facilities.It is at this location that the company’s spacecraft are designed, built and tested, including civilian, commercial and national security spacecraft. The tour included a number…

In February, the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Space held a hearing on “Necessary Updates to the Commercial Space Launch Act.” The Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA), first passed in 1984, and amended several times since then, gives authority to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to license commercial launches and indemnify launch providers…

On Feb. 27, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing entitled, “U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Cyber Command in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2015.” While the hearing normally reviews President Obama’s budget request for these two Commands, due to the budget being released a month late (March 4) the…

On Feb. 27, the House Science, Space & Technology Committee held a hearing entitled, “Mars Flyby 2021: The First Deep Space Mission for the Orion and Space Launch System?” Members of Congress agreed that Mars was the ultimate destination for NASA’s human exploration program, but differed on whether NASA would be ready to support a…

Since 2010, the Space Foundation has held an annual international space cooperation event in the nation’s capitol. On Jan. 22, the Space Foundation celebrated United States and Canadian space cooperation at a reception at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Space Foundation and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the event recognized the…

On Jan. 17, President Obama signed the $1.012 trillion Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 omnibus spending bill into law. The omnibus funds the entire Federal government including NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Defense (DoD). NASA was appropriated an overall budget of $17.646 billion for FY 2014. This is an increase…