The House of Representatives has passed a bill that seeks to overturn agency regulations that were finalized in the last 60 legislative days of a president’s term, Government Executive reported Wednesday.

Charles Clark writes the Midnight Rules Relief Act received a 238-184 vote and will amend the 1996 Congressional Review Act to authorize Congress to nullify up to 61 “midnight” regulations in a single vote.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) said Congress could invalidate about half a dozen regulations, Clark reported.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) said during the floor debate that the Obama administration issued 226 midnight rules and 20 of them cost more than $100 million in economic impact, according to the report.

The Energy Department will construct the headquarters of its new Reducing Embodied-energy and Decreasing Emissions Institute in Rochester, New York.

REMADE Institute will utilize $140 million worth of federal funding and private-cost share commitments from more than 100 partners to help reduce the cost of technologies used to reuse, recycle and remanufacture materials including electronic waste, fibers, metals and polymers, the agency said Wednesday.

REMADE Institute, the fifth DoE-led institute under the Manufacturing USA network, will look to achieve a 50 percent improvement on overall energy efficiency by 2027 through new manufacturing techniques and small business opportunities that can support the country’s economic competitiveness and create jobs for American workers.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the institute will help foster innovation and technologies designed to mitigate harmful emissions and open jobs for the country’s economy.

President-elect Donald Trump is set to nominate Jay Clayton, a partner at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trump’s transition team said Wednesday Clayton will help the incoming administration to drive investment in U.S. companies and provide oversight of the financial sector and related industries as SEC chair.

“Clayton is a highly talented expert on many aspects of financial and regulatory law and he will ensure our financial institutions can thrive and create jobs while playing by the rules at the same time,” Trump said.

Clayton’s career includes providing advice to clients on matters related to regulatory and enforcement proceedings, merger-and-acquisition transactions and capital markets products.

He has authored several publications about regulatory law and previously served as adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, where he also received his juris doctorate.

NASA has unveiled two missions that seek to explore the history of the solar system through the use of robotic spacecraft to study asteroids.

The space agency selected the Lucy and Psyche missions out of five planetary mission finalists chosen through NASA’s Discovery Program, NASA said Thursday.

NASA will launch the Lucy mission in October 2021 in order to study Jupiter’s six Trojan asteroids and one main belt asteroid between 2025 and 2033.

“Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system,” said Harold Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission from Southwest Research Institute.

Lockheed Martin will build the Lucy spacecraft, while NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland will provide systems engineering, mission assurance and management support for the mission to be led by SwRI.

The Lucy mission will carry three payloads that include Goddard’s infrared mapping spectrometer, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s high-resolution visible imager and Arizona State University’s thermal infrared spectrometer.

NASA also plans to launch the Psyche robotic mission in October 2023 to explore a giant metal asteroid called 16 Psyche as well as understand how the planets divided into core, crust and mantle layers.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University will serve as the principal investigator on the Psyche mission.

NASA expects the Psyche spacecraft to reach the metal asteroid in 2030 once it completes the Earth gravity and Mars fly-bys in 2024 and 2025.

NASA will also extend for another year financial support for the Near Earth Object Camera project that involves the use of a space telescope to survey space regions near the Earth’s orbit.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has put off the launch of its weather satellite until after July due to technical errors, Space News reported Wednesday.

Jeff Foust writes the same problems that caused the cancellation of the first Joint Polar Satellite System’s launch in August 2016 have led to the latest postponement of flight.

“The main factors delaying the JPSS-1 launch are technical issues discovered during environmental testing of the satellite and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder instrument,” NOAA spokesman John Leslie was quoted as saying by Space News.

Leslie also cited issues with the common ground system for JPSS and other NOAA polar-orbiting satellites as causing the delay, according to the report.

The agency previously rescheduled the launch of JPSS-1 spacecraft to March from Jan. 20 due to the technical problems found in the spacecraft’s instruments.