WASHINGTON — Congress approved a budget reconciliation bill that includes nearly $10 billion for NASA human spaceflight programs and could also lead to the transfer of a space shuttle to Houston.
The House passed H.R. 1, the budget reconciliation bill, on a 218-214 vote July 3. That vote came two days after the Senate passed the bill, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote after a 50-50 deadlock.
The Senate had passed an amended version of H.R. 1, requiring the bill to go back to the House for final approval. Among the changes was a provision incorporated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, to provide $9.995 billion to NASA.
Of that funding, $4.1 billion would go to procure two additional Space Launch System rockets for Artemis 4 and 5, after the administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request for NASA proposed canceling SLS after Artemis 3. An additional $2.6 billion would go to complete the lunar Gateway, which had also been slated for cancellation in the budget proposal. The bill includes a token amount, $20 million, to go towards an Orion spacecraft for Artemis 4, after the budget rquest also proposed canceling Orion after Artmeis 3.
The bill includes $1.25 billion to supplement the operations budget of the International Space Station, offsetting cuts in the budget request. It also provides $325 million towards production of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, the spacecraft SpaceX is building for NASA that will prform the final phases of the deorbiting of the ISS at the end of its life.
A Mars Telecommunications Orbiter is funded in the bill for $700 million. The bill says the spacecraft would serve as a communications relay for both Mars Sample Return (MSR) and future human Mars missions, although the fiscal year 2026 budget request proposes to cancel MSR.
NASA centers would get $1 billion for infrastructure improvements, although the funding is limited to centers deemed to have a role in human spaceflight: the Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Michoud Assembly Facility and Stennis Space Center.
The bill’s passage, Cruz said in a statement after the Senate approved it, means “ensuring the U.S. – not China – gets to Mars and gets back to the moon first.”
“This legislation provides critical support to advance deep space exploration, land Americans back on the Moon, and continue laying the groundwork for future missions to Mars,” Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science Committee, said in a statement after the House vote July 3.
The reconciliation bill is separate from the traditional appropriations process, which is only now starting. The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up a commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill, which includes NASA, July 10. The House Appropriations Committee was also scheduled to take up its CJS spending bill next week but has postponed it, citing “scheduling changes.” It has not rescheduled the markup for the CJS bill.
Shuttle transfer provision
One item added to the proposal after its introduction last month is $85 million for what the bill calls a “space vehicle transfer.” The bill states that the money would be used to transfer a space vehicle, which has carried astronauts into space, to a NASA center involved in the commercial crew program and placed on public display by a nonprofit entity no more than five miles from that center.
While the language would appear to be open to interpretation, it is intended to move the space shuttle Discovery, currently on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington to the Johnson Space Center. Cruz and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced legislation earlier this year directing NASA to study that specific transfer.
“Houston has long been the cornerstone of our nation’s human space exploration program, and it’s long overdue for Space City to receive the recognition it deserves by bringing the Space Shuttle Discovery home,” Cornyn said in a July 1 statement after the Senate approved H.R. 1.
The effort by Cruz and Cornyn to transfer Discovery is linked to their belief that political factors led NASA not to award Houston a shuttle at the end of the program. A 2011 report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General concluded that NASA` complied with federal law when it selected sites for the shuttle “and was not improperly influenced by political considerations.”
How Discovery could be moved to Houston is unclear. The modified Boeing 747 aircraft used to ferry orbiters during the shuttle program have long since been retired. Overland transportation of the shuttle would be very difficult, and disassembling it is not feasible, Dennis Jenkins, a shuttle engineer who was director of the shuttle transition and retirement program, told collectSPACE in April, Transporting it by water would require a special enclosed ship, he added.
He estimated it could “easily” cost $1 billion to move Discovery, or more than ten times the amount included in the bill.