Space Policy Edition: What a NASA Authorization bill actually does

Casey Dreier: Hello and welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreier, the chief of Space Policy for The Planetary Society, welcoming you to another episode that looks into the policies and processes and behind the scenes things that drive space exploration. Joining me is my colleague Jack Kiraly, the director of government relations here at The Planetary Society. Jack, welcome to the intro part of the Space Policy Edition.

Jack Kiraly: Of course. Thank you. Thank you, Casey. It's great to be back. I think we've been busy this past year, and so it's really nice to be back in the saddle and on the show with you to talk about some really important space policy topics.

Casey Dreier: It's been too long, but yes, you've had better things to do, let's say, in the last year. Saving NASA Science. Can we just take a mini victory lap now that it's official as we record this?

Jack Kiraly: I think it is only right that we do.

Casey Dreier: Take a quick run around the block here, Jack. Before we even go into anything else with this episode, what just happened that we should all be proud of?

Jack Kiraly: So what really just happened, quite literally within the last month. This started January 5th, the House introduced a minibus funding bill right before the Congress was about to go back into session that fully funded all of our space priorities, all of our science priorities in NASA as well as the National Science Foundation. This was a piece of legislation that from our sources was negotiated over the holiday break, up until New Year's Eve where Democrats and Republicans and both the House and Senate came together and came to a compromise that as part of that, because of the outpouring of support for the space sciences within NASA and the National Science Foundation. The tens of thousands, I think between all of the organizations, more than a 100,00 messages were sent to Congress.

The 300 people that participated in our Days of Action, tens of thousands of people that participated and shared information about the Save NASA Science campaign. Because of all that, it was almost a no-brainer that the Congress could come together and pass a pre-conference, as they call it, pre-conferenced budget bill that the House and Senate already agreed on. Democrats, Republicans already agreed on it. They all had their talking points and they themselves took a victory lap on January 8th, to actually pass the budget in the House, January 15th to pass it in the Senate by such overwhelming numbers.

Casey Dreier: Overwhelming amounts. Yeah.

Jack Kiraly: It was 397 members of the House voted for it out of the 431 with a couple vacancies that are seated in the House of Representatives right now. That's huge, for that many people. And then it was 82 to 15 in the Senate, which again, a huge, huge victory, bipartisan. Almost unanimous in both chambers that this passed. And the president signed it just a week after that on the 23rd of January.

So in the course of functionally three weeks, we went from having no NASA budget with a budget deadline looming at the end of January that could have triggered another government shutdown. Went from having basically nothing to having a fully funded NASA Science program in the span of three weeks. And truly an amazing turn of events that in large part is due to the work, the tireless advocacy of more than 30,000 people across the United States. From literally every congressional district, somebody wrote a letter.

And that is something that has, to my knowledge, never happened before in the history of space science advocacy. This is a watershed moment for the space advocacy community. And I think we all deserve certainly some rest and relaxation after the year that we went through, but everyone that took part should pat themselves on the back because you helped make this happen.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. So we'll let everyone pause and do that. Maybe not if you're driving. I mean, this is good though too. I mean, there's lots of good things. We had a longer discussion already with our colleague Sarah on Planetary Radio and we have a great piece that you wrote on our website that we'll link to in the show notes. But I mean, we pretty much got everything we wanted. It's a repudiation. I think there's no other word for it. Of that dismal proposal that we got that was going to cut NASA Science in half, cut NASA by 25% and a third of all active science missions. None of that happens now.

Jack Kiraly: Right. And it really has poked a hole in this view that I think OMB, the Office of Management Budget. There's going to be a lot of TLAs on this, a lot of three letter acronyms on this podcast.

Casey Dreier: Oh, that's why people listen.

Jack Kiraly: Indeed. So refer to your acronym cheat sheet. The OMB have really ... I mean, they overplayed their hand and the folks who had helped craft this piece of legislation really ... I mean, this was an embarrassing loss for them to be honest, because the Congress really came back and in an overwhelming bipartisan, again, near unanimous vote. Said, "No, we are going to protect our investments in space. We're going to maintain US leadership in the space sciences, and we're going to support a workforce that enables this to happen." And so we lost a lot over the last year. Approximately 4,000 people left NASA. Thousands more contractors were either laid off or-

Casey Dreier: Expired, basically.

Jack Kiraly: Put on different contracts.

Casey Dreier: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jack Kiraly: But at the end of the day, we ended up with a budget that fully funded the science program.

Casey Dreier: Yeah.

Jack Kiraly: So kudos to Congress, kudos to you if you took action. And we're gearing up to do all of this again in FY27 because I have a sneaking suspicion that OMB is going to try to run the same playbook. And when they do, we will come back stronger than ever off this victory to do it all again.

Casey Dreier: Well, I think this is a really good just lesson for everybody. This can work, this type of advocacy can work. This is an area still of space that is not a completely frozen by partisanship. I mean, these were repudiations that came through the White House's own party. This is Republican led House and Senate that completely rejected these cuts. Pretty much every mission ... Mars Sample Return is a big exception that was terminated, but that, as we've discussed, as years of trouble, development. There wasn't a clear path through that would've been probably canceled by any incoming administration or seriously reworked. There's still a path forward for that, but lots of other good positive language in here.

