What’s Ahead

Turkey
Image credit – Bill Buchanan / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Full Plate Awaits Congress After Thanksgiving Break

The House and Senate are on recess this week for the Thanksgiving holiday and will return next week to a large helping of pressing legislative business. Most immediately, the stopgap measure currently funding the federal government expires on Dec. 3, and Congress is expected to pass another to buy time to complete negotiations on the federal budget for fiscal year 2022. The next stopgap is likely to last a few weeks, though the lack of progress on a final deal has led some lawmakers to suggest Congress may ultimately resort to a full-year stopgap that would mostly leave agency budgets at their current levels for the rest of the fiscal year. Aside from the budget, the Senate plans to complete work on its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act before reconciling it with the House’s version. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has not yet indicated which of the nearly 1,000 amendments proposed by senators to date will receive consideration, but last week he backed off his push to attach his landmark innovation bill, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. Instead, he reached an agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to “immediately” begin negotiating changes to USICA through a separate conference committee. In parallel with negotiations on NDAA and USICA, Senate Democrats are expected to substantially modify the Build Back Better Act spending legislation that the House passed on a party-line vote last week. In addition to funding large parts of President Biden’s social and climate agendas, the bill currently includes several billion dollars for science agencies.

NASA Launching Collision-Course Asteroid Mission

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is scheduled to launch early Wednesday morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, following a trajectory that will bring it to the Didymos double-asteroid system in late September 2022, about 11 million kilometers from Earth. The spacecraft will collide head-on with the system’s smaller asteroid, and Earth-based observers will monitor the resulting change to its orbital period. The goal of the mission is to demonstrate kinetic-impactor technology that could potentially be used to deflect an asteroid from hitting the Earth. DART is part of the Planetary Defense program in NASA’s Planetary Science Division. It was developed by a team led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and has a total cost of $315 million.

In Case You Missed It

Biden signs Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
President Biden signs the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at a ceremony on the White House lawn on Nov. 15. (Image credit – Cameron Smith / The White House)

Biden Turns to Implementing Infrastructure Law

President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law on Nov. 15 and established an interagency implementation task force that will be co-chaired by National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. The task force also includes the heads of the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and Interior, among other leading federal officials. The new law will provide around a half-trillion dollars in new spending over several years, largely focused on priorities such as upgrading the U.S. electric grid, transportation systems, and broadband networks. It also includes around $25 billion for energy technology demonstration projects, with most of those funds going to a new Department of Energy Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, as well as over $1.6 billion for critical minerals R&D and supply chain security programs, split between DOE and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Science Committee Chair to Retire After 2022 Election

House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) announced last week that she will not seek another term in Congress, affirming a decision she made at the beginning of her last re-election campaign. Now 85, Johnson was first elected to represent her Dallas district in 1992 and has been a member of the Science Committee during her entire time in Congress. She became the committee’s lead Democrat in 2011, and she became the first woman and first African American to chair the committee when Democrats gained control of the House in 2019. In her leadership position, she has generally sought to forge bipartisan support for legislation, which during her first term as chair led the committee to play a key role in shaping the Energy Act of 2020. During her current term, she has orchestrated the House’s response to a major bipartisan push on innovation policy led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). In a statement, Committee Ranking Member Frank Lucas (R-OK) reflected on Johnson’s leadership, remarking, “She’s an old-school legislator who cares more about results than headlines, and I respect that deeply.”

Fusion Advocates Press Case for Further DOE Support

At a House Science Committee hearing last week, witnesses and committee members argued the Department of Energy should rapidly scale up its fusion energy R&D efforts as part of the nation’s broader decarbonization agenda. They also argued DOE has been slow to act on recommendations from a recent long-range plan for its fusion program as well as on requirements of the Energy Act of 2020, which directs DOE to establish several new fusion initiatives. The chair of the long-range planning committee, UCLA physics professor Troy Carter, stressed that the United Kingdom and China have begun building a variety of new fusion research facilities, adding, “In a sense, the U.K. and China are beating us to the punch on our own plan for fusion energy development.” Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Robert Mumgaard warned that failure to act quickly could lead private fusion companies to build in other countries, stating that more than $2.4 billion has already been invested in private fusion ventures worldwide. “All these companies are looking to see which governments are going to be the best partners, and unfortunately we are already seeing defections with a major facility that could have been built in the U.S. instead being built in the U.K.,” he said.

