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NASA's Infrastructure Cross Roads

KSC An image, circa 2000, of key facilities at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA is grappling with aging infrastructure that hindres its ability to carry out future missions, a recent report concluded. (credit: NASA) NASA’s infrastructure crossroads by Jeff Foust Monday, November 4, 2024 Bookmark and Share The next administration will have its share of challenges involving NASA to deal with. There may be scrutiny of NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration campaign, including both its technical approach and its schedule. It will have to examine if NASA’s plans to replace the International Space Station with commercial stations are feasible and on a schedule that will permit the ISS’s retirement in 2030. NASA’s science programs are also facing budget challenges, and the next administration could revisit whatever the agency decides in the coming months on a new approach to the Mars Sample Return program. Underlying all of those issues is problems with the agency’s infrastructure. Many of NASA’s field centers still rely on facilities built many decades ago, dating back to the original space race with the former Soviet Union if not earlier. That aging infrastructure is putting a strain on NASA’s ability to carry out its various missions independent of specific technical or budgetary challenges those missions face. “NASA’s solution to the problem has been to underinvest in infrastructure and so on in the future,” Augustine said. “That tactic, frankly, has run out of gas.” The problem with NASA’s infrastructure is not a new one, but is now an issue that can no longer be deferred. That was the overarching conclusion of a report issued in September by a National Academies committee chartered by Congress in the 2022 NASA authorization act and chaired by Norm Augustine, the retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin. The report, titled “NASA at a Crossroads,” got its name from the committee’s conclusion that the agency was at a crossroads regarding investment in its infrastructure. “The underpinnings of the unique and critical capabilities the agency provides to the United States are eroding and will be inevitably lost if certain trends are not reversed,” the report stated. In a webinar held by the National Academies to roll out the report, Augustine and other committee members said that NASA has underinvested in facilities because of budget pressures. The amount of the agency’s budget that went to “mission support,” a line that includes facility maintenance, fell from 20% of NASA’s overall budget in 2013 to 14% in 2023. “In an opportunity-rich environment, such as NASA has confronted over the years, the choice has too frequently been to pursue near-term missions at the expense of investing in the ostensibly invisible foundational assets of the organization,” the report stated. Augustine, at the webinar, offered a blunter explanation of that “opportunity-rich environment”: NASA was being asked to do more than its budget provided. “NASA’s solution to the problem has been to underinvest in infrastructure and so on in the future,” he said. “That tactic, frankly, has run out of gas.” The committee’s concerned ranged from specific infrastructure, like the Deep Space Network that is increasingly overtaxed trying to support a growing number of missions, to basic facilities like labs and offices. “In fact, during its inspection tours, the committee saw some of the worst facilities many of its members have ever seen,” the report stated. “The concerns that it faces are ones that have built up over decades,” Augustine said of the agency during the webinar. “NASA truly is, in our view, at a crossroads.” The infrastructure comments in the report got the most attention, but the committee also raised concerns about investment in enabling technologies, its workforce, as well as “systemic” issues like a shift in management authority from field centers to NASA headquarters. The committee came up with eight major recommendations included in the report. It called for sufficient funding for infrastructure “even if that requires a rebalancing of the relative allocations of funding between mission work versus institutional support,” as well as the establishment of a working capital fund for infrastructure upkeep. Others called for improving investment in technologies and development of a human capital strategy. The report did not prioritize those recommendations. However, in an interview after the release of the report, Augustine said he considered two of the eight recommendations the most important. One was the recommendation on increasing investment in mission support, which he said could be tackled in two ways. “The first solution is to give NASA more money,” he said, arguing that NASA is a “miniscule” part of the overall budget, even with the recent caps on discretionary spending. “Getting more money is something you can hope for but can’t bet on.” The second approach, he said, it to shift money from missions to mission support. “Just don’t so some of the missions,” he said. “That’s going to be really painful.” He added that neither he nor the committee attempted to identify what missions should be curtailed or cancelled to free up money for mission support. “What are the institutional transformation initiatives we need to implement starting today,” Swails said of the ANSA 2040 effort, “to make sure we’re set up for success in the future?” The other recommendation he considered the most important was what the report called a “priority assessment of its current mission management model,” which he said involves ensuring the “proper checks and balances” between center management and management of mission directorates at headquarters. “The belief of the committee is that this is out of balance and could have dire consequences,” he said in the interview. He added, though, that his committee was “very reluctant” to tell NASA what that balance should be. “That