There's thou shalt spend no less than directives, which is really important right now. There's lots of specific dollar amounts given for operating missions, for future science missions. Some missions get more money than they had been getting, like New Horizons or Juneau and OSIRIS-APEX going to the Apophis asteroid. Basically, everything that was proposed to be canceled said, "Nope, and here's the money that you're going to use to spend on it."

Jack Kiraly: You might just glaze over it as you're reading the bill.

Casey Dreier: Well, everyone's already read the bill.

Jack Kiraly: Right. Yeah. All of us have read the bill. All of us read that part of the bill and the report language, thou shall spend no less than these amounts, and it's easy to just glaze over that. But that is so critical to ensuring that congressional intent is followed in law because otherwise the OMB director, Russ Vought has said time and time again that he sees appropriations as a ceiling, not a floor. Well, this is them saying, "Well, if you see it that way, then there's no difference between those two parts of the room."

Casey Dreier: The ceiling is the floor in this case.

Jack Kiraly: The ceiling is the floor in this case, and that will make sure that money is spent appropriately on these activities. It has the necessary language in there, in the bill to make sure this is binding and it supports, again, like you said, all of these in flight and in development missions that we have that were under serious threat. And even though Mars Sample Return is canceled, there's a path forward that Congress that ...

Honestly, neither administration, the past Biden administration or that the current Trump administration, neither one of them really had a clear plan forward for Sample Return. Those are incredibly valuable samples. I would argue the most valuable rocks in the solar system.

Casey Dreier: More valuable than gold?

Jack Kiraly: Way more valuable than gold. They are incredibly important. And in particular, the Cheyava Falls sample, may with the leopard spot sample, may have the indications that tell us that we at some point, maybe were not alone in the universe. And that is answering a fundamental question. Actually, one of NASA's prime directives, one of the 10 things that NASA is supposed to do, which is created in a different process, which we're about to get into talking about authorization Sample Return has a path forward. It's not going to be called capital M, capital S, capital R, but it is going to be part of a longer term strategy for developing a sustainable Mars exploration program that ultimately leads to American boots on the surface of Mars.

Casey Dreier: So a setback, not end of the story on Mars Sample Return. Again, we'll just emphasize lots more information on this, but Space Policy Edition, I mean, the policy in this bill is what makes it extra important. And that's in response to again, the slow pace of dispersing money, threats of impoundment, threats of rescission. There's language about that as well. It's all of this extra stuff. And this is what Jack spent the last year really talking about people with. And we are putting out this information.

I'll just say, I'm proud of the work we did, Jack. And I'm proud of the work that you did and our colleague Ari as well, our first AAAS policy fellow. As we record this, you're sitting in our new DC office that we've invested in. The Planetary Society is ... We are in this. We are building up this program. We're putting resources to it. And I'll just, as a pitch to our members, thank you first and foremost.

I feel like you got your money's worth this year. And I may be a bit biased in this. As a member, I feel I got my money's worth this year. And we really did play, I think, a unique role in that independence primarily. We don't have government contracts, we don't depend on government scientists for subscriptions or conference fees or whatever. We could say what we believed and we could be on the tip of the spear and speak strongly and plainly and say what was going on without fear of losing income because we have independent members. That was a real strength this year.

If you're listening to this and you're not a member, maybe consider joining us. This allows us to do our work. And because we don't have that other money, because we don't have big giant corporate aerospace donors, we live and die by our membership. So if you're not a member, please consider joining us. It starts at just four bucks a month at planetary.org/join. If you are a member, again, thank you. And consider upping your membership level. Again, we are putting your money to good work. We have done, I think, incredible work.

You can read more about it also in our 2025 Impact Report, the pieces that Jack has written, and we're gearing up to maybe do this again in 2027 because ... Hopefully they've learned their lesson and why bother with this fight when you can just do so much more, but we'll talk about it when and if it comes.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, I'm base-lining my expectations that they're just going to run the same playbook, not based on anything, but if they moderate-

Casey Dreier: Fantastic.

Jack Kiraly: I mean, we've seen years of stagnating budgets for NASA and our return on that investment then therefore is going down because it's just costing more to do things. That's just the nature of how budgets work. You have to adjust for inflation year over year. And when you don't do that, those are effective cuts. And so although we can say we kept NASA fully funded, that fully funded amount is ultimately buying us less. The difference between 2025 and 2026 is not going to be a huge difference. But as that piles up, that then starts to become a problem. And we need to start looking long-term at the health of the space program and the direction that it's going. We will continue to fight. We're not going to stop at just good enough. We're going to continue to push so that we continue to have the best space program in the world.

Casey Dreier: Absolutely. Planetary.org/join. And Jack, we've had a good 10 minutes on appropriations in our Authorizations episode here.

Jack Kiraly: All the authorizers out there are getting antsy.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, they're already ... So let's switch to our main topic today. Again, we were just talking about '26 appropriations. We're in '26 fiscal year now, but there's this other track that Congress does in the United States. There's a theoretical structure to it, and then there's the practical structure, but authorizations, which sound a bit more abstract than I suppose they are. It's a weird idea of like, "I authorize this thing to exist and so it shall." But Jack, why don't you walk us through in a very basic level, what is the idea behind authorizations? And let's talk about it again in this ideal timeline and series of what's supposed to happen or what used to happen on an annual basis with those.

