Congress – Spaceflight Now

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.