The sound and fury over a NASA authorization bill

摘要

When the bipartisan leadership of the House Science Committee introduced a NASA authorization bill Jan. 24, it surprised many people in the civil space community. The bill appeared to reject the goal of NASA's Artemis program to return humans to the moon by 2024, requiring instead a return only by 2028. It also spurned NASA's approach for using public-private partnerships for building a lunar lander in favor of a more conventional government-led approach, and minimized activities at the moon to just those needed for a later human mission to Mars.