Subcommittee Examines Progress and Plans of NASA’s Exploration Initiative
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics held a hearing to review the status of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) exploration initiative. Members of the subcommittee examined NASA’s current implementation issues, focusing both on near-term development challenges and the longer-term plans for the lunar exploration phase of the initiative.
In 2004, the Administration’s announced Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) mandated NASA focus on returning the Space Shuttle to flight, finishing the International Space Station (ISS), increasing the use of robotic exploration, and returning to the moon by 2020 and Mars thereafter. The VSE is arguably the program that will have the biggest impact on NASA’s future direction over the next several decades. Congress expressed its support for this new direction for the nation’s human space flight program in the NASA Authorization Act of 2005.
"NASA’s exploration initiative exemplifies both the strengths and weaknesses of the agency," stated Subcommittee Chairman Mark Udall. "From its beginning, NASA’s exploration initiative has suffered from chronic underfunding, with a ‘once-in-a-generation’ project to develop a new space transportation system ‘shoehorned’ into a NASA budget that in some years hasn’t even kept pace with inflation."
Members questioned witnesses regarding the status of NASA’s near-term missions and overall initiatives. In 2005, NASA completed the agency’s exploration architecture study (ESAS), which established a blueprint for implementing the VSE. Although NASA plans on spending almost $230 billion to achieve the agency’s short and long-term exploration initiatives over the next two decades, NASA’s budget requests have never matched what the Administration had said would be needed to carry out both the exploration initiative and its other important missions.
"A good number of my colleagues agree with me that we should be investing more in NASA—but there isn’t necessarily a consensus on what those funds should be used to accomplish. I think exploration is a worthwhile endeavor, and I support it," said Udall. "However, it is also clear to me that NASA’s core missions in aeronautics and science—and especially Earth science and climate research—are highly relevant to addressing the nation’s needs and must be better supported than they have been. And we need to see that NASA is exercising fiscal responsibility with its funding in all of these critical areas."
NASA’s FY09 proposed budget provides $3.5 billion to the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD). The ESMD budget allocates funding for the development and deployment of Constellation systems, such as the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) as well as for advanced research and technology development activities. The agency’s FY09 budget proposes $2,875.1 million for the Constellation system programs.
The Committee reviewed progress on the CEV and CLV development projects, as well as whether NASA’s overall exploration architecture is sustainable under the constrained budget outlook.
"We need to make sure that NASA’s exploration program is structured in a way that ensures that the critical long-term exploration research and technology investments will be made," added Udall. "We need to ensure that the activities we carry out on the Moon don’t become a counterproductive drain on NASA’s—and the nation’s—resources but instead help further our long-term exploration goals."
Chairman Udall also stressed the potential benefits of international cooperation in space exploration, rejecting the idea of rerunning a "space race" that the United States had already won nearly forty years ago.
"I think we need to be reaching out to fashion a new, internationally cooperative approach to exploration. That, more than any nationalistically driven competition, will ensure that U.S. leadership in space is maintained in a way that will deliver the maximum benefits to our citizens for decades to come," added Udall.
For more information on this hearing or to access witness testimony, visit the Committee’s website.
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