WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) today praised National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for announcing that they are accepting Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for entities to bid on contracts related to the movement of Space Shuttle Discovery from Virginia to Houston, a significant development in the effort to bring the shuttle to its rightful home in Space City:

“My law authorizing and funding the Space Shuttle Discovery’s movement to Houston is being set into motion thanks to NASA’s announcement, and I applaud Administrator Isaacman for keeping this process moving,” said Sen. Cornyn. “Today is real progress in our mission to bring Discovery home, and I look forward to welcoming the shuttle home to Space City soon.”

Background:

The Senator’s provision was signed into law as part of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act.

Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center led all of the space shuttle flights throughout the program’s history, and the astronauts who flew aboard the shuttles lived and trained in the area Houston. Four space shuttles were retired from NASA in 2010, and one of them was expected to go on display in the Space City. Congress stated in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 that the four space shuttles were to be given to states with a “historical relationship with either the launch, flight operations, or processing of the Space Shuttle orbiters or the retrieval of NASA-manned space vehicles, or significant contributions to human space flight.”

Unfortunately, this directive was unlawfully ignored by the Obama administration, who played politics to keep Houston from getting one of the shuttles. Notably, the administration gave one of the four shuttles to New York City, which has not made any major contributions to the nation’s history of space exploration and is not home to a NASA center—unlike Houston. The Space Shuttle Discovery should be transferred to Houston.