Jack Kiraly: So the way you can think about it is that the appropriations is the money and the authorizing is what is the money for? It is the direction in which the Congress writes the laws, sets the policy direction of the United States. That's the direction in which they want the agency to move. And so the authorization by its name authorizes certain activities, programs, projects, general ideas, concepts of ideas. That's the role that the authorization plays.

And so it can feel that that is not as important as cold, hard cash that's coming straight from the US Treasury, but it's vitally important when you're dealing with an agency that can't really ... You can't do things in space on an annual basis. There's very little you can do within a calendar year. You're talking about time horizons of 3, 5, 10, and in the case of some big flagship missions, 15 or 20 years in the future. And so you need the annual process to make sure that resources are being allocated appropriately.

The authorizing is to say, "Here is the broader strategy that the Congress wants to have." And these are documents that used to be annual, very similar ... An analogous authorization process is for the Department of Defense, which has to go through the National Defense Authorization Act. It is one of those ... You'll hear it called a must pass piece of legislation because it comes up every year because the Department of Defense is not a permanent agency. The way it's written into the US code, the rule book that we go by is that it has to be reauthorized every year.

NASA, thankfully in 1958, the authors of the first NASA authorization established it as a permanent agency. Meaning that it is going to continue to exist with or without an authorization. But for those first 40 odd years, every year on a pretty regular cadence, the Congress would come together and write, "Here are the directions we want the agency to go." It was almost like a status check.

Casey Dreier: It was also with the money. I mean, that's the other thing that they would do. They would authorize a ceiling. Now here we're talking about ceilings again, but they would say, "We recommend this much for these programs we're authorizing or reauthorizing." And that would be like direction given to the appropriators who would ... I think in that conception is almost more of a mechanical process is how I think of this, which is you have the authorizers set, "Here's what we're doing, here's what we think it needs." And they hand that off to appropriators who say, "Okay, here's the money we have. We'll give up to this." And that seemed like the original way that this used to be done.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. And that's not just for NASA, that's for a lot of areas within the federal government. That's where you get the term unfunded mandate is you have something that is mandated by an authorization, but the appropriators aren't allocating enough resources for it. "Well, how are we going to do it with zero dollars. Well, you don't. It's an unfunded mandate. And so they authorize a funding level, typically at the NASA top line level and maybe at what we call the mission directorate. It's that like, science mission directorate, technology mission directorate, space operations mission directorate.

Casey Dreier: And the major accounts within NASA.

Jack Kiraly: And so in recent years, authorizations have become less and less frequent, but these are still wildly important documents. They've turned from being this annual process to being what you call multi-year authorizations, where it'll look two, three, four years into the future and authorize funding levels for those fiscal years as well. And set, again, that broader direction for the agency for that period of time.

Now, when you're outside of an authorized funding year, say you're currently. The last NASA authorization that we had was ... I've been calling it the mini auth, the mini authorization that was in the CHIPS and Science Act, which passed in 2022. That was only for one year. That was just for fiscal year 2023. We're out of fiscal year 2023. We're in fiscal year 2026. So we're three years out of an authorized funding level.

That doesn't mean that the content of the bill no longer matters. There's not somebody sitting at NASA headquarters being like, "I hate that I have to work on this project, but the moment October 1st, 2026 comes around. I'm going to have to stop doing it. " No, this is again, the policy direction within authorized spending levels. It's really like a pretty big deal for this bill to come together.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I did some work on this with an intern of mine a few years ago, and again, I'll include the link to the piece that we wrote about this. But we looked at every NASA authorization and when it was passed ... And again, as Jack says, you said it's like clockwork. Every year you'd have the authorization first and then you'd have the appropriation and always by the fiscal ... Almost always by the start of the fiscal year, something almost in living memory, for a lot of people alive today has almost never happened.

And this is, I think ... There's a lot of bigger things in terms of trends of US politics, but starting in 1992, you started to get fewer and fewer authorization bills passed as the politics started to get more and more partisan and Congress started to become more and more gridlocked and unable to move through basic things. The advantage that appropriators have over authorizers, if you think about this These are two separate committees within the House and Senate that are responsible for these. As Jack alluding to, without an appropriation, the government shuts down. You just cannot spend money from the Treasury.

So you have to pass an appropriation at some point to do anything with the US government. So you have to always do that. So that external pressure means there's always an appropriation. And as that happens and you start seeing projects not technically authorized, but moved through via appropriators, starting to do more policy rather than that ... The proper place for that would be on the authorizing side. So without this external motivation that you have to pass it, mixed with increased partisanship and just more gridlock in Congress, you have seen this dramatic drop in the number of authorizations. Do you have it pulled up? I think it's only something like seven in the last 30 years or so have passed.

Jack Kiraly: Six. Six in the last-

Casey Dreier: Six in the past 30 years.

Jack Kiraly: A couple false starts, I will note. There were a handful that were drafted, introduced, just never got floor time, never made it to debate. Actually, a situation that we're dealing with now, where in the past three years, we've had three authorizations introduced, but some of them have passed full chambers. Some of them haven't even gotten a hearing. So we're in this in between period, where we're back to that cadence of every year we get an authorization. It just has happened to be basically the same authorization each three years, or each of the last three years.

