Earth. Announcer watch the 1969 News Coverage of the Apollo Mission on cspan or listen with our radio app. Administrator Jim Bridenstine was on capitol hill to testify about the space Agency Strategy to return to the moon and a mission to mars. He talked about staffing and recruitment challenges. This comes as nasa celebrates the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. This is just over one hour. Lets bring this hearing to order. Thank you for coming. Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 mission. The moon landing still unites us like few events in our history. It is hard to believe half a century has passed since the u. S. Won the space race. Although it is failing to celebrate, we are pleased Jim Bridenstine although it is appropriate to celebrate, we are pleased Jim Bridenstine has joined us. Space policy directive one calls for returning humans to the moon for the First Time Since 1977. This time it will be for longterm exploration and will be followed by missions to mars. Nasa planned to return to the speech,2028 but in a Vice President pence announced a dramatic acceleration of the timeline. Under the Artemis Program, the u. S. Will land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024 and establish a sustained presence on the moon or in lunar orbit by 2028. I share the administrations sense of urgency, as i told Jim Bridenstine, the u. S. Has entered a new space race driven primarily by the dispatch of Chinese Space power ambitions and desire for space commerce. There are clear goals and ambition ambitious timelines. Nasa and their partners will have to accomplish a great deal of work in a short amount of time. Space launch system rocket and orion crew capsule need to be tested and certified as soon as possible. We also need to build Lunar Landing systems and the gateway orbiting that docs the orion crew capsule and lunar landers. It needs to be assembled in space. As they continue to pursue these goals, nasa will maintain the highest commitment to safety. Part of that commitment to safety should include the completion of a full green run test. There is no better place to do that then at the space center in mississippi. The cost is a challenge for nasa. Inmate, the administration submitted a Budget Amendment for 1. 6 billion in additional funding related to the accelerated artemis schedule, and amount Brandon Stein is called a down payment and said the program could cost 20 billion to 30 billion of the next five years. That cause the congress to appropriate for billion dollars to 6 billion in extra funding each year. Congress needs more details on funding requirements so we can be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. Concerns have been raised about nasa moving funding from other priorities for artemis. Prioritize asian needs to include consultation to congress critical programs are not undermined. Jimden stein bridenstine shedding light, specifically gateway orbiter in order to execute the program successfully. The anniversary of apollo 11 remind us all of untapped , but constantly changing priorities, unstable funding, have caused the Space Program to suffer. Congress should and will perform oversight duties but we need to provide nasa with consistent direction, clarity of purpose, and the funding it needs for success. Succeed, i am excited about this and i hope this hearing will help provide the insight necessary to make good on the legacy of apollo. I turned to Ranking Member cantwell for her comments. Thank you for holding this important nasa meeting today about the plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2024. Launchedago, apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon. Five politicians successfully landed 10 more americans and three lunar rovers built in washington state. Just as importantly, the Apollo Program inspired and entirely generation of engineers and scientists. Many of them went on to other careers in other fields of high technology. This generation of dreamers firmly established the u. S. As a Global Leader in innovation and technology. The space race and nasas investment in space also perpetrated a thriving commercial space industry that exists today. Very proud of those companies that reside in the state of washington using the expertise of many washington scientists and engineers to help us achieve this mission. The benefits of Space Exploration are clear. Nasa should continue to push the boundaries of space, science, exploration and technology and also started to outline a plan. I appreciate that nasa is looking at the nontraditional partnerships that the commercial Space Community can given that relationship and in Space Exploration. Today, nasa has been developing the rocket and spacecraft need for deep Space Missions for more than nine years and nasas estimate is that orion will not be able to fly crew until 2022. Nasa has started to study the lunar landers and other hardware needed for the mission. It is hard to believe these key pieces can fall together in just the next five years. Last week you made changes at the head oftion human expiration. With that and nasas retirement of the space shuttle, the question of the leadership in the new organization to deliver on the goal is some of the things i will drill down on the question and answer part of this this morning. Nasa has yet to deliver a congressional budget for the meeting beyond 2020. It is difficult for us to approve the mission if we do not know what the ultimate cost will be to the taxpayers. While we celebrate the accomplishment and the fact that you are continuing to be pioneers in space, we also need to look at the other the next chapter of exploration and make sure it is successful. I appreciate the value of ambition but look forward to hearing from you on how we are going to meet the challenge. Thank you, mr. Chairman, for holding the hearing. I would like to include