is something it will have to address on its own.” NASA 2040 The National Academies report comes as NASA is working on an internal effort to reshape the agency called NASA 2040. “It’s an agency transformation initiative to propel us into the future,” said Casey Swails, NASA deputy associate administrator, during a talk at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium last week in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA has mentioned the NASA 2040 initiative from time to time but rarely discussed it in detail outside the agency. The effort has the goal of making NASA the “preeminent organization” in space science and engineering through various institutional reforms. Swails said the approach to NASA 2040 is modeled on other strategies, like its Moon to Mars architecture, that “start from the right” with a specific end state and work backwards to determine how to get there. “What are the institutional transformation initiatives we need to implement starting today,” she said, “to make sure we’re set up for success in the future?” That work has focused on what the initiative calls “workstreams” in seven areas: mission, structure, budget, people, infrastructure, technology, and process. Those efforts are led by personnel at both headquarters and the field centers with assistance from more than 200 “employee champions” that serve as liaisons between leadership and the overall workforce. “This is a whole-of-agency effort,” she said. “We’ve been focused on this as an entire leadership team.” She highlighted the work of the technology workstream, which is looking less at mission-specific technologies than those that enable agency operations, from artificial intelligence to cybersecurity. “This is more around the technology to help us do our jobs.” One example of the efforts coming out of those workstreams is the concept of a “NASA front door” for companies interested in working with the agency. “How many of you can say where NASA’s front door is?” Swails asked the audience, getting muted laughter in return. Even at a single center, she argued, there can be so many ways for companies to try to seek to do business with, or engage in partnerships with, the agency, that it can make it confusing for companies to figure out the best way to proceed. She said NASA is looking at ways through technology to create such a front door. An example she gave is a company looking for access to a wind tunnel going to this portal to find out what agency facilities and expertise could meet its needs. “It's not about creating this big organization you have to go through,” she said, “it’s about a technology platform to see what’s out there.” “If you don’t know NASA, it can be hard to partner with NASA,” said Joseph Pelfrey, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, of that “front door” initiative in an interview during last week’s conference. “We’re trying to make it easier for industry to be able to come in and identify where those capabilities are, where those test facilities are, and where they have capacity to support.” “Their response has been very encouraging,” Augustine said of NASA. “Many of the things we talked about they are addressing.” He said he was optimistic about the prospects of NASA 2040 making lasting, positive reform to the agency. “It's very committed to really looking at ourselves through the mirror to say, how can we be better as an agency, and what do we need to focus on to really enable the goals of the nation in space exploration, to enable commercial space, to be a good partner.” Pelfrey said the NASA 2040 effort identified the need for infrastructure investment would be a challenge. “The National Academies report validated that, in that we have not been able to invest in the infrastructure and somewhat in the workforce for at the level that we would like,” he said. Swails said that the NASA 2040 effort got underway just before the National Academies study started. “What it’s really shown us is that we’ve been on the right track with the things that we’ve been working on,” she said of the study. “A lot of their summary and the findings of their report are really well aligned with the things that we’ve been working on in the last year for 2040.” That includes, she said, the need for more infrastructure investment and a “complex matrix structure” for agency management. The efforts of the various workstreams are wrapping up, she said, providing recommendations to NASA management. Implementing recommendations will begin some time in 2025, although funding for specific efforts may have to wait until fiscal year 2026. Augustine said in September that his committee had briefed NASA on its report shortly before the public release. “Their response has been very encouraging,” he said. “Many of the things we talked about they are addressing.” That response, he said, was one reason he had a “fair amount of optimism” about NASA’s future as it grapples with infrastructure and other institutional challenges. Another, he said, is because “NASA is not going to have much of a choice.” Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Comparing Harris And Trump On Space Policy