Casey Dreier: And that's a strange thing too. When these do pass, they tend to pass with what's called unanimous consent. No one bothers to register any ... Is that basically a voice vote? Are you even taking a actual recorded vote in unanimous consent?

Jack Kiraly: Typically, unanimous consent, you're not. The last time they voted on the floor was the 2024 authorization. That was that huge vote. And I think there was maybe 21 votes against it. There was maybe one or two in the committee that said that we didn't want to move forward or abstentions. People that just decided not to vote for one reason or another. And then it passed the floor, but there was 21 people voting against it.

Typically, the only opposition that you're actually seeing to these bills aren't even necessarily the opposition to the content of the bill, but rather the mechanism, the procedural mechanism. In the House, they have these things called rules, which sounds like a glib comment, but it's not like they ... They have a rules committee, where you have to go and you present a ... Basically a parliamentary procedure, a congressional procedure to say, "And we're going to have this long of debate and we're going to take these votes and these things are going to happen." It's basically your agenda for that day or for that bill vote.

And sometimes you suspend the rules because you need to get something passed. And the last NASA authorization that passed the House, the 2024 one, was passed under suspension of the rules because then you don't have to go through this whole process. There's all this politics around how much time you're allocating to debate and how many signatures you need to get certain things moving forward. And typically people vote against things that are under the suspension of the rules because they don't like that process, not because they don't like-

Casey Dreier: It's like a protest vote.

Jack Kiraly: Right, basically. And that was the last time that we had anybody vote against the NASA authorization. But yeah, you're right. I mean, typically these things are non-controversial. Space touches almost every congressional district, but certainly every state. It is this icon of American idealism and hearkens back to a period of time that people certainly idealize a lot. And so it's something that everyone can get behind and everyone has a little piece of the pie.

Casey Dreier: But again, why don't they pass them more? The consequences aren't the biggest. I think that's maybe one of the reasons why they don't feel like they have to pass them. But it almost seems like they just get ... When they do pass, they pass with huge margins. You said most people aren't against the space program. So it must be ... What I would guess is that it's just getting caught up in the larger machinations. There's only so much floor time you have when you're running Congress and things can take a while. And so you have other priorities, I assume, that are just taking up time if you're running down a clock because every two years, you basically ... If you've introduced anything in the House that hasn't passed, you basically got to start that all over again.

Jack Kiraly: And your majority might change.

Casey Dreier: Yes, not to mention that.

Jack Kiraly: [inaudible 00:25:15] might change.

Casey Dreier: The whole majority might change. Yeah. But I mean, is that how you would see this too? It's just a function of everything else eating up so much time Congress isn't able to move fast enough, and so they just don't prioritize a NASA authorization?

Jack Kiraly: There is almost so much agreement that it's hard to break through. Everyone agrees that this is something we should do. And a lot of the disagreements are on these finer details. Nobody wants a contentious NASA authorization. And so it almost creates this expectation that because there's going to be this large majority, you have to go through this very arduous consensus building process. That even when you have members of Congress that are co-sponsoring the bill but might have wildly different expectations of what policies the bill implements. You're doing a lot of behind the scenes negotiations over that bill because you want it to be something that everyone can get behind. Nobody wants a 51, 49 vote on a NASA authorization. The expectation is that it is broadly bipartisan.

And so it's almost to its detriment because you have to build that coalition behind it every time you want to get one of these passed, and there are so many other pressing issues that are dividing people. That it's hard to find the time to do all that background work to get everybody on the same page because the expectation is such. And so it's this self-fulfilling prophecy for a NASA authorization. It needs to pass by wide margins, but to get wide margins, you need everybody to agree to it. And sometimes there's just issues that people don't agree on, and that's the nature of Democratic government, but at the same time, these are small disagreements sometimes, sometimes pretty big disagreements between individual members who with them come a lot of votes, right?

Casey Dreier: Mm-hmm. I think you've seen also as they become more infrequent, they do more and say more when they do pass. Again, you look at the annual authorizations back in the day, they're not doing much actually beyond authorizing funding, but when they stop passing as frequently, and then they ... There's been a steady growth in the number of words that they contain. It's a measurable metric, but something that's ... There's lots more senses ... What's called a sense of Congress, maybe you can explain that, more requests for reports. Just more declarative guardrails and points of ... They're just talking about more because you don't have this annual check-in on the authorizers and you can't get it through.

And so that then probably takes more work to get that level of buy-in that you're talking about. You have to basically say, "Okay, we'll accept your amendment on this. We'll bring this text in." And it balloons up in terms of legislation. Again, it's a strange irony to me, where it's like it's both important and not that important and that they don't have to do it, but then when one passes, they can actually change quite a bit. Before we go onto that hanging thread though, what is a sense of Congress that is frequently included in these authorizations?