DOE Physicist Picked to Lead Homeland Security S&T Branch

The White House announced on Nov. 17 that President Biden is nominating Department of Energy official Dimitri Kusnezov to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, which has an annual budget of about $1 billion and focuses on issues such as critical infrastructure resilience and detection of chemical, biological, and radiological weapons. Kusnezov first joined DOE in 2001, working at the National Nuclear Security Administration, where he served as chief scientist from 2010 to 2019. He was nominated by President Obama to be NNSA’s deputy administrator for defense programs in 2016 but did not clear the Senate confirmation process before the administration’s end. From 2019 until this year, he was DOE’s deputy under secretary for artificial intelligence and technology and recently has worked to develop international partnerships in AI for the DOE Office of Science. Before joining DOE, Kusnezov spent 10 years as a physics professor at Yale University after earning a doctorate in theoretical physics from Princeton University. If the Senate approves his nomination, he will be the first person confirmed to the role since Reginald Brothers, who departed at the end of the Obama administration.

Senate Panel Advances NIST Nominee, Reviews FCC and NOAA Picks

At a meeting last week, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee advanced the nomination of Laurie Locascio to direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology on a voice vote. In advance of the hearing, Locascio responded to written questions from both Democratic and Republican committee members that addressed issues such as NIST’s manufacturing programs, research priorities, and semiconductor supply chain disruptions. Sen Rick Scott (R-FL), who was the only committee member to register opposition to her confirmation, submitted questions about NIST’s investigation of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Florida and China’s “growing aggression to influence standards-setting organizations.”
After the meeting, the committee heard from nominees for other positions, including climate policy expert Jainey Bavishi, who is in line to be deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Jessica Rosenworcel, who was picked to chair the Federal Communications Commission. Rosenworcel responded to several questions about the agency’s role in allocating spectrum and said that FCC’s interactions with other federal agencies should be more effectively coordinated through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. She also said that federal agencies should have “incentives” to use spectrum more efficiently so that they see spectrum reallocations as presenting more of an opportunity to make gains and as less of a threat.

ARPA–H Placed in NIH in New Bipartisan Bill

Last week, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Fred Upton (R-MI) introduced the Cures 2.0 Act, a major biomedical research bill framed as a follow-on to the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. Among its provisions, the bill recommends that Congress appropriate $6.5 billion to create an Advanced Research Project Agency for Health within the National Institutes of Health. ARPA–H is a priority for President Biden, and DeGette and Upton worked with the White House to develop the legislation, which hews closely to proposals the administration has put forward. However, some advocates argue that, contrary to the administration’s proposal, ARPA–H should be housed outside NIH to foster a distinct culture. A bill that Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) introduced last month would establish ARPA–H as a standalone agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Eshoo leads the policy subcommittee for NIH, while Upton is a senior Republican member of the panel. The House and Senate appropriations bills for NIH respectively include $3 billion and $2.4 billion to launch ARPA–H, though they stipulate the funds will only be available after Congress passes legislation establishing the agency in statute. Beyond ARPA–H, the Cures 2.0 Act also incorporates Upton and DeGette’s Research Investment to Spark the Economy (RISE) Act, which recommends Congress provide about $25 billion across science agencies to defray researchers’ pandemic-related losses.

Russian Anti-Satellite Test Threatens Space Stations

On Nov. 15, Russia tested an anti-satellite weapon by destroying its long-defunct Cosmos 1408 satellite, triggering an international outcry. According to a statement issued by U.S. Space Command the same day, the test “so far has generated more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and will likely generate hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris.” In addition to presenting a new persistent threat to satellite assets, the debris field also intersects the orbit of the International Space Station. In the hours after the test, the station’s crew closed hatches to isolate air loss in the event of hull damage, and, during two passes through the field, took refuge in docked spacecraft in case it became necessary to abandon the station. Russia’s test drew condemnations from, among others, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the latter remarking, “With its long and storied history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on the ISS, but also their own cosmonauts. Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening as well the Chinese space station and the taikonauts on board.” In a statement confirming the test, the Russian Defense Ministry denied the debris poses any danger.

