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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 26, 2008
MEDIA CONTACT: Matt Mackowiak
Sen. Hutchison Announces Senate Passage of NASA Reauthorization Bill
$20.2 Billion Bill Awaits House Passage Today
WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) announced that late Thursday the Senate passed the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2008 which will provide $20.2 billion in funding for Fiscal Year 2009. The bill includes funds for a number of important NASA initiatives for which Sen. Hutchison has strongly advocated, including rapidly shrinking the space gap and delivering the Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Senate adopted a substitute amendment which replaced the entire content of the House-passed bill with language that had been pre-negotiated with the House Science and Technology Committee and represented a consensus of the House and Senate. This enables the House to consider the bill under Suspension of the Rules and pass it without further amendment, which is expected to occur this afternoon.
“Throughout my Senate career, I have been a strong supporter of NASA,” said Sen. Hutchison. “This bill reaffirms our commitment to support the goals of U.S. space exploration policies at NASA, including activities related to Moon missions and Mars exploration.”
“With other countries moving forward with manned spaceflight, the stakes are too high for America to lose its edge as the world leader in space exploration,” said Sen. Hutchison.
The reauthorization includes a number of provisions that ensure the United States has uninterrupted human access to space, including a report on the lack of a U.S. human spaceflight system to replace the space shuttle and termination or suspension of any activities that would preclude flying the Shuttle after FY 2010.
The reauthorization also directs NASA to take all necessary steps to fly an extra Shuttle mission to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS. Given the importance of the ISS to the U.S. Space Program, the bill requires NASA to develop a plan to support the operations of the ISS until at least 2020 to ensure that the ISS’s scientific capabilities are utilized to the maximum extent.
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