WASHINGTON — Democratic
presidential candidate Barack Obama is urging Congress to take several steps to
ensure the United States can continue to access the international space station
beyond 2011.
In
letters addressed to House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and posted on his Senate Web site Sept. 22,
Obama urges the two congressional leaders to renew an
existing waiver to the Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-proliferation Act
(INSKNA) to permit NASA to continue buying the Russian Soyuz vehicles it needs
to transport U.S., Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts to and from the
station. NASA's current waiver, enacted in 2005, expires at the end of 2011.
NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin told reporters Sept. 18 that without swift
action on the waiver request, NASA might not be able to send its astronauts to
the station on a Soyuz flight slated to launch in October 2011 since the agency
would have no way to guarantee their return. Griffin said Russia needs a three-year lead time to produce a Soyuz.
Obama,
echoing a plea Republican presidential candidate John McCain made to President
George W. Bush in
an Aug. 25 letter, also calls for NASA to "take no further action that
would make it more difficult or expensive to fly the Shuttle beyond 2010."
Obama
also urges Congress to give NASA additional funding in 2009 for the additional
shuttle flight House and Senate authorizers want to see NASA conduct in order
to launch the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the international space station.
Obama
said Congress needs to be prepared to further increase NASA's budget depending
on what emerges from a shuttle
extension study recently initiated at Griffin's request.
"The
results should be available in the November timeframe so that the
President-elect's transition team can prepare appropriate action along with
appropriate [fiscal year 2010] budgeting," Obama wrote.
"NASA's
appropriators, however, should be prepared to consider increasing NASA's budget
to extend safe Shuttle operations beyond 2010 and to accelerate government and
private-sector efforts to provide human access to low-earth orbit. Any effort
to extend
the Shuttle program must receive adequate funding, ensuring that progress
on developing new vehicles is not further delayed by diverting funds to the
Shuttle."
The
Senate Foreign Relations Committee is slated to take up the INKSNA waiver —
formally known as S. 3103, the International Space Station Payments Act of
2008, during a Sept. 23 working session.
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