InnerSpace Opinion “He who pays the piper, calls the tune.” On Wednesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress informing America’s elected representatives that due to consistent under-funding of the Commercial Crew program since its inception, his agency would be forking over an additional $490 million to Russia to pay for Soyuz crew […]
The results of a new study indicate that a return to the Moon is clearly within NASA’s reach and existing budget, providing the agency is willing to follow the commercial model employed in the COTS and CRS programs to get there. The full title of the study, which was partially funded by a grant from […]
Last week, a Senate Appropriations Committee “marked up” the FY 2016 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill which funds among other things, NASA. For supporters of several NASA programs, including Commercial Crew, it was a simply put, a very bad day. Despite repeated impassioned pleas from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to fully fund Commercial Crew at the requested […]
Yesterday, a House Appropriations subcommittee approved a draft NASA FY 2016 funding bill. As expected, the bill was set at the same overall funding level as that offered up by the Administration, at $18.592 billion. To that extent, the bill is non-controversial, but that is also about as far as it goes. Once again, the […]
Dawn of New Era : KSC Clock Adds Up the Minutes of the First SpaceX Launch to ISS If Project Constellation was the clear victim of President Obama’s Kennedy Space Center address, the immediate beneficiary was without a doubt the International Space Station program. Slated for de-orbit as soon as 2016 in some Constellation planning […]
President Obama at the Kennedy Space Center / April 15th 2010. Image Credit : NASA The following is Part I in a multi-part series looking back at changes in American space policy put forward by President fiove years ago. Wednesday, April 15th was perhaps not the best of days for many Americans. While for those […]
NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) ion thruster. / Image Credit NASA. After arriving at the dwarf planet Ceres one month ago, NASA’s ion powered Dawn spacecraft entered an initial capture orbit which took it to a maximum altitude of more than 46,000 miles above the icy body. Firing steadily, a 2.6 kw ion engine, one […]
April 15th, 2015 will mark the fifth anniversary of one of the most significant, and controversial policy changes in the history of the U.S. space program, the decision to cancel Project Constellation and NASA’s planned return to the Moon. Now, according to a story by veteran reporter Eric Berger in the Houston Chronicle, with less […]
Fact, followed by Editorial Opinion. Beginning in 2012, after NASA somewhat reluctantly adopted the Space Launch System architecture dictated by Congress the previous year, America’s space agency has been pushing the the narrative that it is on “A Journey to Mars.” For anyone looking beyond the hype however, it is has been rather clear that […]
On Wednesday, March 25, NASA announced that it had reached a decision regarding which option the agency is to pursue as part of its Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM. In what came as no great surprise to those who have been following the space agency’s painful struggle to come up with an achievable mission plausibly […]
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