Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week plus two days of August 21-29, 2022, and any information we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in recess except for pro forma sessions.
During the week
Lazy, hazy summer days? Not in the space business and certainly not THIS week.
With the Artemis launch fast approaching, NASA has been busy, busy, busy, and the rest of the space community hasn’t slowed down either.
This edition of What’s Happening covers two days longer than usual, until Monday, August 29, because that’s the currently scheduled launch date for Artemis I. There’s a lot going on this week leading up to it, and it seemed logical to just keep it all together.
The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I unmanned test flight await at Launch Complex-39B for liftoff, currently scheduled for August 29, 2022. The orange segment is the main stage (Boeing). Two white Solid Rocket boosters are on the side (Northrop Grumman). The white temporary cryogenic upper stage (Boeing/United Launch Alliance) and the white Orion spacecraft (Lockheed Martin) with its launch abort system are at the top. Photo: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Note that a launch can fail for a variety of reasons. August 29 is the first of three launch opportunities in this window. Archive dates are September 2nd and 5th. They then have to wait a few weeks before the next window opens.
As of this morning (Sunday, August 21), however, here’s the plan. All NASA briefings will be broadcast on NASA TV, NASA Live and the NASA app. Tuesday’s ESA briefing will be on ESA TV (ESA provides the Orion Service Module).
- Monday, August 22: NASA Post-Launch Readiness Review (LRR) Briefing, 7:00 PM ET
- Tuesday, August 23: ESA briefing on its role in Artemis, 5:00am ET (11:00am CEST)
- Friday, August 26: NASA Briefing on Industry’s Role in Advancing Human Space Exploration, 10:00 a.m. ET
- Saturday, August 27: NASA Briefing after the Mission Management Team (MMT) meeting, 11:00 a.m. ET
- Saturday, August 27: NASA Briefing on Lunar to Mars Exploration Plans, 2:30 PM ET
- Sunday, August 28: NASA Briefing with Countdown Update, 9:00 a.m. ET
- Monday, August 29:
- 12:00 (midnight): Refueling begins
- 6:30 a.m. ET: Full launch coverage begins in English on NASA TV and continues through launch, translunar injection and spacecraft separation
- 7:30 a.m. ET: Full launch coverage begins in Spanish on NASA’s Spanish-language social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and continues until 15 minutes after launch
- 8:33 – 10:33 a.m. ET: two-hour launch window
- The timing of the post-launch event can vary depending on when the launch occurs
- 12:00 PM ET: Post-Launch Briefing
- 4:00 PM ET: coverage of Orion’s first outward trajectory burn
- 5:30 p.m. ET: coverage of the first views of Earth from Orion
If all goes well, NASA hopes to send four crew members around the moon on Artemis II in 2024 and return humans to the lunar surface in late 2025, the first human landing on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
It’s a long way off, but NASA is already in the process of selecting sites to land two Artemis III astronauts, one of whom will be the first woman to walk on the moon. On Friday, NASA revealed 13 regions, each with at least 10 distinct landing sites, on the moon’s south pole that are candidate sites. This week (Tuesday-Thursday), NASA’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) will meet at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland to discuss these sites and other topics. On the agenda for Tuesday afternoon is an Artemis update session that includes a Starship update from SpaceX’s Nick Cummings. Lots of other good sessions too. This is a hybrid meeting, so there is a virtual option for those who cannot attend in person.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will participate in a pre-launch briefing tomorrow (Monday).
Artemis isn’t the only thing on NASA’s mind, either. It’s almost time for another crew swap on the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will fly aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 with two Russian cosmonauts on September 21. Rubio will hold a virtual press conference before the launch tomorrow morning (Monday). Its flight is the first as part of the crew exchange agreement the United States and Russia signed last month. Shortly after the launch of Soyuz MS-22, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina will be the first Russian woman to launch on an American shuttle-era Crew Dragon spacecraft as a member of Crew-5. There have already been several pre-launch briefings for Crew-5, but there may be more closer to launch.
And that’s not all. On Thursday, NASA and Boeing will provide an update on Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew program, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon competitor. Boeing finally successfully completed the unmanned Starliner flight test, OFT-2, in May. Next comes the Crew Flight Test (CFT). They had hoped to launch this before the end of this year, but NASA officials have hinted that it will likely slip to early 2023. Hopefully they will announce the date at Thursday’s briefing.
