NASA’s course
Cruz must step up to fill void left by two defeated congressmen to protect the agency.
Celebratory news coverage of the space rover InSight’s successful landing on Mars in November showed how much attitudes have changed since that bittersweet moment on July 21, 2011, when space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the last time at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Atlantis landing ended the 30-year-old shuttle program and left big question marks about the future of NASA and human space flight.
Much of the pessimism felt at that time has been gradually replaced by a sense of purpose generated by the continuing success of the International Space Center, deep space robot missions like Insight’s and NASA’s so-far-successful embrace of ambitious commercial partners who are helping keep America in the forefront of space exploration. In the aftermath of the midterm elections, Congress too must be a partner in keeping NASA on course.
Two lawmakers who would have played roles in that endeavor, Republican Rep. John Culberson of Houston and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, lost their re-election bids in November. Nelson, who in 1986 took a ride as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia, often worked with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA. Absent Nelson, Cruz must continue to work across the aisle to determine and protect the agency’s best interests.
Culberson was defeated by Democrat Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a corporate attorney who didn’t say much about NASA while campaigning in the wealthy and well-educated 7th District. After the election, Fletcher told skeptics that she “absolutely” supported the agency and that it’s “critical that we support scientific research and exploration.” It would be good to see her work with Republican Rep. Brian Babin, chair of the House Subcommittee on Space. His 36th District is home of the Johnson Space Center.
NASA will need strong congressional support to continue building the Lunar Gateway space station, which it wants to place in orbit around the moon by 2026. The space platform will provide a base for astronauts farther from Earth than the International Space Station, which is overseen by NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. President Donald Trump wants to turn NASA over to private managers but both Cruz and Nelson have objected. Cruz, while a champion of the private space industry, is right to be protective of NASA.
NASA is also building its Orion spacecraft, which will use the moon as the staging base for a manned flight to Mars sometime in the 2030s. Propulsion systems for the Orion’s journey are being tested at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, with a six-day test flight to the moon scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center by 2023. Also planned: A test mission to an asteroid by 2025.
Those proposed launch dates are little changed from when they were first envisioned during the Obama administration. That’s also when the privatization of space travel intensified. Since then, companies like Northrop Grumman, United Launch Alliance, Aerojet Rocketdyne, SpaceX, founded by Tesla founder Elon Musk; and Blue Origin, founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have won bids for lucrative contracts to develop rockets and spacecraft. Some of these companies have accomplished things never done before, like the reusable rockets SpaceX has sent into orbit and landed safely back on Earth.
NASA selected nine companies in November to compete for shares of up to $2.6 billion in contracts over the next 10 years to build and launch instruments, experiments and small robotic payloads to the moon. “We’re doing something that’s never been done before,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “We want multiple providers that are competing on cost and innovation so we as NASA can do more than we’ve ever been able to do before.”
NASA’s continued investment in private partnerships may determine the future of the Johnson Space Center, which has been the locus for human space flight ever since the original Mercury Seven astronauts were welcomed to Houston in 1959. Given how important NASA is to this state, members of Congress from Texas, and especially chairman Cruz, should help guide the space agency’s steps toward Mars and beyond.