Nimble NASA looks to return to its roots
New director sees opportunity to focus on space exploration
Mark Geyer isn’t worried about NASA becoming irrelevant as discussions escalate about the commercialization of space, especially the controversial plan to end federal funding for the International Space Station.
Instead, the new director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston sees it as an opportunity for the space agency to return to its roots, focusing on human space exploration after two decades of sending astronauts to the same place in low Earth orbit, where the station flies.
“NASA’s job has always been to provide vision … and to do things no company can make money doing,” Geyer said Tuesday in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “We need to let go of the stuff we know other
people can do and have the motivation to do themselves.”
President Donald Trump proposed earlier this year that space station operations be transitioned over to private companies in 2025, making the United States a customer of the scientific laboratory in the stars rather than one of its benefactors. The proposal, which must be approved by Congress, has drawn ire from legislative leaders concerned that companies will not be up to the task.
Federal funding for the space station was already set to end in 2024, but Congress can extend that date. Experts believe the space station will be operational until at least 2028.
“We need to start thinking about what the future of the ISS is going to be … (but) right now we’re just starting to see companies express an interest in going to the space station,” he said. “We want to make sure we have a target for when to transition the station, but we don’t want to mess it up,” Geyer said.
Geyer, 59, sat down with the Chronicle on Tuesday, about two weeks after taking over as Johnson’s 12th center director. He replaced Ellen Ochoa, a veteran astronaut who retired last month after 30 years with the agency. She was the second woman and first Hispanic person to lead the nation’s astronaut corps at Johnson, where human space flight research and training take place.
Launch capability returning
Geyer, an Indiana native who started his career at Johnson 28 years ago, said he feels fortunate to take the helm at such an exciting time in the space agency’s history.
In the next few years, NASA has plans to send American astronauts back near the moon, restart spaceflight launches in Florida rather than Kazakhstan (where astronauts currently rocket to the space station) and build a mini-space station orbiting the moon.
“I’m most excited for getting back to launching people from the U.S.,” Geyer said. “Our Russian partners have been terrific, but I think it’s important for us to have launch capability.”
As the new center director, Geyer oversees the nation’s astronaut corps, the Orion program and mission operations for the space station, among other things.
He wants to continue the Johnson tradition of “nearly flawless operations” on the space station since 2000, the first year crew lived aboard, and make sure the Orion spacecraft is ready for launch.
Along with transitioning space station operations to private companies, Trump’s $19.9 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year tasks NASA with launching an uncrewed Orion flight by 2021, followed by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023. It also would set aside $504.2 million in the coming year to begin working on the foundation on a $2.7 billion Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway — basically a mini-space station orbiting the moon where astronauts could live and work.
This is a significant departure from the Obama administration’s plans for the agency, which were focused on sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and then near Mars by the 2030s.
And that difference is one of the biggest obstacles NASA faces, Geyer said. With each president comes a new plan for the nation’s space endeavors.
Impact of policy changes
The Orion program, which Geyer worked on at Johnson, is a great example of this. The spacecraft was initially part of President George W. Bush’s Constellation Program, which aimed to send astronauts back to the moon. In 2010, the Obama administration ended the Constellation Program saying it was too costly and inefficient, though the Orion spacecraft was spared the ax to serve as a next generation capsule for future Mars missions.
The Trump administration has now shifted back toward Bush’s plans, using Orion to get astronauts back to the moon.
Policy fluctuations “can be difficult to weather,” he said. “It can cause fluctuations in the space program and that’s hard if you’re trying to move the country forward. But that’s life, so you need to develop strategies to navigate that.”
Geyer said he’s in favor of a return to the moon, but that reaching Mars by the early 2030s will be difficult if the agency does not start developing a spacecraft to take astronauts there soon.
“The current strategy is that we’re going to start first by accessing the surface of the moon,” Geyer said. “So in the budget horizon, which means over the next five years, we don’t have a Mars transport in that, so that would make it tough.”