Harris Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a December 2023 meeting of the National Space Council. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky) Comparing Harris and Trump on space policy by Jonathan Coopersmith Monday, November 4, 2024 Bookmark and Share Space exploration and development will shift very few voters in this week’s presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Space policy has historically been a bipartisan area which presidential campaigns have largely ignored. Indeed, contra the argument recently made by former US Representative Bob Walker, both candidates’ platforms support space commercialization and innovation, returning astronauts to the Moon, and continuing American leadership in space. Trump prefers to “go it alone”; Harris’s approach is “together, we can—and will—do great things.” Significant differences do exist between the two candidates, though not necessarily the way Walker implies. Harris bests Trump in three areas of growing national and international importance: emphasizing greater cooperation and coordination among all the sectors involved in space exploration; using our needs in space technology as a stimulant for preparation of the high-tech workforce our nation needs for many purposes; and leveraging space technologies to monitor and address the existential threats posed by climate change. Although the United States has dominated, and there are competitive and even military aspects to what one might still call the space race. Space is increasingly an environment that requires multilateral coordination on rules and norms, if not always cooperation on specific missions. Failing to develop clear “rules of the road” for commercial operations, especially on the Moon, can create uncertainty and hinder development. While the Trump Administration originated the Artemis Accords, non-binding principles to guide civil space exploration and exploitation, in fact 38 of the 47 countries currently signed on to the Accords joined during the Biden Administration, reflecting the priorities and achievements of the National Space Council under Vice President and now candidate Kamala Harris. Harris has encouraged and worked for international cooperation and coordination in areas ranging from banning debris-generating anti-satellite (ASAT) tests in space to developing standards for commercial development of space both in orbit and on celestial bodies like the Moon and asteroids. Trump prefers to “go it alone”; Harris’s approach is “together, we can—and will—do great things.” A less photogenic, but nonetheless critical, area is workforce development. Whether a young American wants to become an aerospace technician or computer chip designer, she or he will require STEM education and specialized training. A burgeoning space sector provides a growing opportunity that incentivizes young people to get the right training, which will benefit our nation in all its endeavors. All the Biden Administration’s high-tech initiatives such as the CHIPS and Science Act have included an emphasis on STEM education and training. As a demonstration that Harris “gets” this key issue better than Trump, in 2022 she helped launch the Space Workforce Coalition. The biggest threat to NASA’s budget is the growing federal deficit. In this context, NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon may become its own worst enemy. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two candidates lies in their different approaches to climate change and its intersections with space technology. The Trump Administration tried to kill NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 and other Earth-oriented missions and reduced funding for NOAA’s environmental satellite programs. In contrast, the Biden Administration supported greater space monitoring of the environment. Ignorance and denial do not equal strength: accurate understanding and effective action are the best ways to respond to climate challenges. Imagine handling hurricanes and wildfires without satellites managed by public agencies that do not have to earn a profit! Upcoming challenges With her appreciation of the benefits from closer international and national cooperation and coordination, Harris is better positioned than Trump to understand and address the challenges NASA and the military will surely face. The biggest threat to NASA’s budget is the growing federal deficit. In this context, NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon may become its own worst enemy. The program has fallen behind its ambitious schedule and experienced huge cost overruns. What will be sacrificed to make the numbers work? While both candidates (and Congressional leaders) have not yet fully acknowledged the seriousness of the fiscal situation, a nonpartisan group of economists calculated Trump’s proposals will expand the national deficit by $7.5 trillion compared with Harris’s $3.5 trillion. That’s a lot more financial pressure not to spend money on the full range of NASA priorities and missions. In military space, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated the growing importance of military operations in orbit and the threats posed by adversaries to GPS and other satellites. While international cooperation is essential for global navigation (and the resultant benefits), so too is the development of alternative technologies in case GPS is jammed, spoofed, or otherwise downgraded. Building on the creation of Space Force under Trump, the Biden Administration has expanded cooperation with NATO allies into space. In short, our country would significantly benefit more from a Harris Administration’s space foci on international coordination and cooperation, dealing with—not denying—climate change, and providing training for future jobs. Jonathan Coopersmith is a historian of technology who had the honor of teaching at Texas A&M University for over 30 years. His most recent article covers the failure of space commercialization in the 1970s and 1980s. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

The Case For Space Policy Stability In The Next Administration