Jack Kiraly: So a sense of Congress is a way for the members of Congress to indicate a series of ... I want to say facts because a lot of times it is, "We feel that such and such is important." It is you making the argument to say ... Typically, you start off a section of the bill talking with your senses of Congress, which is you saying, "Because we feel this and we feel that, and we want this. We are therefore going to do X, Y, and Z." And then you go into your subsection that deals with ... And that's why we're calling for this report on skill gaps within the NASA technical workforce. Or that is why we are requiring that NASA look for ways to leverage our entry descent landing expertise for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

Both of those are examples of things that made it into this most recent authorization, the one that just passed the House Science Committee yesterday as we're recording this and they are your way to lay out your argument and it gets all of Congress because it's a sense of Congress. It is Congress saying, "We as a body, we as the duly elected 535 members, give or take a few for vacancies. We, the 535 members of Congress, feel this way about the future of the space program, and this is what we're going to do about it." It actually is a very important consensus building tool. It can be disagreements about what you're saying. I mean, if you've ever been on a committee or council, from your local HOA to county boards or commissions. If you've ever been on any of these types of things, getting the words right is very important. And Congress is doing the exact same thing here. So this is them putting forward the list of observations that they're making.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Yeah. It's non-binding though. So it's not some thou shalt. It's just, "We care about this." It can be a very important signaling, probably mostly to the executive that it's saying, "By the way, we care about this." Which is saying, "Don't mess with it or do this." It's a way to support industries would be also my guess and other aspects of a workforce. It's a funny thing, but it's also ... You're attributing a belief or a statement to a very diverse body of people. It's a funny and interesting quirk of the system that's basically saying, "You can read this law and within the law that does set statute." We just say, "Oh, by the way, we care about this. We like this."

Jack Kiraly: Right. It is your congressional intent. It's your way of saying ... You read a section, subsection that says, "And we're asking for a report on yada, yada, yada. On the future of the Deep Space Network, the thing that we use to talk to the spacecraft millions and millions of miles away. We're asking for a report on this." From just that alone, you can't really ... You can say, "Okay. Well, they clearly care about this." But you don't know why they're caring about it. It's that sense of Congress that gives you the intent behind it. We care about this because it's very important for X, Y, and Z reasons and not just because we want to know more about it.

Maybe some members want to just know more about the Deep Space Network or some space topic and they want to get a report from the agency, but that intent is very important because then when you come to applying both the appropriations, you're spending the money and implementing the policy. NASA officials are then looking back at that piece of legislation and saying, "Well, why did they want us to do this? Is there maybe a different way or a way within the guardrails they've given us on a particular policy directive, a way that we can address their concerns or interests or preferences through reading that sense of Congress?" And so it helps the agency understand, "Okay, this is what they want out of this." Even if there's maybe some ambiguity about what that policy directive might ultimately be.

Casey Dreier: We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break.

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Casey Dreier: Within an authorization, we've talked about that they recommend funding levels. They set these senses of Congress, and this is where the real power comes in. We should talk about this for a minute. They set statute. They pass it as a law when they want to. It amends this US code that is the rules by which the government operates. And this is where ... Even though you're not, as you said, necessarily funding, you can have mandates that are unfunded. You are passing law. So you can, or they can through these vehicles, these legislative vehicles say, "NASA will do this." It is law that this is ... Or it is policy of the United States that this will be the case.

Let's talk about that for a minute. I mean, this is maybe the most basic concept of what I suppose a law is, but it's interesting in ... As you point out in this context where ... Often laws govern behavior, like what you can and can't do or what an agency can or can't do. Here are these laws ... I mean, they can govern behavior, but they tend to be, "You are going to build a thing that will take a decade and then will travel for seven years and then do this." Or, "You will have this type of fundamental program activity that does these types of missions at NASA." It's more than just governing activity. You are setting out the country on a path.

Jack Kiraly: Right. It's that strategy piece.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, right. This is where in a sense the authorization really sets the actual meat of the national strategy of what we're doing in space. Let's go through some examples maybe of some of the more notable laws that were passed in this. Does anyone jump to mind for you? Because I have a couple, but I'll turn it over to you if one jumps into mind.

Jack Kiraly: I mean, I think that the big one that we at The Planetary Society are really excited about, Europa Clipper. That's something that through appropriations and through authorization was made into law. You also have Space Launch System. The guardrails that were used to create that basically based off of using heritage space shuttle technology, building the next super-heavy lift vehicle for the United States government.

Another really good one is the ... I guess maybe this is not just building one particular mission, but creating the entire idea of planetary defense, 2005, the George E. Brown Near-Earth Object Surveyor Act. Requiring that NASA find 90% of the potentially hazardous asteroids, putting the confines on ... This is what we want you to find. We understand that these are dangerous and here's how ... You need to do this by this date. NASA didn't do it by that date, but still has that mandate to do those things.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. It's a good example of an unfunded mandate. There's the Brown Survey Act that eventually turned into a funded mandate. But it was something ... Like when we were advocating for funding planetary defense and NEO Surveyor and ground-based observations, we could point to it, it's like, "It's actually law. You should be doing this." And they had a deadline that they couldn't make. No one gets arrested. There's no congressional NASA authorization police that kicks down the door and hauls the NASA administrator away if they don't do this, but it is statutorily required that they do something about this.

Even just having that framework becomes enormously useful as advocates, even other members of Congress later down the line. I just want to talk about the SLS one because maybe this is the most notable and probably in the last 20 years one of the most important authorizations is the 2010 NASA authorization. And this is a good example to me of how important and how impactful when these do pass, if they're written in a certain way and done with a strategically really long-term consequences for the space program.

