Exposed rock on Mars

Exposed rock on Mars NASA file photo

The Future of Space Exploration, According to Congress

Mars, Europa and the search for life in deep space.

Lamar Smith dreams of one day trav­el­ing in­to out­er space.

The chair­man of the House Sci­ence, Space, and Tech­no­logy com­mit­tee has an in­tense in­terest in all things ex­tra­ter­restri­al and loves to talk about the fu­ture of space ex­plor­a­tion, a top­ic that has long been near and dear to his heart.

“People are fas­cin­ated by the uni­verse and by what’s up there and by what the United States and oth­er coun­tries are do­ing in space,” Smith said in an in­ter­view, adding: “The idea that we’re dis­cov­er­ing Earth­like plan­ets and oth­er sol­ar sys­tems is sort of the next big thing in space and it’s at­trac­ted a lot of at­ten­tion.”

Al­though Smith, 67, isn’t likely to get his chance to fly in space, the Texas Re­pub­lic­an has a chance to shape the fu­ture of Amer­ic­an space ex­plor­a­tion—and help de­term­ine just ex­actly what the ‘next big thing’ will be. The House sci­ence pan­el is charged with the au­thor­iz­a­tion le­gis­la­tion that sets spend­ing bench­marks, and pri­or­it­ies, for NASA.

Ex­plor­a­tion is a pri­or­ity not just for Smith, but for the pan­el’s Demo­crat­ic mem­bers as well. “NASA has in­spired me and I know without a doubt that it in­spires so many young people out there who will be our next great gen­er­a­tion of sci­ent­ists, en­gin­eers, and as­tro­nauts,” rank­ing mem­ber Ed­die Ber­nice John­sonalso a Tex­an, said.

So what comes next when it comes to space? Land­ing a hu­man on Mars is a ma­jor pri­or­ity on both sides of the aisle and there is bi­par­tis­an agree­ment on the need for a NASA roadmap on how to get there, though there are dis­agree­ments over the best way to achieve that goal.

There is en­thu­si­asm for con­tinu­ing to study the sol­ar sys­tem, the search for life else­where in the uni­verse, and en­sur­ing that NASA has the abil­ity and the fund­ing needed to ex­plore deep space. Re­pub­lic­an mem­bers are par­tic­u­larly ex­cited about the po­ten­tial to ex­plore Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, as well as in­tent on get­ting Amer­ic­an as­tro­nauts back to Earth’s moon again one day.

Demo­crats and Re­pub­lic­ans also want to make sure that the U.S. does not have to rely on Rus­sia to trans­port its as­tro­nauts to the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion.

NASA’s suc­cess­ful mis­sion of send­ing the New Ho­ri­zons space­craft hurt­ling past Pluto deeply in­spired many Amer­ic­ans as well as mem­bers of Con­gress, and cre­ated an op­por­tun­ity on Cap­it­ol Hill to talk about what the fu­ture of space ex­plor­a­tion should look like.

Of course, all of the many things that Amer­ica may en­deavor to achieve in space cost money. And in an era of budget cuts and belt tight­en­ing, it has not al­ways been easy to make sure that the money is there. The House and Sen­ate have not been able to agree upon a NASA au­thor­iz­a­tion bill since 2010. Two broad NASA au­thor­iz­a­tion bills have passed out of the House in re­cent years, but there has not been floor ac­tion for NASA au­thor­iz­a­tion in the Sen­ate.

That makes it harder for Smith’s com­mit­tee to set pri­or­it­ies for the space agency, but, even so, the pan­el has served as a power­ful plat­form—and mega­phone—for space ex­plor­a­tion, reg­u­larly con­ven­ing hear­ings and call­ing in ex­pert wit­nesses to talk about what comes next and what NASA needs to suc­ceed.

After Pluto’s New Ho­ri­zons mis­sion, the pan­el brought NASA mis­sion spe­cial­ists to Cap­it­ol Hill. The com­mit­tee has in­vited NASA Ad­min­is­trat­or Charles Bolden to the Hill, and worked with NASA to set up a satel­lite feed so that Amer­ic­an as­tro­nauts on the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion could tell com­mit­tee mem­bers, in their own words, what life is like in space.

While not dir­ectly re­lated to NASA, in May, the House passed the SPACE Act, a piece of le­gis­la­tion that ori­gin­ated in the space sub­com­mit­tee that aims to spur growth in Amer­ica’s com­mer­cial space sec­tor, help­ing com­pan­ies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Vir­gin Galactic con­tin­ue to de­vel­op space ex­plor­a­tion mis­sions and pro­jects.

Des­pite bi­par­tis­an sup­port for space travel, however, NASA has also been a sub­ject of a highly par­tis­an de­bate.

In April, the com­mit­tee passed a NASA au­thor­iz­a­tion bill on a party-line vote in­creas­ing fund­ing for deep-space-ex­plor­a­tion pro­grams and plan­et­ary ex­plor­a­tion above what had been sug­ges­ted by Pres­id­ent Obama’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. The bill sup­por­ted in­creased fund­ing for the Space Launch Sys­tem as well as the Or­i­on crew vehicle pro­gram.

The le­gis­la­tion drew cri­ti­cism from Demo­crats and NASA for cut­ting money for Earth sci­ence re­l­at­ive to cur­rent fund­ing levels and what the ad­min­is­tra­tion re­ques­ted. Bolden said that the bill “guts our Earth-sci­ence pro­gram and threatens to set back gen­er­a­tions worth of pro­gress in bet­ter un­der­stand­ing our chan­ging cli­mate.”

Re­pub­lic­ans de­fen­ded the al­loc­a­tion as a way to pro­tect space travel and re­bal­ance scarce re­sources at NASA, say­ing that Earth sci­ence has seen fund­ing in­creases in re­cent years. Chair­man Smith has also been highly crit­ic­al of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s com­mit­ment to deep space ex­plor­a­tion.

“I don’t want to cut NASA, I don’t want to cut what we do in space, and that’s why I’m res­ist­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s trans­fer­ring funds from NASA to cli­mate change. I want to keep NASA, NASA,” Smith said.

Demo­crats say that Earth sci­ence is just as de­serving of funds as any oth­er NASA pri­or­ity—a schism that has sparked ill will and deepened par­tis­an fault lines on the pan­el.   

“NASA’s re­search in Earth sci­ence, which deep­ens our un­der­stand­ing of our own plan­et and en­vir­on­ment, and the agency’s work in aero­naut­ics re­search are equally as im­port­ant as our hu­man space-ex­plor­a­tion pri­or­it­ies,” Ber­nice John­son said. “The chal­lenge be­fore Con­gress, and in par­tic­u­lar this com­mit­tee, is to not only sup­port hu­man space ex­plor­a­tion, but all of NASA’s long-term goals that make it a mul­ti­mis­sion agency.”

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