Audit Details Cost and Schedule Burdens of Artemis Lunar Program

NASA’s Office of Inspector General released an audit report on the agency’s Artemis lunar exploration program on Nov. 15, documenting the “schedule, procurement, technical, and funding risks” it faces. The report accords with NASA’s recent announcement that the Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight of its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, will not launch until mid-2024, missing its late-2023 target date. While NASA has acknowledged that Artemis III, the program’s first crewed lunar landing, will take place “no earlier than 2025,” the report suggests the Trump administration’s goal of conducting the mission in 2024 is apt to be missed by “several years.” The report also criticizes NASA’s prior estimate of $28 billion for the total cost of the Artemis I, II, and III missions because the figure does not encompass the entire cost of the program, including spending on planned follow-on missions during that same timeframe. “When aggregating all relevant costs across mission directorates, NASA is projected to spend $93 billion on the Artemis effort up to fiscal year 2025. We also project the current production and operations cost of a single SLS/Orion system at $4.1 billion per launch for Artemis I through IV, although the agency’s ongoing initiatives aimed at increasing affordability seek to reduce that cost,” the report states.

DOE Eyes Expanded Hunt for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

At last week’s meeting of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, Department of Energy official Tim Hallman presented the results of a recent departmental review of potential ton-scale experiments to detect a neutrinoless double beta decay. If they occur, such decays would constitute evidence that the neutrino is its own antiparticle, which would present a new avenue for researching the origins of the neutrino’s slight mass as well as the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe. Because such decays would be exceptionally rare, detectors needed to find them will have to be large. Hallman said the review rated three proposed experiments highly: CUPID, nEXO, and LEGEND-1k, which would have total costs ranging from $64 million to $442 million. He also argued that more than one experiment should be pursued in order to independently verify any positive result. To support such an effort, he said that a recent summit explored the idea of setting up an international collaboration specifically for neutrinoless double beta decay that could also go on to support a follow-on multi-ton experiment. Hallman said the overall cost of supporting all three highly rated experiments would be about $100 million per year over 10 years and compared the amount to current spending on accelerator-based research, which he suggested is on the order of $2 billion per year worldwide. “The potential discovery of neutrinoless double beta decay would be every bit as much of a game changer as the discovery of supersymmetry at CERN, and is as compelling as any accelerator-based research currently underway,” he asserted.

Events This Week

All times are Eastern Standard Time and all congressional hearings are webcast, unless otherwise noted. Listings do not imply endorsement.

Monday, November 22

IOP: Physics and the Green Economy Summit
(continues through Thursday)
Moon Dialogues: “Lunar Governance: Lessons from Earth”
8:00 - 10:00 am

Tuesday, November 23

OSTP/Center for American Progress: “Bill of Rights for an Automated Society: The Health Care System”
12:00 - 1:30 pm

Wednesday, November 24

Thursday, November 25

Thanksgiving Day

Monday, November 29

Acoustical Society of America: 181st meeting
(continues through Friday)

Opportunities

NIST Seeking Input for Emerging Technologies Study

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is seeking public input to inform congressionally mandated studies on eight emerging technology areas: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain technology, advanced materials, 3D-printing, internet of things and its application in manufacturing, and unmanned delivery services. NIST welcomes input on “public and private sector marketplace trends, supply chain risks, legislative, policy, and the future investment needs” of each technology area. Submissions are due Jan. 31, 2022.

Space Studies Board Seeking Program Associate

The National Academies is hiring a program associate for its Space Studies Board. The associate will conduct background research, coordinate meetings of study committees, and oversee the publication of reports. Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and at least three years of relevant professional experience.

MITRE Accepting Applications for a Policy Fellow

MITRE, a non-profit that manages seven federally funded R&D centers, is accepting applications for a policy fellow who will help “shape the federal S&T investment strategy.” The fellow will contribute to policy studies and represent MITRE in engagements with Congress, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and other external groups including the media. Applicants must be U.S. citizens able to obtain a security clearance and should have an advanced degree in policy, science, engineering, or another relevant field.
For additional opportunities, please visit www.aip.org/fyi/opportunities. Know of an opportunity for scientists to engage in science policy? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.

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