WASHINGTON — NASA has no intention of
paying Russia to help deliver supplies to the international space station (ISS)
beyond 2011 despite winning congressional and presidential approval to do so.
"NASA's policy has
not changed," NASA spokesman David Steitz said Oct. 2. "NASA will
rely on U.S. commercial cargo services to resupply ISS following retirement of
the shuttle, and does not intend to purchase Progress cargo services after
2011."
The U.S. space agency's recommitment to the guiding principal of its Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services (COTS) program came on the heels of U.S. President
George W. Bush signing into law a $630 billion temporary
spending measure to keep the federal government operating at current
spending levels until early March. Among the many pieces of unfinished business
Congress addressed in the so-called continuing resolution was extending NASA's
existing waiver to a 2000 weapons proliferation law that bars the agency from
buying space station-related goods and services from Russia as long as Russian
aerospace firms continue to aid Iranian weapons programs.
Had Congress not acted to
extend the agency's waiver from having to comply with the Iran-North
Korea-Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA), NASA insists it would not have been
able to conclude a new deal with Russia for the three-person Soyuz
capsules needed to transport U.S., Canadian, European and Japanese
astronauts to the international space station beyond 2011 when the existing
waiver would have expired.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
pushed U.S. lawmakers all year to extend the waiver, even going so far as
defying the White House Office of Management and Budget by bringing up the
issue during budget hearings this past winter.
The White House, however,
eventually got behind the waiver and sent Congress a legislative proposal in
April that would grant NASA permission to continue buying Soyuz vehicles, but
not unmanned Progress flights, through 2016. Progress flights were left out of
the equation at NASA's request in order to reassure U.S. launch firms that the
agency remained committed to buying ISS resupply flights from proven commercial
providers.
The White House proposal,
introduced in July as the International Space Station Payment Act of 2008 (S.
3103), stalled in the Senate after Russia invaded neighboring Georgia in August. Shortly after the invasion, the bill's main congressional proponent,
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) declared chances of passage all but dead.
A series of last-minute
developments, however, combined to help win NASA the Soyuz waiver. The INKSNA
issue was given new impetus Sept. 22 when Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, wrote House and Senate leaders urging
extension of the waiver. The next day, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
normally chaired by Obama's running mate Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware,
approved S. 3103, clearing the bill for the full Senate's approval.
That particular bill,
which would have limited NASA's authority to buy Soyuz vehicles, went no
further. Instead a simple extension of the current waiver was included in the
continuing resolution, the House of Representatives passed Sept. 24 by a vote
of 370-58.
The Senate followed suit
Sept. 27, clearing the way for the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance
and Continuing Appropriations Act for 2009 (H.R. 2638) to be signed into law by
Bush.
While NASA now has the
legal authority to put in an order for post-2011 Progress flights when it sits
down at the bargaining table with Russia this fall, the outspoken chief
executive of one of the companies vying to sell resupply flights to NASA said
he is not worried.
"I'm not super
concerned about that," said Elon Musk, chief executive and chief technical
officer of Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies. "I
think it's probably a good thing NASA's hands aren't tied there. It's possible
we may lose a few flights to the Russians but we are not going to lose more
than that. There is no way Congress would tolerate sending millions of dollars
to the Russians rather than to a U.S. company and keeping that money domestic."
Musk said he does not see
that changing regardless of who is elected U.S. president Nov. 4.
"Neither [U.S. political party] likes sending money overseas if there's a U.S. supplier," Musk said.
In addition to permitting
NASA to buy Soyuz and Progress spacecraft through 2016, the newly enacted
continuing resolution also keeps most federal agencies funded at their 2008
levels for the first five months of the new budget year, which began Oct. 1.
NASA officials have been
bracing for months for having to get by without a budget increase for all or
part of 2009.
NASA's 2008 budget was
$17.3 billion, some $300 million less than the White House was seeking and $500
million less than Congress appeared likely to approve had it completed separate
spending bills rather than resorting to a continuing resolution for the second
time since 2006.
Steitz said
NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate — the division building Orion
and Ares — and institutional spending (what NASA calls Cross-Agency Support)
would be hardest hit since the continuing resolution leaves them "funded less
than planned" for the first five months of the new budget year. "This
requires them to re-plan and defer activities that would have been accomplished
under the original plan, which is less efficient, and limits our ability to
accelerate Constellation," Steitz said.
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