§18321 Human Space Flight Beyond Low-earth Orbit

Summary

The NASA Administrator must send a report to the relevant Congressional committees within 120 days after October 11, 2010 about NASA’s assets and plans for human missions beyond low-Earth orbit. Congress says expanding human spaceflight past low-Earth orbit should enable trips to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and eventually international missions to Mars. The area near the Moon can be reached by other countries and companies, which raises security and economic issues that working with other nations can help address. Moving beyond low-Earth orbit should push new space infrastructure and technology, enable services like in-space servicing, fuel resupply, and using local resources, and create chances for more national, commercial, and international users. Future missions should build needed capabilities, be affordable, include international partners, follow a pay-as-you-go approach, and keep new launch and crew systems only as big as needed to do core cis-lunar missions. Early missions should test technology and give operational experience before expanding further. The report must describe NASA’s efforts to increase international collaboration on the International Space Station and NASA’s approach and progress on near-term missions in cis-lunar space (the area near the Moon). The Administrator must assume NASA will provide a Space Launch System, a multi-purpose crew vehicle, and any other technology elements the Administrator lists in the report.