Trump President Donald Trump speaking after the launch of the Demo-2 commercial crew mission in May 2020. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls) The case for space policy stability in the next administration by Thomas G. Roberts Monday, November 4, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Conversation The next president of the United States could be the first in that office to accept a phone call from the Moon and hear a woman’s voice on the line. To do so, they’ll first need to make a series of strategic space policy decisions. They’ll also need a little luck. Enormous government investment supports outer space activities, so the US president has an outsized role in shaping space policy during their time in office. For many candidates, getting into the weeds of their space policy plans may be more trouble than it’s worth. Past presidents have leveraged this power to accelerate US leadership in space and boost their presidential brand along the way. Presidential advocacy has helped the US land astronauts on the surface of the Moon, establish lasting international partnerships with civil space agencies abroad, and led to many other important space milestones. But most presidential candidates refrain from discussing space policy on the campaign trail in meaningful detail, leaving voters in the dark on their visions for the final frontier. For many candidates, getting into the weeds of their space policy plans may be more trouble than it’s worth. For one, not every president even gets the opportunity for meaningful and memorable space policy decision-making, since space missions can operate on decades-long timelines. And in past elections, those who do show support for space initiatives often face criticism from their opponents for their high price tags. But the 2024 election is different. Both candidates have executive records in space policy, a rare treat for space enthusiasts casting their votes this November. As a researcher who studies international affairs in outer space, I am interested in how those records interface with the strategic and sustainable use of that domain. A closer look shows that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have used their positions to consistently prioritize US leadership in space, but they have done so with noticeably different styles and results. Trump’s space policy record As president, Trump established a record of meaningful and lasting space policy decisions but did so while attracting more attention to his administration’s space activities than his predecessors. He regularly took personal credit for ideas and accomplishments that predated his time in office. The former president oversaw the establishment of the US Space Force and the reestablishment of US Space Command, as well as the National Space Council. These organizations support the development and operation of military space technologies, defend national security satellites in future conflicts and coordinate between federal agencies working in the space domain. He also had the most productive record of space policy directives in recent history. These policy directives clarify the US government’s goals in space, including how it should both support and rely on the commercial space sector, track objects in Earth’s orbit, and protect satellites from cyber threats. He has called his advocacy for the creation of the Space Force one of his proudest achievements of his term. However, this advocacy contributed to polarized support for the new branch. This polarization broke the more common pattern of bipartisan public support for space programming. Like many presidents, not all of Trump’s visions for space were realized. He successfully redirected NASA’s key human spaceflight destination from Mars back to the Moon. But his explicit goal of astronauts reaching the lunar surface by 2024 was not realistic, given his budget proposals for the agency. Should he be elected again, the former president may wish to accelerate NASA’s Moon plans by furthering investment in the agency’s Artemis program, which houses its lunar initiatives. He may frame the initiative as a new space race against China. Harris’s space policy record The Biden Administration has continued to support Trump-era initiatives, resisting the temptation to undo or cancel past proposals. Its legacy in space is noticeably smaller. As the chair of the National Space Council, Harris has set US space policy priorities and represented the United States on the global stage. Notably, the Trump Administration kept this position that the president can alter at will assigned to the vice president, a precedent the Biden Administration upheld. Given their past leadership, it is unlikely that either candidate will seek to dramatically alter the long-term missions the largest government space organizations have underway. In this role, Harris led the United States’ commitment to refrain from testing weapons in space that produce dangerous, long-lasting space debris. This decision marks an achievement for the US in keeping space operations sustainable and setting an example for others in the international space community. Like some Trump administration space policy priorities, not all of Harris’ proposals found footing in Washington. The council’s plan to establish a framework for comprehensively regulating commercial space activities in the US, for example, stalled in Congress. If enacted, these new regulations would have ensured that future space activities, such as private companies operating on the Moon or transporting tourists to orbit and back, pass critical safety checks. Should she be elected, Harris may choose to continue her efforts to shape responsible norms of behavior in space and organize oversight over the space industry. Alternatively, she could cede the portfolio to her own vice president, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has virtually no track record on space policy issues. Stability in major space policy decisions Despite the two candidates’ vastly different platforms, voters can expect stability in US space policy as a result of this year’s election. Given their past leadership, it is unlikely that either candidate will seek to dramatically alter the long-term missions the largest government space organizations have underway during the upcoming presidential term. And neither is likely to undercut their predecessors’ accomplishments. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Thomas G. Roberts is a postdoctoral fellow in international affairs at Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, where he leads a research portfolio dedicated to issues of international coordination, sustainability, and security in outer space.

IAC Final Report - Is European Spaceflight doomed to failure?

(1955) Tom Corbett Deep Space Project