Floor Statement- NASA

Mr. GORE. Mr. President, I am pleased to bring before the Senate H.R. 1988, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act for fiscal year 1992.

H.R. 1988 is a 1-year authorization bill that builds upon the recommendations of the advisory committee on the future of the U.S. Space Program, the so-called Augustine committee, widely hailed upon its release last December as a blueprint for shaping the future of our civil space program.

The bill before us today authorizes nearly $14.995 billion for NASA in fiscal year 1992, providing some $1.4 billion more than the current fiscal year for carrying out the U.S. aeronautics and civil space research and technology development program. Also included in this bill is the authorization of funds for continued operation of the National Space Council and the Office of Commercial Space Transportation within the Department of Transportation.

In crafting this legislation, we have made every effort to bring NASA's funding in line with the fiscal realities currently facing the Federal Government, trimming those initiatives that offer the lowest potential benefit or face overwhelming technical challenges. Overall, the bill before us reduces the President's fiscal year 1992 budget request for NASA by $496.5 million.

Deeper cuts to NASA's overall funding request have been approved by the Senate in its consideration of the fiscal year 1992 Veterans Affairs-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriations bill, which was adopted earlier this year. By and large, many of those reductions were necessitated by constrained Appropriations Subcommittee allocations, reflecting the limitations imposed by the 5-year budget agreement adopted last year.

In contrast to H.R. 1988 attempts to focus NASA policies and programmatic activities for fiscal year 1992 and beyond. Its enactment is essential for the United States to maintain a vital, robust civil space program.

Mr. President, at this point, I would like to highlight the major provisions of this bill. First, H.R. 1988 authorizes full funding for continued development of the redesigned space station Freedom. After being directed to develop a new design and assembly launch sequence last year that would fit within a reduced funding profile, NASA has come forth with a program which anticipated that space station man-tended capability will be achieved in fiscal year 1997, followed by permanently manned capability in the year 2000.

H.R. 1988 also authorizes funding for the space science and applications budget for NASA for fiscal year 1992. Notably, the bill provides full funding for the Earth Observing System and the Earth Probes programs, as well as the Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility, the Mars Observer, and the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Full funding is also provided to other critical programs such as the National Aerospace Plane and other aeronautics research and technology programs, as well as NASA's commercial programs. Finally, while the bill makes minor changes to NASA's budget for space flight, control, and data communications, they will in no way diminish the safety and viability of the space shuttle and expendable launch vehicle programs.

Mr. President, a number of programs included in the NASA budget request for fiscal year 1992 could not be supported in our bill, given the limited growth in available discretionary funding. Specifically, reductions have been made to the President's proposed initiative for human exploration of the Moon and Mars. Also, the bill assumes reductions to the Comet rendezvous asteroid flyby, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the proposed new launch system. NASA's only requested new start for fiscal year 1992, the Lifesat mission, was also denied funding.

During the course of our subcommittee hearings, it became clear that we must begin to rationalize the NASA budget. In an environment of limited budget growth, congressional endorsement today of any NASA program, whether it be Lifesat or the space station Freedom, affects the availability of funds for other programs for other programs. To date, NASA has failed to provide adequate long-term budget information to the Congress to ensure that decisions are made with a complete understanding of how other programs will be affected.

For example, in the fiscal year 1992 budget request, NASA proposed to initiate a new program called Lifesat, a reusable radiation research satellite, requesting $15 million as the initial funding increment. At first blush, a $15 million program within a $15.7 billion budget request seems modest enough. However, no where in the budget does NASA state that, when all costs related to the Lifesat mission are calculated, it will cost the Federal Government some $870 million. This is a fact that only came out in questioning of NASA officials during subcommittee hearings. Obviously, the unknown funding wedge that results from one program, even one that appears to be relatively small, could preclude the possible funding in the future of other, possibly higher priority programs for years to come.

