The Senate Appropriations Committee recommends the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the agency’s method to streamline commercial launch policy, Space News reported Thursday. The committee approved a bill that boosts FAA’s funds for commercial launch licensing, but also urges the agency to create another draft on associated policy.

The agency’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation would receive $26 million via the bill, in contrast to the House’s $24.9 million proposal. A recent committee-issued report notes several concerns in FAA’s draft policy. 

The existing draft provides unnecessary entry barriers for newer firms, limits cost efficiency and does not address the policy’s effects to future space ports, according to the report. The committee urges FAA to revise launch licensing requirements and provide a supplemental rulemaking proposal notice before the release of a final policy.

The Department of Veterans Affairs unveiled a new scheduling capability in support of the agency’s plans to modernize its appointment system, Nextgov reported Thursday. Jointly built by Lockheed Martin’s Systems Made Simple subsidiary and Epic, the Medical Appointment Scheduling System has been fielded at the Chalmers. P. Wylie Ambulatory Care Center in Ohio until June 2020.

According to the report, the center features an updated framework and a specialized team that can accommodate the scheduling tool. John Windom, executive director of the Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization at VA, said the agency will transition to the Cerner Scheduling System and the Cerner Millenium EHR tool as part of the modernization initiative.

U.S. Special Operations Command is working to develop artificial intelligence technologies to help the military identify personnel who best suit certain tasks, Military.com reported Thursday.

SOCOM officials have collected and studied data on potential members for the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command. The information covers a very wide range and only excludes privacy-protected content, David Spirk, SOCOM’s chief data officer, told Military.com

“In the next six months, we’ll have a minimal viable product that we can begin using to use machine learning to identify who would be a good Marine Raider,” he said. If its successful, SOCOM will implement the approach across the special forces application process, Spirk noted.

Ball Aerospace delivered the Operational Land Imager 2 (OLI-2) for Landsat 9, completing development of the instrument on schedule and under budget, the company announced on Friday. Ball will continue to support instrument integration and spacecraft-level testing, working closely with NASA and the Landsat 9 spacecraft provider.

The Operational Land Imager 2 design is a virtual copy of the instrument’s predecessor, which launched in 2013 on the Landsat 8 spacecraft and is operating past its design life with no interruptions to operations for more than six years. 

OLI-2 is a push-broom sensor with a four-mirror telescope that takes measurements in the visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The instrument images the entire globe every 16 days at resolutions as high as 15 meters, which is sufficient to resolve land cover features such as forests, farms and urban centers.

“Ball Aerospace is enabling the sustainability of the nation’s land imaging architecture through collaboration with our customer and industry partners,” said Makenzie Lystrup, vice president and general manager, Civil Space, Ball Aerospace. “By developing innovative, reliable, cost-effective instruments and investing in the next generation of land imaging technology, we are ensuring the long-term continuity of Landsat’s important data record.”

About Ball Aerospace

Ball Corporation (NYSE:BLL) supplies innovative, sustainable aluminum packaging solutions for beverage, personal care and household products customers, as well as aerospace and other technologies and services primarily for the U.S. government. Ball Corporation and its subsidiaries employ 17,500 people worldwide and reported 2018 net sales of $11.6 billion.