The U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee received warnings Thursday from two distinguished former NASA officials and a management expert from the U.S. General Accountability Office that the agency’s human space program could face upheaval after the 2016 presidential election, the kind of turmoil that erupted in 2010 soon after President Obama was sworn into office.
The newly elected Obama cancelled NASA’s Constellation Program, initiated by former President George W. Bush to return U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface by 2020 as part of a long term strategy to reach Mars. The lunar agenda and a decision to phase out the space shuttle program came in response to the 2003 shuttle Columbia tragedy.
Obama directed NASA to strive instead for a human mission to an asteroid by 2025 as the first step in a campaign to reach the Martian environs by the 2030s, a plan recently labeled as NASA’s Journey to Mars.
The House Science Committee seemed well aware of the concerns raised in the testimony it was about to hear from former Mike Griffin, NASA’s former administrator and a Constellation architect, and Eileen Collins, a retired NASA astronaut and the first women to command a shuttle mission.
S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the committee’s chairman, expressed concerns the Mars venture is stumbling even before the November elections because the Obama administration’s proposed 2017 budget would cut $800 million from the development of NASA’s Space Launch System exploration rocket and Orion crew vehicle.
Both are considered cornerstones for the current administration’s asteroid/Mars strategy.
The asteroid mission has been altered as well. The two phase Asteroid Redirect Mission would start with a robotic effort to collect a boulder from the surface of a Near Earth Asteroid and move it into a stable orbit around the moon. There, the boulder would become a destination for astronauts launched aboard an Orion capsule atop an SLS rocket.
Smith cited reports from two prominent advisory groups — the National Academies of Science and the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel — that characterized the changing asteroid/Mars objectives as costly turbulence and disruption.
“This regrettable approach continues to make a Mars mission all but impossible,” said Smith.
Part of the hearing dealt with the Space Leadership Preservation Act, proposed by U.S. Rep. John Culberson, who chairs the House appropriations panel responsible for NASA’s budget, as a possible means of avoiding future disruption.
Culberson’s proposal would attempt to stabilize spending and cement bi-partisan support by changing the way NASA’s administrator is chosen — currently by presidential nomination and U.S. Senate confirmation. The leadership preservation act would establish a new NASA “board of directors,” whose members would be chosen by the president and members of both political parties in the House and Senate. The board would be responsible for naming a NASA administrator to a 10-year term and for preparing an annual NASA spending plan.
Major deviations from the board’s programs presented to lawmakers as part of the annual White House budget would require a detailed explanation.
Culberson was open to changes to his proposal.
The current asteroid strategy is misguided because it has failed to win sufficient support from potential international partners and the broader science community, Griffin told the science committee. He remains an advocate of the lunar objectives.
“We must understand that if U.S. leadership in space is important to our nation, then it is necessary to have goals which potential partners might wish to embrace,” Griffin said in testimony presented to the committee.
Like Griffin, Collins did not specifically endorse Culberson’s bill.
But Collins stressed the need for a strategy that places an emphasis on tested space hardware and broad support. The moon as the next destination for astronauts meets those criteria, she said.
“My idea of a successful program is cut the fat, integrity always, get the smartest people and remind them every day that leadership is committed to supporting the mission,” Collins told science committee members.
Cristina Chaplain, director of acquisition and source management for the U.S. General Accountability Office, the audit arm of Congress, credited NASA with making strides in managing the cost and schedule challenges of its major programs over the last five years. Still more improvement is needed, she told the panel.
Orion, SLS and a major new initiative championed by Culberson to launch a complex robotic mission to Enceladus, the ice and ocean covered moon of Jupiter, are at risk, Chaplain cautioned.