H.R. 1988 attempts to close this information gap by requiring NASA to submit budgetary information each year on the 5-year development costs of every project, mission, and program, as well as life-cycle costs associated with each. It is my expectation that, if agreed to by our colleagues to the House of Representatives in our upcoming conference on this bill, NASA will submit this data as a part of the President's annual budget package, beginning next year. We must have such a budget runout to ensure that funding for the highest priority programs is not squeezed out by previous decisions made on other programs.

Mr. President, I strongly believe that H.R. 1988 provides the resources for NASA to ensure continued U.S. preeminence in space and aeronautics. It follows the widely endorsed recommendations of the Augustine committee by supporting a balanced space program, with a particular emphasis on space science. And it provides the necessary mechanisms to ensure that in the future, the Congress can better understand how the funding profiles of various aeronautics and space programs fit with in our stated national priorities.

Mr. GORE. Mr. President, I have an amendment to the bill that I believe is an important enhancement to our efforts to better understand our changing global environment. NASA has proposed the Earth Observing System, estimated to cost some $11 billion by the year 2000, as the centerpiece of its effort to monitor the Earth's environmental systems.

While I strongly support this initiative, I have long been concerned that NASA and other agencies responsible for gathering and archiving remote sensing data have not given adequate attention to data previously gathered. One existing data set that could provide a critical source of information for global change researchers comes from aircraft missions, as well as certain satellite missions flown over the last several decades.

From 1963 through 1973, NASA managed a broad-based Earth Resources Observation Systems Program that gathered remotely sensed aircraft data from more than 700 test sites across North and South America. This data was obtained by aircraft at a variety of altitudes using many different types of remote sensors, including microwave radar and infrared imagery. In addition, vast archives of aircraft and satellite derived data are available in Great Britain, Germany, Australia, and other countries.

Mr. President, this is data that is urgently needed by environmental scientists. NASA's EOS Program is in the midst of a congressionally mandated restructuring and the precise date on which it will fly remains uncertain. With this potential for delay, researchers are increasingly turning to existing data.

The difficulty lies in converting the aircraft derived data to a usable medium. At present, the various data sets of remotely sensed aircraft data are not in a medium that can quickly and efficiently be used by scientists and global change researchers.

Steps must be undertaken to convert this data into such a medium that can be incorporated into a baseline that will help us better understand the data derived from the EOS Program.

Mr. President, this amendment takes the initial step in accomplishing this conversion by authorizing $3 million in fiscal year 1992 for a pilot study and prototype demonstration of converting aircraft-derived remote sensing data into a machine readable form. This will help begin the process of filling important information gaps in our understanding of global change until NASA's EOS begins to supply data later this decade.

There has been a great deal of interest in initiating such a data recovery program. Discussions have centered on a cooperative program including several Federal agencies including NASA, the National Mapping Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Agriculture Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, and the Department of Energy research facilities at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This amendment will authorize the funds to ensure that these discussions result in action.

Mr. President, it is critical that we fully utilize those assets already at hand. In this instance, that asset is the data that has been collected from previous aircraft missions.

The cost of this conversion effort would be minimal. But its benefits could significantly expedite our efforts to better understand how the Earth's environmental systems are changing.

Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will join me in approving of this amendment to the NASA authorization bill.

Mr. GORE. Mr. President, I have a second amendment which I believe is noncontroversial. This amendment, which has two provisions, is to clarify the intent of the Commerce Committee when it ordered H.R. 1988 reported earlier this year.

The first provision of the amendment is needed to clarify that certain program reductions agreed to by the committee are allocated to the correct NASA program. There will be no net change in the total authorization level with this provision.

Mr. President, the second provision in this amendment, which relates to the earlier decision to terminate funding of the comet rendezvous asteroid flyby mission, is consistent with action on this bill in committee, as well as the full Senate when it adopted in H.R. 2519, the Veterans Affairs-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriation bill for fiscal year 1992. It modifies the current law authorization for the CRAF-Cassini missions, which imposes an overall funding cap of $1.6 billion. The present amendment reduces that overall cap to $1.3 billion, to reflect the termination of the CRAF mission.