Space Politics

A NASA authorization bill that sailed through the House Science Committee in April passed the full House Monday by nearly a unanimous vote. After a brief floor debate where no members expressed opposition, the House passed HR 4412 on a 401-2 vote, far above the two-thirds threshold needed for passage under suspension of the rules. The two members voting against the bill were Reps. Paul Broun (R-GA) and Mark Sanford (R-SC); neither spoke against the bill on the House floor nor otherwise explained their votes.

During the half-hour floor debate, members of the House Science Committee praised both the bill and the bipartisan aspect of the bill, a far cry from the partisan debate over a previous version last summer. “This act has a come a long ways from its original state nearly a year ago, when the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, of which I serve as ranking member, passed a different version of the bill on a party-line vote, a departure from the committee’s traditional bipartisan approach to NASA,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX). “However, much has changed since that time,” she added, thanking the committee leadership for work on the revised bill.

The bill authorizes funding for only the current fiscal year, but more importantly includes a number of policy provisions in the bill, from a clarification of termination liability for NASA programs to the requirement for the agency to develop an “exploration roadmap.” Some members in the floor debate linked that latter provision to the National Research Council’s report last week that recommended the development of a “pathways” approach to human space exploration.

The bill also blocks NASA from spending money on its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and searches for smaller asteroids that would be targets for the ARM, requiring instead NASA develop a report with detailed cost and schedule estimates for the mission and an explanation of the technologies developed for the ARM that would be suitable for future human missions to the Moon or Mars. “The bill reflects the skepticism that members of the Science Committee and the scientific community have about the Obama Administration’s proposed asteroid retrieval mission,” said committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). “Congress will be better equipped to consider the administration’s proposed missions once we have all the proper information.”

The Senate has yet to take up its version of a NASA authorization bill. At the 30th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last month, a Senate Commerce Committee staff member said a number of topics were under consideration for their version of an authorization bill, including extending ISS operations beyond 2020 and maintaining competition in the commercial crew program, but gave no timeline for when a bill might be introduced.

As expected, the NASA funding levels in the Senate’s Commerce, Justice, and Science funding bill are broadly similar, but not identical, to those in the bill the House passed last week. From the report accompanying the bill, here’s how the Senate’s funding levels compare to those in the House and the President’s budget request (PBR):

(Note that the House numbers above do not reflect the transfer of $7 million from Space Operations to Space Technology called for in an amendment the House approved last week; the amendment did not specify from where within Space Operations the money should be taken.)

Some details from the report language:

Science: There’s good news for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) in the bill, as it provides $87 million for the airborne observatory to continue operations, about the same as the program received in fiscal year 2014 and far above the $12 million requested to mothball SOFIA. The committee, the report notes, “believes that such [cancellation] decisions for science missions should be made only after a senior review that evaluates the relative scientific benefit and return from continued investment.”

The report doesn’t discuss the decision by last month’s astrophysics senior review to end the Spitzer Space Telescope mission, but does note language in the senior review report expressing concern about a lack of funding for astrophysics missions in general. “The Committee believes that the decision to continue supporting large-scale science missions, such as these astrophysics resources, should first be considered for their scientific merit and viability and then in the context of any fiscal constraints,” it states, directing NASA to do that.

Astrophysics overall receives $100 million above the administration’s request. However, that $100 million is more than offset by the increases to SOFIA ($75 million above the administration’s request) and $56 million for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), $42 million above the administration’s request.

Planetary science did not get the same increase as in the House, with the Senate electing to fund most programs at the PBR levels. The request does provide an additional $20 million for Discovery and $65.7 million for Mars Exploration. Unlike the House, which allocated $100 million for a Europa mission, the Senate does not earmark any additional funds for it, but does direct NASA to use the Space Launch System (SLS) for the baseline mission profile under development.

In Earth sciences, the Senate offers a slight increase for the next Landsat mission, but directs NASA to accelerate planning for that effort, noting that Landsat 7 could end its mission as soon as 2017. “The Committee does not concur with various administration efforts to develop alternative ‘out of the box’ approaches to this data collection—whether they are dependent on commercial or international partners,” the report stated, calling instead for a more conventional satellite procurement not to exceed $650 million and launch by 2020.

The bill also transfers funding for the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) and Jason-3 missions from NOAA to NASA’s Earth sciences program, and also adds $25.6 million for Jason-3 and $24.8 million for DSCOVR.

Exploration: The bill adds a significant amount of funding for SLS, from $1.38 billion in the administration’s request to $1.7 billion in this bill. Orion gets a smaller increase, from $1.05 billion to $1.2 billion. “The additional resources provided in this bill will ensure that NASA can make the investments necessary, including those required for risk mitigation, to maintain a 2017 launch date” for the first SLS mission, the report stated.

The Senate is slightly more generous than the House for commercial crew, providing $805 million versus the $785 million in the House bill, although both fall short of the administration’s request of $848 million. The Senate report does not include language calling for a downselect to a single company, as the House report does, but does require “certified cost and pricing data for prime contractors, for any contracts entered into to support the development of a commercial crew vehicle.” The report would also require NASA to provide Congress with quarterly reports “that detail the funds invested by NASA and by the awardees during the previous quarter and cumulatively, including legacy launch systems that may be integrated with the crew vehicle.”

