Trump’s NASA sees Space Force as a means to bring free market capitalism to the final frontier, Muckrock “In an internal draft of NASA’s “National Exploration Campaign Report” from August 2018, the authors of the report identify the very first of five strategic goals for the new campaign as “Transition U.S. human spaceflight in LEO to commercial operations, which support NASA and the needs of an emerging private sector market.” […]

Getting NASA to Comply With Simple FOIA Requests Is a Nightmare “Trying to effectively use the Freedom of Information Act can be hell. Maybe a police department will demand a ridiculous and seemingly arbitrary fee to collect records, or perhaps an agency simply won’t respond to requests. Judging by Motherboard’s own requests as well as those from Freedom of Information organizations, one government body in particular stands out for turning […]

NASA blocks FOIA request for potential White House ‘media blackout’ orders, Daily Dot “Users of a popular online service that helps the public acquire legal access to government records face new hurdles when petitioning NASA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The National Aeronautics Space Administration has begun rejecting public records requests from users of FOIA request-filing service MuckRock, which doesn’t provide what the agency calls a “personal mailing […]

NASA Open Government 2016 Plan, NASA CIO Keith’s 15 Sept note: With regard to the Open NASA thing at FOIA this report says “NASA’s FOIA program provides access to agency documents through a citizen-centered service. NASA is committed to providing the public with excellent customer service as well as access to disclosable agency documents in accordance with all appropriate laws and regulations. Each Plan listed improvements, consolidations, and revised processes. […]

Keith’s note: It is time to examine how NASA and CASIS have interacted since 2011. Little, if anything, has ever been publicly released with regard to how CASIS reports its progress to NASA or how NASA measures or responds to CASIS about their performance. The OIG and GAO have mentioned this matter in prior reports. Last week the NASA Advisory Council spent a lot of time trying (with little success) […]

Keith’s note: On 17 November 2015 NASA issued a press release titled “NASA Awards Two Robots to University Groups for R&D Upgrades” regarding NASA JSC’s R-5 robot. At the time I asked “Is JSC’s R5 Droid Worth Fixing?“. I sent NASA PAO a simple request asking “How many applications/proposals were submitted? Which schools submitted proposals?” PAO replied “Thanks for reaching out to us. To answer your question, it’s not our […]

Procedures for Disclosure of Records Freedom of Information Act Regulations (NASA, Federal Register “Sec. 1206.300 How to make a request for Agency records. (b) NASA does not have a central location for submitting FOIA requests and it does not maintain a central index or database of records in its possession. Instead, Agency records are decentralized and maintained by various Centers and Offices throughout the country. (c) In accordance with the […]

NASA MSFC Says That SLS Performance Specs Fall Under ITAR “You requested the Technical Performance Metrics (TPM) presented to SLS senior management on a monthly basis for TPMs created during Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012. The documents requested contain export-controlled information and are being withheld in their entirety pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3).”

FOIA Front: Space agency on different planet with FOIA response?, Washington Examiner “Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, also demanded detailed records of conference spending by agencies in April. So knowing of those requests to NASA, The Washington Examiner submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request earlier this month seeking all documents the agency prepared in response to the […]

NASA takes more than a year to provide shuttle decision documents, Dayton Daily News “After the National Aeronautics and Space Administration chose not to assign a retired space shuttle last year to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the Dayton Daily News filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking NASA to provide documents supporting its decisions on where to send the orbiters. NASA initially took 13 months […]