This is a famous one to me because this is where people get the term the Senate launch system because this was a Senate-led authorization. And it was this text that it's not just that NASA ... Hey, think about building a heavy lift launch vehicle. It was NASA shall make a Space Launch System that ... This is, I think, the extraordinary part. It didn't just say that NASA should build a big rocket. It made the specifications, specifically how much mass it could carry to low Earth orbit. And that just basically sets the constraints of the rocket equation. That means, you're building a big rocket.

And then even more, and this is where I think we can talk about the lobbying aspect or this is what frustrates people. Congress told NASA how to build it. They said, "Use the existing shuttle workforce and contractors." And that's why it looks like pieces of the ... That's why it has solid rocket boosters. Thiokol. I forget who makes those now. Is it rocket ... I don't know off the top of my head. Yeah, Aerojet. To keep up with all the mergers. It's the shuttle workforce mapped onto this And it has a shuttle sized ... The fuel tank of the shuttle is the same diameter as the core section of the SLS. Lockheed, Boeing, all these other ones, that's why they're on this project because they were the primary shuttle contractors that by law had to be moved into this heavy launch system.

It is US law that NASA make this rocket. To not make this heavy lift Space Launch System in this way would require basically a change of statute. You'd have to pass a law saying you cannot do that. And interestingly, every subsequent authorization that has passed, I guess the two in 2017 and 2022, but you can see this in the attempts prior. Reinforce this every single time, particularly regarding the SLS, not just as a sense of Congress, but they reaffirm the policy that you shall ... It's a much more muscular outcome.

So I love lingering on the SLS one because people will say, "Well, why do we have to do this?" Well, it's in statute. This is why it is the way it is. And you could say that's not engineering-wise. Sure, you can argue it, but politically, it's about as rock solid as a program as one sees.

Jack Kiraly: Indeed. Like you said, it comes up in every authorization after that. And even in the appropriate ... Again, this is that feedback loop between authorization and appropriations is every appropriations package has money specifically set aside for this program because it is statutorily required. And so to get to that level, to be a statutorily required mission or vehicle or whatever, is very important. That means that it is illegal for NASA not to do this. Now there is always typically ... For SLS, it's a little bit different. Typically, there's always those off-ramps, as funding is appropriate.

Casey Dreier: Subject to appropriation.

Jack Kiraly: Subject to appropriation, subject to availability of resources functionally. So if something does become impossible, NASA is supposed to go back to Congress and say, "Sorry, we can't actually execute on this. Can you give us the green light to say, yes, we can cancel this, or no, we can't." And Congress gets really mad when NASA doesn't do that. So you look back at the Discovery Program, the Dawn Mission to a series invest up, back 2003 gets terminated by NASA being over budget. And Congress comes back the following year and says, "No, you are going to continue doing this mission." And that is, again, one of those things that like ... If you are on a mission and it gets canceled, terminated, but you're in statute or you have friends in Congress, that can be the thing that saves your mission. Quirk of the system that ultimately ...

It is how the government's supposed to work. You have these co-equal branches of government. For NASA, you're really only caring about two. There's not a lot of space law that happens at the Supreme Court or federal court level at this point.

Casey Dreier: The Supreme Court taking up the space law. Right.

Jack Kiraly: When that happens, that'll be a red letter day, indeed. But you care about that interplay between the executive branch, the agency, and the various other supporting agencies, like OMB and OSTP and the various offices within the executive office of the president that pertain to space. But then you also hear about that interplay between the executive branch and the legislative branch because ultimately they're the ones who are authorizing and appropriating this direction. And so there's supposed to be this back and forth between the two.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Again though, you just see when an authorization does happen, even though again, there's no ... Again, none of this congressional police, as we've talked about it, just you have so much more argument to hang on. And not just at ... You said at the administration level, but even within NASA itself, when there's the internal debates about resources, directionality of the agency. Debates within OSTP or the other parts of the administration and space advocates like ourselves. If you have something in an authorization, and let's be clear, I think this is also important to emphasize. Funding can expire from an authorization, when an authorization lapses, but the preexisting statute doesn't go away. Those stay in law.

We haven't had a funding authorization in four years now, but that doesn't mean that any of the other statutes have gone. And so you have these on ... Unless specifically amended or unless they have a sunset clause or something built into it's still the law. It's still the legal requirement for NASA to do any number of these things. Again, as advocates or anyone where they're advocating external or internal, you can point to that as a really important and helpful piece. Like, "No, it's actually statutorily required that NASA does whatever, planetary defense." And you're not doing it means you're in violation of that or you need to be doing it better. That it's not just something someone is making up or a preference. Like, "No, you've been told to do this. I can point you to the point in US code that says you should do this." That's an enormous help for some of these things that we're trying to invest in more.

Jack Kiraly: And makes it easier for when you have a new authorization and you want to get things amended in it or changed to be able to say, "Well, the Congress has already said X and Y. You just need to say Z to finish this point."

Casey Dreier: Right right. Or to tweak it or to ... It just adds valance to it by default because it's already gone through that process.

