Planetary Defense vs. Texas Pork

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), in a section titled “Mars Missions, Artemis Missions, and Moon to Mars Program,” provides $85 million in NASA funding for “transportation” of a “space vehicle” and “construction of a facility to house the space vehicle.” This isn’t a step toward building infrastructure on the moon or Mars. The funds are for moving the retired space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum in Washington and putting it on display at Space Center Houston, the visitor complex for NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn pressed for this.

The change of venue may appeal to people who want to boost Texas tourism or give D.C. an F.U., but getting the shuttle to Houston will be difficult, as the spacecraft’s fragile after a record-setting 39 missions in orbit. The Smithsonian estimates the total costs of the transfer will be $300–400 million. None of this can be justified by any rational ordering of federal budget priorities. The Trump administration has asked to reduce NASA’s funding from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion, a 24 percent drop, with the agency’s science directorate bearing the brunt, at a proposed 47 percent decline from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion.

Dozens of science missions will be canceled under the administration’s budget plan. One of these is OSIRIS-APEX, targeted at catching up with the asteroid Apophis shortly after it passes close by Earth in 2029. The probe is already in space; this is a follow-on mission to OSIRIS-REx, which collected a sample from the asteroid Bennu in 2020 and returned it to Earth in 2023 (in a mini-fridge-sized capsule, dropped off in Utah via parachute). The OSIRIS probe had fuel to spare, and so OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer) was redirected, becoming OSIRIS-APEX (same acronym except now ending with APophis EXplorer).

Discovered in 2004 and named after an Egyptian god of chaos and destruction, Apophis is as tall as a skyscraper and several football fields wide. The asteroid is expected to pose a threat of colliding with Earth over coming millennia, and would have a catastrophic impact if it did, though NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has effectively ruled out a collision in the current century. On Friday the 13th of April 2029, Apophis will come within 20,000 miles of Earth, less than a tenth the distance to the moon and closer than some satellites. Visible to the naked eye as what will look like a bright star, the asteroid will be the largest object to pass this close to Earth in recorded history.

OSIRIS-APEX, making its closest approach to the asteroid in June 2029, would help prepare for future collision risks from Apophis or other objects, by collecting data about its surface and interior and how these are affected by Earth’s gravity. As the OSIRIS-REx mission was already paid for, at a total of around $1 billion including launch, OSIRIS-APEX is a relatively low-cost extension, estimated at $200 million over a decade. This is an investment toward future planetary defense strategies, and a reasonable national priority in conjunction with a separate European mission to study Apophis.

In the aftermath of the withdrawal of Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator, the space agency is directionless. Policy appears to be shaped, to a considerable degree, by the ups and downs of President Trump’s relations with Elon Musk. NASA’s budget plans, unveiled before the falling-out, aligned with Musk’s recommendations in canceling the Gateway moon-orbiting station and phasing out the Space Launch System (an expensive rocket that lacks the reusability of launch vehicles designed by Musk’s SpaceX). However, the OBBBA restores funding for those systems, contracted to SpaceX’s competitors. Such lurching, small-minded space policy bodes ill for America’s future.

—Kenneth Silber is author of In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal. Follow him on Bluesky