Congress – Spaceflight Now

NASA chief still hopeful to get more money for moon landing effort

July 9, 2020

House lawmakers this week proposed to fund NASA’s human-rated lunar lander development program at less than one-fifth of the level the Trump administration wanted, but NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday the House budget bill is just the “opening salvo” in an appropriations process that now goes to the Senate.

Lawmakers question NASA’s plan for a 2024 moon landing

October 18, 2019

Amid questions from lawmakers about the cost of the Trump administration’s proposal to accelerate a human return to the moon’s surface to 2024, the chairman of the House subcommittee responsible for helping write NASA’s budget said this week he favors keeping to the space agency’s earlier schedule for a crewed lunar landing by 2028.

NASA still looking for new human spaceflight chief

September 19, 2019

NASA hopes to have a new leader for the agency’s human spaceflight directorate by the end of the year to replace Bill Gerstenmaier, who held the post for nearly 14 years before his reassignment in July amid the Trump administration’s push to land humans on the moon by 2024, a NASA official said Wednesday.

Commercial crew capsules still beset by parachute problems

May 9, 2019

A malfunction during a drop test over Nevada last month for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon program has engineers re-examining the crew capsule’s parachutes, and Boeing has also encountered parachute failures during testing for its commercial crew capsule, a senior NASA official confirmed Wednesday.

NASA wrestles with what to do with International Space Station after 2024

May 20, 2018

Lawmakers last week questioned the Trump administration’s proposal to end direct U.S. government support of the International Space Station in 2025, citing concerns about the economic viability of commercial outposts in low Earth orbit.

New name for Space Launch System gets backing of lawmakers

May 3, 2015

A push to give NASA’s Space Launch System a new name is garnering support from lawmakers, who have written into legislation provisions that would order NASA to rename the heavy-lift rocket through a competition among schoolchildren.

House bill backs exploration at the expense of Earth science

May 3, 2015

A draft policy outline passed on a party-line vote by a House committee last week calls for redirecting funding from NASA’s Earth science programs into the space agency’s heavy-lift rocket and Orion crew capsule programs, an outcome NASA’s administrator said will set back climate change research.

Despite budget boost, Space Launch System will not fly before 2018

December 16, 2014

NASA’s heavy-lifting mega-rocket and its ground support systems at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will not be ready for launches until at least mid-2018, even with extra funding approved by Congress, the space agency’s senior human spaceflight official told lawmakers.

NASA gets budget hike in spending bill passed by Congress

December 14, 2014

NASA will receive $18 billion in the federal government’s 2015 budget passed by the U.S. Senate on Saturday, winning nearly all the funds the agency says it needs this year to develop commercial space capsules to fly astronauts to the International Space Station by the end of 2017.