Jack Kiraly: I mean, if you go through the authorizations, you'll see in there there's real ... I mean, what feel like minor technical corrections, changing a ... I think there was one in the one that just passed the House Science Committee, where it changed the sunset on a previous clause from February 1st, 2026 to February 1st, 2028. It changes the meaning of that thing. And it can feel like a small change, but it is the reaffirmation of some piece of congressional intent. So all of the pieces of authorization matter and they make sense and they are designed to solve problems.

You wouldn't pass a bill if there was no thing to solve or some issue to provide clarity on. These serve a very important purpose. And because they're so important, because there's that expectation for such wide support, and because it's a non-controversial issue, that is in part why we just end up with less authorizations in recent memory.

Casey Dreier: Authorizations are very helpful. One of those things where ... Would you call it like a meat and potatoes legislative aspect? It doesn't have the the annual oomph and the dollar signs to measure. It's actually hard to quantify and put in a chart, have tried, what these do or mean. But again, from what we're talking about, they're really critical and they also ... And maybe just part of it ... Let's talk about just the people who make it, they're distinct. They're part of a certain committee that is distinct from the appropriations committee. They're part of the House Science Committee is responsible for this. And then in the Senate, it's actually interestingly grouped with commerce. It's the Senate Commerce Committee that also does science.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. There is also overlap between authorizers and appropriators. Notably, the chair of the Senate, Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriation Subcommittee. Again, another commerce overlap. Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas, is also on the Senate Commerce Science and Transportation Committee. They do oversight of NASA. When you have a nomination hearing, as we had with Administrator Isaacman, that's where you testify to. And again, over in the House, you're right, it's the Science Space and Technology Committee. And they have a subcommittee on space and aeronautics, which is very specifically focused on the space policy issues.

Casey Dreier: These committees are ... They're self-selecting generally. Some people get ... Particularly if you're young, I guess you're a new member of Congress, you can tend to ... You have fewer to choose from. But if you're on that committee, you are writing or your staff is writing that first pass on this bill. And so you get the most influence on these policies and whatever senses of Congress that we're talking about. And you might not be surprised to hear that a lot of people who have NASA interests in their district tend to be the ones serving on it. And it makes sense. They care about it.

It's a subset of Congress that is doing this, drafting it initially, putting this together. Ultimately it gets voted on by everybody, but this core part of it just doesn't change as much. They take an input ... This is really that group of people have that expertise and focus and that's where you really spend your time on. They're the ones thinking about NASA basically from a very deep level on an annual basis.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. Going back to something you were just saying about the newer members being on these committees, the House Science Committee is not seen as a very attractive committee because their purview is science, space and technology, and that's not the meat and potatoes political issues.

Casey Dreier: And not a lot of big donors. If you're on the banking committee or setting rules committee or setting House or tax law. A lot of more interests, a lot of more money interest I think for fundraising opportunities.

Jack Kiraly: Right. And a lot more lobbyists. I mean, these are much larger organizations, not to say that the science community and the space community broadly doesn't have a very healthy lobbying community, but certainly is dwarfed by the size of some of these other interests. And so actually the average tenure of a member of Congress on the science committee, your seniority is two and a half-terms. Meaning that you are either in your second or third term, most of the members. I think really there's just a handful of members that are in a more senior role.

I'm thinking of Chairman Brian Babin, who was elected in the ... I believe, early 2000s, who represents the Johnson Space Center, and he's the chair of the science committee, has a huge interest in his district, and it's something that's very important to him, and he's been in Congress for a long time, but then you have the chair of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, Mike Haridopolos from Florida, who represents Kennedy Space Center. This is his first term in Congress, and he's chairman of this subcommittee.

And so you have this balance of older, higher seniority members at the helm of the full committee, but then your rank and file members, and even the chairs of some of your subcommittees are very new members. And so you cycle through a lot of different people when you're on the science committee, because we have so many. Basically, whenever there's a special election, you can almost guarantee that they're going to get put on the science committee when they fill a vacancy.

Casey Dreier: Lots of opportunity for education and outreach.

Jack Kiraly: Indeed. That turnover is definitely motivation for our work.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. If you're listening to this and you do have a member who's new and they're on the committee, I mean, those are huge opportunities for you as a member of their district, if you're in it, to talk about that as something important to you. They have this nominal interest to care about it on the committee. They're probably not getting a ton of other people talking about it. So it's real great. And we've met and you've met people who find real excitement. They didn't realize how cool some of this stuff could be.

Jack Kiraly: Right. I would argue ... If I were a member of Congress, I would argue to be on the committee just because of-

Casey Dreier: I would love to be on the-

Jack Kiraly: The jurisdiction of it. You look at some of the other things in their remit, they just had a hearing on quantum computing, they've done hearings on artificial intelligence and applications in science. Aeronautics, I believe there's one coming up, a hearing coming up on wildfire mitigation. You get a little bit of everything in this committee because its remit is mainly focused on your science agencies and technology focused agencies. You have a real education opportunity if you have a new member of Congress. I mean, we're going into 2026, which is a very big election year. It feels like it's always election season, but we're going to go into a year, where we're going to have a lot of retirements and we're going to have a lot of turnover with some of the mid-decadal redistricting that's happened. There's going to be a lot of turnover. And so there's going to be a lot of new members of Congress on January 3rd, 2027 when the 120th Congress gets sworn in.

