Today's Senate Hearing on NASA
Statement of NASA Administrator Bolden: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
“At its core, NASA’s mission remains fundamentally the same as it always has been and supports our new vision: “To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind.” This statement is from the new multi-year 2011 NASA Strategic Plan accompanying the FY 2012 budget request, which all of NASA’s Mission Directorates, Mission Support Offices and Centers helped to develop, and encapsulates in broad terms the very reason for NASA’s existence and everything that the American public expects from its space program.”
– Budget and Program Description Enclosures
Chairman Rockefeller Remarks on Realizing NASA’s Potential: Programmatic Challenges in the 21st Century
“The space station itself recently passed a milestone of its own. Last November marked 10 years of a continuous human presence on the space station. Much of that time has been devoted to construction, but the astronauts on board still found time to conduct more than 1,200 experiments that supported the research of more than 1,600 scientists worldwide.”
Key Quotes from Today’s Hearing on Realizing NASA’s Potential: Programmatic Challenges in the 21st Century
“Unless we get a pretty dramatic budget cut, we plan to go execute that mission. We see that mission as extremely critical to us. What that mission provides for us is it gives some margin that if commercial providers are a little bit late and they don’t fly in late 2011 and 2012 as they have been planning, then we’ve got some time through 2012 that we’ll have enough supplies pre-positioned on the Space Station that we can continue to do quality research and we can continue to keep our crew size at six aboard the Station through that period until 2013. If we don’t have that shuttle flight then it is absolutely mandatory that the commercial cargo providers come online this year and early into 2012. I don’t think that’s a prudent strategy. We need some margin.” Mr. William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, NASA in response for comment on whether the STS-135 will fly this year and the benefits of the mission
Hutchison Pushes NASA Leadership on Implementation of Law
“It is important to remember [the NASA Reauthorization Act of 2010] is a law, not just an advisory framework. Compliance is not something we should have to hope for, it is something that we expect and is required. At the same time, the president’s budget request proposes a significant increase to the very same areas prioritized by the Administration’s last request, which Congress rejected,” said Sen. Hutchison.”
