AUSTIN – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) released the following statement in response to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Acting Administrator Sean Duffy’s approval of a retired NASA space shuttle to be moved to a non-profit near the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, an effort that was spearheaded by Senator Cornyn and signed into law by President Trump as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act:

“Since the inception of our nation’s human space exploration program, Houston has been at the center of our most historic achievements, from training the best and brightest to voyage into the great unknown to putting the first man on the moon,” said Sen. Cornyn. “There is no better place for one of NASA’s space shuttles to be displayed than Space City, and I thank Acting Administrator Duffy for rectifying the Obama Administration’s error and look forward to welcoming this iconic orbiter to its rightful home.”

Background:

Senator Cornyn’s provision was signed into law in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and required the consideration of a NASA Space Shuttle’s movement to a facility near NASA’s JSC in Houston. As written into the law, the entity adjacent to Johnson Space Center will be able to select the space shuttle in concurrence with the NASA Administrator. Congressional intent of the law makes clear that this is aimed at the movement of Space Shuttle Discovery. 

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 Houston area. Four space shuttles were retired from NASA in 2011, 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 Senator’s legislation authorized the movement of a Space Shuttle to an entity near the JSC in Houston.