And so a lot of those folks are going to end up on the science committee, and that's going to be, again, another huge opportunity for us to educate those members. But you have members right now who are still in their first term, who are on the science committee. And so if you know that your member is new and they're on the science committee, this is a great opportunity for you to sign up for the Day of Action on April 19th and 20th, 2026.

Casey Dreier: Forgot to plug that earlier, didn't I?

Jack Kiraly: Well, I figured that this was the right, right, right segue for it. So our Day of Action, it's our flagship advocacy event. We held two of them last year. No guarantee we're going to do that again.

Casey Dreier: That killed us.

Jack Kiraly: It did. Casey, it was ...

Casey Dreier: But worth it. Worth it.

Jack Kiraly: Oh, absolutely worth it. That was the largest-

Casey Dreier: [inaudible 00:54:08].

Jack Kiraly: I mean, not to use the talking point, but a historic day of space science advocacy.

Casey Dreier: Show me a day where more people came to Congress for space science.

Jack Kiraly: I don't think there was.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, I don't [inaudible 00:54:20].

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. So. One for the history books, but this next one will be one for the history books too, because we're following on that historic day.

Casey Dreier: Absolutely.

Jack Kiraly: April 19th and 20th, we arrange your meetings, we give you the training, we give you the materials. You just got to bring yourself and your passion, and we'll help you translate that into real political action. We have a NASA authorization, as I've alluded to, has passed the House Science Committee. We don't know the path to the floor. We don't know whether the Senate's going to take it up. There's so many open questions. We could still be dealing with this issue in April and it'll be good to be pushing on that. But then as always, appropriations is a huge, huge issue.

And getting in early ... We're expecting the president's budget request to come out sometime in March. And so that means April is going to be that period of time where members of Congress are going to be soliciting input from the community, from other members of Congress, from the administrator of NASA himself on the future direction of the agency. And this is that moment to influence the direction that the agency's going with regard to the spending, to projects, to research opportunities, this is that moment.

So April 19th, the 20th planetary.org/dayofaction, registration is open now. Early bird pricing through March 1st, get 35% off your registration fee, which I will say is a nominal registration fee. We're not making money off of the Day of Action.

Casey Dreier: Certainly. We are a nonprofit. We don't make money off of this.

Jack Kiraly: It's just helps us diffuse some of the costs. Again, take care of all the training. We organize all of your meetings and we pair you up with people who are just as passionate as you about the exploration of our cosmos and the understanding of our place in space. So please consider joining us April 19th and 20th.

Casey Dreier: Great pitch, Jack. I heartily endorse it. I will be there too, and a great place to end this episode. So we will have a lot to do this year again, and the authorization may be one of them. I find the entire thing just ... The distinctions compared to appropriations and then what they're able to do and the inherent limits of when you have too much agreement. Again, just fascinating examples of how our Congress in this country works and occasionally it doesn't.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. We could do a whole episode on this one that just passed the science committee and I think maybe we'll do a writeup or something on it because ... To have it go as quickly as possible is really ... I don't want to say unprecedented because I'm sure it's happened before in years gone by, but for the current Congress to have moved as quickly as it did from introduction to passing out of committee. Certainly a laudable achievement for the staff that made this happen and for the advocates that got it across the finish line. Sometimes these things move quickly. And that's why we have our presence here in DC is to be ready to respond to opportunities like that.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Jack, you were sitting in the hearing room when they passed it out of committee. You were there for the entire exciting aspect of it. This is why, again, members. You're getting your money's worth.

Jack Kiraly: I would say it was a blur of 72 hours.

Casey Dreier: Right. Yes. You were doing a lot there before then. Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations at The Planetary Society. Thanks for having you. We'll have to have you back more often. It's great having you here and we'll have lots to talk about this year.

Jack Kiraly: Yep, indeed. Thank you, Casey. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Casey Dreier: Anytime, Jack. And let me see if I can close this with a new Latin phrase suggested by a longtime listener. We usually say ad astra at the end. What if we say something like ad astra per civitatum? To the stars through the citizens. I think, or something like that. Does that work, ad astra per civitatum? Jack, what do you think about that?

Jack Kiraly: Ad astra per civitatum. I like it.

Casey Dreier: It's got a ring to it.

Jack Kiraly: Civic engagement. It's through those efforts that these things happen.

Casey Dreier: We'll use that this time. So Jack, until next time ad astra per civitatum.

Jack Kiraly: Ad astra per civitatum.

Casey Dreier: We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, but we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space, science and exploration. Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and The Planetary Society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show.

Your input and interactions really help us be discovered by other curious minds and that will help them find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us, including me, your thoughts and questions at [email protected], or if you're a Planetary Society member and I hope you are. Leave me a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our online member community.

Mark Hilverda and Ray Paoletta are our associate producers of the show. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Me, Casey Dreier, and Merc Boyan, my colleague, composed and performed our Space Policy Edition theme. The Space Policy Edition is a production of The Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit space outreach organization based in Pasadena, California. We are membership based and anybody, even you can become a member. They start at just four dollars a month. That's nothing these days. Find out more at planetary.org/join. Until next month ad astra.