WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans continued to express bewilderment and displeasure on Wednesday with an administration plan to send astronauts to an asteroid as part of a stepping-stone approach to a Mars mission.
NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission is “uninspiring… unjustified and… just a time-wasting distraction,” Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said at a hearing.
“It is a mission without the support necessary to make it a reality in the nine months remaining in the Obama administration,” he said.
Criticism of the mission, where NASA would grab a chunk of an asteroid and tow it near the moon, is a familiar GOP refrain. Many Republicans would prefer to instead use the moon as a launching pad for a crewed mission to the Red Planet.
"Virtually every witness we've ever had come before this committee has said we need to have a lunar base as part of the stepping stone," said Rep. Bill Posey, whose central Florida district includes Kennedy Space Center. "The only ones we haven't yet got that through (to) is NASA."
Posey and other Republicans hope that when the next president takes office next January, Congress and the scientific community will feel inspired to revisit an earlier plan to return to the lunar surface.
Democrats have been less critical of the asteroid proposal.
They've focused more on making sure NASA articulates a clear road map to Mars to see whether the moon or an steroid is the best choice.
They've also called for giving NASA more money for a Mars mission and have warned against the sort of wholesale changes that often come with new administrations, given the cost, time and momentum required to follow through on a commitment.
"Such (presidential) transitions have in the past led to significant redirections in NASA's human exploration program," Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the top Democrat on the full committee, said at Wednesday's hearing. "If that were to happen again, that would be a tragedy, and a wasteful one at that."
Criticism of the asteroid mission is backed by some in the scientific community.
A NASA advisory panel concluded last year the agency should scrap the controversial plan to corral part of an asteroid into orbit around the moon.A task force sponsored by the respected National Research Council also raised questions over the past year about the usefulness of an asteroid mission.
But NASA remains committed to the project, partly because it's relatively inexpensive at an estimated $1.25 billion. That price doesn't include a launch vehicle that's expected to be part of the mission. The project also would give the Space Launch System and Orion crew vehicle a chance to test their deep-space capabilities in advance of a Mars mission as early as the 2030s.
No current NASA officials testified at Wednesday’s hearing. Bu Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., last year told the same panel the asteroid mission has been vetted by his internal team of scientists, "who happen to think that the mission is awesome."
NASA officials say dropping part of an asteroid into orbit around the moon not only would be useful in reaching Mars, it also would give agency scientists insight on how to deflect asteroids headed toward Earth.
Paul Spudis, a senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, isn't impressed.
The (Asteroid Retrieval Mission) offers no unique benefits beyond providing a place for Orion to visit," he told the House committee. "In terms of scientific and operational importance, it is barren of real accomplishment and irrelevant to future human deep space missions."
I s'pose the asteroid redirect makes the most sense in terms of paying for itself directly - though I've still never heard, even in broadest theory, how we're going to return those metals to Earth...
I s'pose the asteroid redirect makes the most sense in terms of paying for itself directly - though I've still never heard, even in broadest theory, how we're going to return those metals to Earth...