Nicolas Maubert, CNES representative and Space Counselor for the French Embassy in Washington, will be a guest at the Space Foundation’s Start Here for Space on Tuesday.
Lots and lots of other events this week too.
On Tuesday, the Space Foundation will hold the next in its Start Here for Space series, highlighting international collaboration.
Every Tuesday this month and into September, the Space Foundation is holding half-hour webinars with Washington representatives from non-US space agencies to talk about what their agencies are doing and about cooperation with the United States. This week’s guest is Nicolas Maubert from the French space agency CNES. Previous episodes (archived on the Space Foundation website) were with Sylvie Espinase of ESA, Masami Onoda of JAXA, and Jill Smith of CSA. Coming up are Krunal Joshi of ISRO and Marc Johemich of DLR. They are a really good introduction to what these countries are doing in space.
To pick just two more of this week’s other excellent events, we’ll turn to the national security space. On Wednesday, the Space Policy Institute and the Aerospace Corporation are teaming up to present a hybrid seminar on “After the KE-ASAT Moratorium: What’s Next?”. Experts will discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’ announcement in April that the United States would not conduct direct ascent (ASAT) anti-satellite tests, as Russia did last November. The United States invites other countries to make the same pledge. Harris chairs the White House National Space Council and its executive secretary, Chirag Parikh, will kick things off, followed by two top-notch panels on “a whole-of-government approach to space norms of conduct” and “the role of the private sector in space norms of conduct.” The personal meeting will be held at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a virtual option is available.
Breaking Defense reporter Teresa Hitchens will moderate an INSA webinar on the Intelligence Community’s use of commercial GEOINT on Thursday.
Then on Thursday, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) will have a webinar with the heads of commercial programs at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), Pete Mundt and Dave Gauthier, discussing the implementation of a commercial GEOINT strategy of the intelligence community. Moderated by Theresa Hitchens of Breaking Defense, this fireside chat should be quite enlightening about how the defense and intelligence communities are taking advantage of commercial opportunities in geospatial intelligence (GEOINT).
These and other events we know of as of Sunday morning are shown below. Check back throughout the week for others we learn about later and add to our calendar, or changes to them. We’ll also mention that the Chinese taikonauts aboard Tiangong-3 are expected to take a spacewalk soon, but as usual China hasn’t specified when. If we hear anything definitive, we’ll add it to the calendar.
Monday, August 22
Monday-Tuesday, August 22-23
Tuesday, August 23
Tuesday-Thursday, August 23-25
Wednesday, August 24
- NOAA Advisory Committee on Commercial Remote Sensing (ACCRES), Virtual, 9:00am-3:00pm ET
- After the KE-ASAT moratorium, what’s next? (Space Policy Institute/Aerospace Corp), George Washington Eliot University School of International Affairs, Washington, DC/virtual, 10:00am – 3:00pm ET
- NASA Space Weather Council, public participation is virtual only, 10:00am-5:00pm ET
- State of the Space Industry Base (Atlantic Council), Virtual, 2:00-4:00 PM ET
Wednesday-Thursday, August 24-25
Wednesday-Friday, August 24-26
Thursday, August 25
Friday, August 26
Saturday, August 27
Sunday, August 28
Monday, August 29
- Artemis I launch, KSC, 8:33 a.m. ET
- 12:00 (midnight): Refueling begins
- 6:30 a.m. ET: Full launch coverage begins in English on NASA TV and continues through launch, translunar injection and spacecraft separation
- 7:30 a.m. ET: Full launch coverage begins in Spanish on NASA’s Spanish-language social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and continues until 15 minutes after launch
- 8:33 – 10:33 a.m. ET: two-hour launch window
- The timing of the post-launch event can vary depending on when the launch occurs
- 12:00 PM ET: Post-Launch Briefing
- 4:00 PM ET: coverage of Orion’s first outward trajectory burn
- 5:30 p.m. ET: coverage of the first views of Earth from Orion
Last updated: August 21, 2022, 5:48 PM ET
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