What is Biden’s program for NASA and space exploration

• President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday appointed members of his NASA transition team.
• Ellen Stofan, former NASA chief scientist, will chair the team, which also includes an astrophysicist and a climatology researcher.
• Biden will likely push back the timeline for NASA’s Artemis lunar mission, expand funding for the International Space Station, and redirect more resources to climate science.
• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday appointed members of his transition team for NASA, a key step in determining his administration’s agenda for space exploration.

Ellen Stofan, who currently heads the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, will lead the team. Stofan was NASA’s chief scientist from 2013 to 2016.

Other members include Jedidah Isler, an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College who studies supermassive black holes; Bhavya Lal, space policy strategist who works with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Waleed Abdalati, another former NASA chief scientist (he served from 2011 to 2012) who is now at the University of Colorado.

NASA Ames Research Center

In addition to naming his team members, Biden has yet to release details of his plans for NASA. But based on the make-up of the transition team, the priorities of the Obama administration, and the 2020 Democratic Party platform, here are four ways Biden could approach space policy.

NASA will likely redefine the priority of climate research

As president, Barack Obama has prioritized NASA’s research on climate change, funding missions to track global warming via satellites. Obama requested more than $ 2 billion in funding for NASA’s Earth Sciences division for fiscal year 2017, although the division ultimately received $ 1.92 billion.

President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has always requested less funding for the Earth Sciences division than Obama. The current administration has also said it wants to cut five Earth science missions that focus primarily on climate change research.

Congress kept existing earth science programs in place during Trump’s presidency, but allocated somewhat less funding to the division as a whole. NASA’s earth science budget for fiscal 2020 was $ 1.78 billion, about $ 140 million lower than in 2017.

NASA Earth Observatory

Biden’s administration will likely try to reverse the budget cuts and boost research in the earth sciences. The move would align with the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform, which has pledged to support NASA’s “Earth observation missions to better understand the impact of climate change on our home planet.”

The appointment of Abdalati by the Biden Transition Team, whose research focuses on using satellites to understand changes in Earth’s ice cover, is another sign of the president-elect’s commitment to that question.

Still, if Republicans retain control of the Senate, Biden’s ability to allocate more funds to NASA’s Earth Sciences division may be limited.

Biden May Extend Funding For Space Station

NASA

Under Trump, the government was prepared to stop funding the International Space Station by 2025, and then hand over control of the in-orbit lab to private companies afterwards.

Biden will likely reverse the decision, according to Reuters. Instead, the president-elect plans to propose an extension of funding for the ISS, although it is not yet known for how long.

The continued federal funding for the space station could benefit companies like Boeing, which currently receives $ 225 million per year under its contract to support ISS operations. Slowing down the schedule could also give companies more time to design and plan private space stations. For example, Axiom Space, a private aerospace company headquartered in Texas, has contracted with NASA to build its own space station attachment.

Once the ISS is removed, Axiom’s module could theoretically detach to become an independent orbital outpost.

NASA will still aim to land on the moon, but not so soon

In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence vowed that the administration would bring people back to the moon in 2024.

But that goal was hampered by funding shortages, as Congress failed to provide NASA with the $ 28 billion it requested to build equipment and train astronauts.

Biden’s administration is likely to push back a lunar landing date by several years – a goal that fits with the House Science Committee’s proposed bill that would aim to land astronauts on the moon by 2028.

NASA / Joel Kowsky

“I don’t know of anyone who thinks we’re going to get there by 2024,” Lori Garver, who was NASA deputy administrator in the Obama administration, told Space News. “It didn’t matter who won, it was going to be an impossible goal.”

Still, the administration appears to have a lunar landing on its priority list. Stofan, the chairman of Biden’s NASA transition team, helped NASA develop plans for the commercialization of spaceflight as well as human missions to Mars and the moon.

Biden wrote in August that he hopes to lead “a daring space program that will continue to send heroes astronauts to expand our frontiers of exploration and science.”

Continued competition between private space flight companies

While Biden and Trump may differ on certain NASA priorities, the president-elect will likely continue to encourage commercial activity in space – an effort the Obama administration has also supported.

According to Reuters, who spoke with officials close to the Biden campaign in late October, the president-elect plans to continue promoting competition between companies like Boeing and SpaceX. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program funded Boeing and SpaceX to develop a spacecraft ready for astronauts to fly to and from the space station. It is almost certain that these contract missions will take place.

Still, officials told Reuters that Biden’s space program was still being formulated and would likely take precedence over more pressing issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. economy.