That language has generated opposition from commercial space advocates, like the Space Access Society, which sent out a notice yesterday in opposition to that provision of the report. “‘Certified Cost And Pricing Data’ is a totally inappropriate requirement for commercial fixed-price vendors, such as the Cargo Resupply Services companies and the Commercial Crew bidders,” the organization argued, fearing those provisions could increase costs for those provides by a factor of 1.5 to 3.

Space Technology and Space Operations: The bill provides $580.2 million for Space Technology, below both the administration’s request and the House bill, which was already below what NASA requested. It directs NASA to put “an increased focus” on Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) awards to companies with fewer than 50 employees. It also specifies $17 million be spent on the Flight Opportunities program for flying experiments on parabolic aircraft or suborbital vehicles.

The report also directs NASA to spend $130 million on satellite servicing efforts, using a combination of funding from Space Technology and Space Operations. That funding would support a “Restore Pathfinder” technology demonstration mission to test servicing technologies on a satellite in LEO or GEO by 2017. “Given constraints imposed by the Budget Control Act, satellite servicing offers a unique and valuable means to stagger the capital requirements for new missions by significantly extending the useful life of existing ones,” the report states.

The report also directs NASA to consider the requirements of the Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Virginia as part of the agency’s “21st Century Launch Complex Program”, which has been focused on the needs of the Kennedy Space Center. “There are now growing capacity issues at WFF that, if not resolved, could soon prevent the center from taking on small and large missions due to limitations associated with spacecraft processing and fueling facility and associated facilities that need to be addressed,” the report states. The bill includes $8 million above the administration’s $25.9-million request for the program.

Wednesday morning’s briefing on the Committee on Human Spaceflight’s report largely followed the key points laid out in the report and discussed here. That included the decision to make Mars the “horizon goal” for human space exploration, a discussion of some of the exploration architectures included in the report, and other issues about public sentiment and spending.

The committee’s leadership did make it clear in the briefing that they do not consider NASA’s current plans adequate. “The program of record, we believe, will not be able to get us to the ultimate horizon goal in a foreseeable amount of time,” so co-chairman Jonathan Lunine, echoing comments made by the other co-chairman, Mitch Daniels. “We recommend a change to what we call a ‘pathways’ approach to human space exploration. This is a specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destinations that led to the horizon goal and for which there is technology feed forward from one mission to subsequent missions.”

That comment would appear to be a sharp rejection of the “flexible path” approach that NASA largely adopted from the Augustine Committee’s 2009 report. Yet NASA, in a statement Wednesday afternoon, largely endorsed the report.

“After a preliminary review, we are pleased to find the NRC’s assessment and identification of compelling themes for human exploration are consistent with the bipartisan plan agreed to by Congress and the Administration in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and that we have been implementing ever since,” NASA said. “There is a consensus that our horizon goal should be a human mission to Mars and the stepping stone and pathways thrust of the NRC report complements NASA’s ongoing approach.” The statement makes no mention of the comments by the committee rejecting the program of record, or more technical criticism in the report of a mission architecture that includes the Asteroid Redirect Mission.

The report also got an endorsement from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). “This is affirmation that a mission to Mars is a go,” he said in a statement. “But as the report points out, we’ll have to give NASA sufficient resources to get this done.” Nelson’s statement doesn’t address the criticism of NASA’s current plans found in the report.

The criticism of the ARM was highlighted in a statement by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Science Committee. “The NRC report also calls into question the Obama administration’s continued focus on the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), highlighting ‘an underlying concern that ARM would divert U.S. resources and attention’ from other potential missions,” he states. “The Committee has heard a number of concerns about ARM, as well as promising alternatives such as a flyby mission to Mars and Venus in 2021.” However, the report is silent on the 2021 Venus/Mars flyby concept developed by Dennis Tito’s Inspiration Mars effort, not including it in any of their mission architectures.

In a brief markup session Tuesday morning, a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee approved a funding bill that would give NASA $17.9 billion in fiscal year 2015, including boosting funding for science and the Space Launch System.

“We were very disappointed in the President’s request,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chairwoman of both the full appropriations committee and the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) subcommittee, in her opening statement about the bill. She and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), worked together “to make sure that we maintained the balanced space program of human spaceflight, science, and discovery, and at the same time promote aeronautics.”

The text of the bill itself has not been released, but the hearing offered a few clues to its contents. Mikulski said she “listened to Sen. Shelby when he said we needed more money for the SLS rocket,” providing $1.7 billion for the Space Launch System. The administration had requested $1.38 billion for SLS, while the House bill offered $1.6 billion; both also included over $300 million for ground systems.

The markup provided a few other data points for the NASA budget, including $5.2 billion for science (the House bill provides $5.19 billion, while the administration requested $4.97 billion.) The bill provides $3 billion for International Space Station operations, comparable to both the original request and the House bill. For commercial crew, the Senate bill offers $805 million, less than the $848 million requested but slightly more than the $785 million in the House.

However, the bill includes a provision requested by Sen. Shelby regarding “transparency” in the commercial cargo and crew programs. That language, he said, “provides greater accountability and budgetary transparency in the commercial crew program and future commercial cargo missions,” he said. “I believe we must ensure that the taxpayers are getting the best value for their dollar, and I believe the language here will help make that happen.” According to a statement from Shelby’s office, the bill would require “certified cost and pricing data (consistent with FAR requirements)” for those programs.

The bill goes on to the full appropriations committee for consideration at 10am Thursday.