TOKYO – A House spending bill would direct NASA to begin work on an asteroid mission in partnership with industry, as well as an orbital debris inspection mission.
The House Appropriations Committee released the report accompanying the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) spending bill on July 8, a day before a full committee markup. The SDP subcommittee favorably reported the basic bill on June 26 without discussing much detail about its provisions.
The report includes additional details about spending on NASA programs, as well as other provisions. Among those details are provisions calling on NASA to at least begin studying missions not included in the agency’s request.
The report directs NASA to spend $5 million on “a plan for a public-private partnership reconnaissance mission to Apophis before its 2029 flyby.” Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid that will approach Earth in April 2029. NASA plans to visit the asteroid after the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft flyby, an extended mission for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.
However, scientists are interested in visiting the asteroid before the flyby to see if the close approach — closer to Earth than the geostationary belt — changes the physical attributes of the asteroid in any way. A workshop in April in the Netherlands discussed several possible missions to visit Apophis in the months or weeks before flyby, including concepts from companies such as Blue Origin and Exploration Labs. NASA officials, however, have noted that budget constraints made it difficult to commit to any mission beyond OSIRIS-APEX.
The House report says appropriators are “concerned that NASA could miss a unique opportunity presented by asteroid Apophis’ close approach to Earth in 2029.” It suggests that the committee believes that such a mission can be carried out through partnerships with the private sector rather than as a traditional mission.
“The committee emphasizes the importance of effective prioritization of resources to ensure the success of this mission and encourages NASA to explore funding mechanisms that balance the need for scientific exploration with budgetary constraints, including new and innovative approaches that leverage the expertise of small companies , non-traditional partners and potential benefits from private sector resource exploration,” the report states.
In NASA’s space technology directorate, the report would allocate up to $25 million to the agency’s small satellite technology program for what it calls the Orbital Debris Inspection Mission.
“The committee supports a technology demonstration that tracks, characterizes and inspects multiple objects in space,” the report said, but provided little other guidance on such a mission. NASA’s 2025 budget request included $41.2 million for space sustainability efforts in general “to better understand and mitigate the risk of orbital debris,” the proposal said, but did not explicitly include an inspection mission. .
While space agencies elsewhere are pursuing orbital debris technology demonstration missions, NASA has yet to request funding for any missions to characterize debris or test active debris removal technologies. The Japanese space agency JAXA, for example, has been working with Astroscale on the ADRAS-J inspection mission currently flying in the vicinity of an upper stage, as a precursor to a mission to remove that upper stage from orbit.
The report overlooked several other key issues in the budget proposal. In the Mars Sample Return, the committee approved NASA’s efforts to obtain input from industry on alternative ways to carry out the mission. However, he stated that he was concerned about “serious losses to NASA’s skilled workforce and leadership in areas critical to the planetary sciences as well as future NASA missions,” and would direct NASA to was spending at least $650 million on MSR. NASA is seeking $200 million for the program as it considers how to redesign it.
The committee’s report also expressed support for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, whose budget NASA is considering reducing due to relatively high operating costs. Astronomers have fought against any cuts, fearing they could lead to the shutdown of the 25-year-old spacecraft. However, the report does not specify any funding levels for either Chandra or the Hubble Space Telescope, which is also facing potential budget cuts.
The report suggests the committee is interested in possible changes to NASA’s approach to its Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development, or CLD, program to stimulate the development of commercial stations proposed by several companies. The report calls on NASA to provide an update on its “plans to achieve rapid and cost-effective CLD capabilities.”
That briefing would include an assessment of whether program goals could be met with “a mix of diverse services from CLD contractor teams rather than requiring nearly identical services from providers” as well as “taking incremental steps toward more advanced CLD over time”.