the testimony of dr. Patricia sanders, who has highlighted some of the challenges i mentioned. Without objection. It will be added. Jim bridenstine thank you. Thank you for having me here today. We are celebrating 50 years of apollo and we had this great contest of great powers in that era and we were trying to demonstrate our technological prowess, the ability to lead the world. It was not just about technological prowess. We were trying to demonstrate our politics were superior to that of the former soviet union and we were proud of what nasa did in those days and what the astronauts walked on the first walked on the moon for the first time and 50 years later we are celebrating that achievement. As the Ranking Member identified, we did five Additional Missions after that and 12 people walked on the moon and then the program ended. And that has been a letdown for nasa. We want to continue to do these achievements and go further and explore more and that is what the new program is about. We call it artemis. We think about the history of the Apollo Program and what it meant to the u. S. In greek mythology, apollo had a twin sister and her name was artemis. She was the goddess of the moon. This time, under the Artemis Program when we go forward to the moon sustainably, we go with a very diverse, highly qualified Astronaut Corps that includes women and we have directions from the Vice President , that within five years, we will land the next man and first woman on the south pole of the moon. Believedese years, we the moon was bone dry up until 2008. Now we know there are hundreds of millions of tons of water ice on the south pole. That represents air to breathe and water to drink and hydrogen. Nd oxygen same rocket fuel that powers the space shuttles and it is available on the south side of the moon. So we are doing it differently this time. The direction is to go sustainably. To have access to the moon any time, and the integrity of the moon so we do not miss another stunning discovery like water ice, which we missed for almost 40 minute 40 years. So we want to go back sustainably and have access to all parts of the moon anytime we want and we want to use this as the proving ground. This is the proving ground. It is how we learn to live and work in another world using the resources of that world so we can take that technology to mars. That is the longterm vision. We have a good start. Certainly have come in the budget request, what we need to come out of the gate, i suggest that the 2021 budget request will have more details as far as the trades we need to make within the option space to go to the moon sustainably with an eye way thatand do it in a is commensurate with the budget. That is what we are working on now. Thank you for holding this hearing on the anniversary of apollo and i look forward to answering any questions. Thank you. I am afraid i must have mr. Bogan i must have misspoken earlier when i said this was the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. I was a freshman in college at the time and that could not ago,bly have been 50 years so im am going to ask my staff to recalculate that. [laughter] no one question deal. [laughter] something is wrong. We have to get the money right. Thank you for being ambitious. And thank you to the administration for saying we can move this five years earlier and make it a priority and something we can be proud of but something that will be safe. About not getting anddget number for defense nondefense discretionary. Getting to october 1 and moving monthlong, that would be counterproductive to getting you where you need to go. How would that affect you . It would be devastating. What we lack right now is a lander. The u. S. Has not had a moon lander since 1972, the last time we landed on the moon. That is something we need to develop. We have commercial partners that have been investing their own money. We are thrilled about that. We have opportunities to achieve this goal because of the investments some of them have already made. A number of private companies have already invested money. That being said, it is not cheap to build a lander and they are looking for support from nasa and we want to be that support. We believe doing a Publicprivate Partnership is important and they will be able to have customers that are not nasa. So we can have more access for lesser cost and grow the space economy. That being said, if we end up in , the lander does not continue this get developed and we do not have money in the budget right now to develop a land. Lander. It takes a good bit of time which is why we have to get started right away. To some people, a continuing resolution, level funding, it is way worse than that, is not it . It is. A lot of people associate a cr with keeping things steady and the reality is we do not make investments we need to make, but even worse, we continue to make investments we do not need to make. So it is a waste of money when we end up in a cr and that is one of my biggest concerns, that we will be spending money on things we do not need and not spending money on things we do. You told the committee and marsh in march that nasa would examine all available options to ensure the first oneht of the sls artemis takes place by 2021. How confident are you that we can meet that i think 2020 one is definitely achievable for the arguments one lunch vehicle. Identifiedady been havehe Ranking Member, we made some changes at the head of the Human Exploration Missions directory. Some of the key challenges we have had as an agencys cost and schedule, being realistic about cost and schedule, and meeting the cost and schedule milestones that we ourselves set. So in order to reset the cost and schedule of some of these programs, we have made changes missionop of the directory. Put theoving rapidly to right folks in place, but i want them to be in place before we set out a new deadline for artemis one. I say that because we need by and from people who make the agency. Some of the challenges we have notin the past, nasa has been good at setting realistic budgets and schedules and we need to get better at that. We announce a new date, i want to make sure we have new leadership in place. Quickly, with regard to green run, are you still determined to do it . Green run is absolutely in the baseline plan. Of the greenope run, i dont know what that will like. Will get a team in place to assess the situation and i would be more than happy to report. Some senator . Thank you, mr. Chairman. You mentioned the human space expiration administrators. Who will be making decisions on artemis . Want to make sure that we have new leadership in place before we make those decisions. , we have experienced, qualified folks in acting positions. Namely, human extortion and Operations Command the associate administrator command the Development Division with an human expiration. We have acting folks who have been at the agency long time. In fact, they are just getting the positions. Want to find the absolute best talent and move quickly. That does not affect your decisionmaking . Within the next six weeks, it will not heard not. But before we make commitments on the scope or timelines, i want to make sure the new team is in place and have realistic costs and schedules. So that it is their cost and schedule and they can be held accountable. You think that was something that was missing before . We have a long history of costs of schedules not being set in a realistic way and not achieving our cost of schedules. Cases, that leads to a lack of confidence from the key people that we need, namely folks on this committee i definitely believe in system testing. Ugh very important. When can we expect to see a budget . The 2021 Budget Development is underway right now. She was working within the administration. , you will seedget the out your funding for the Artemis Program through 2024. You think we will be able to see an extrapolation of that number. I think you will see the dollars that we are looking at in orderfor the years to achieve that milestone to to achievein order that milestone. Thank you. I thank you for artemis. Missionhat in this next , we can use whatever tools we have to call on americas brightest women engineers to participate in the process. As we have all looked at video of the last launch, we can see one thing is missing. We dont see women in the control rooms or in those pictures, but i appreciate the fact that you are trying to uphold an image and i hope that we will do some serious work at trying to use that as a tool. I hope that we are able to do that. Is makeg we can do here sure that we get this weather situation correct one of the things, when chairman of ajit pai was here chairman achieved by ajit pai was here, he sadi said there was no progress. Can i get your opinion on that . Yes, maam. When we think about the 24 gigahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum, depending on the decibel level, it will definitely bleed over to the 23. 6 gigahertz part of the spectrum. There is risk of air that when it leads over, some of the sensors in space that are looking at the earth to characterize water vapor and energy of that water vapor, some of that data could be interfered , corrupted. I want to be really clear, this was a study done by nasa on behalf of noah. In this not have a dog fight, other than having great scientists and engineers to do this analysis. We do have one or two missions that use that part of the spectrum, but nothing compared to what no a has for weather prediction. This is a weather prediction effort, and i can tell you that depending on the decibel level and that 23 point six gigahertz, we could lose significant data. , wending on that level could lose up to 70 of that data. , itif that were to happen would affect our ability to predict whether, without question. I do think there could be an elegant solution. Area, itis outside my is not nasas job to do this. There is an elegant solution where the decibel level could be modified the point were we could get all the data we need to still be able to operate and 24 gigahertz. Require additional cell towers, that kind of thing. But there are others who should be considering that. But i will tell you, there is a riskier. A risk here. Thank you, chairman. Although it is not your thing , it is a vitally important it is vitally important. It is. Have you had a conversation about this issue . I have not. Formula e study four noah for noah. Thank you. Next, we have senator scott. He is not here. Senator gardner. Thank you for being here. Last night, i have the opportunity to walk down the mall and see thousands of people from around the globe that are around the mall to watch the incredible projection of the saturn rocket on the washington monument. And it was a time to see families together. Some were having picnics or telescopes out on the mall. They had cameras and tshirts emblazoned with the nasa logo in celebration of a historic accomplishment 50 years ago. It made me incredibly proud of this country and i hope that we can find more moments like that to celebrate. Not just in this, but in sony achievements this country has accomplished. In times of Great Division and political strife, things like this can bring the country together. And he saw it last night on the mall, i think i even taxes do a picture of it. Thank you for doing that. It was a great picture. When you look back to the opportunities we have in space, just around the hearing room, my guess is that a significant majority of people were not here years ago when the United States embarked on this incredible effort. Generation, mars could of new incredible amount opportunity and hope for our country. What are two or three things this congress ought to be looking at that will ensure we are succe