WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) today introduced the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act, which would move the Space Shuttle Discovery from Virginia to its rightful home near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston:

“Houston played a critical role throughout the life of the space shuttle program, but it is clear political favors trumped common sense and fairness when the Obama administration blocked the Space City from receiving the recognition it deserves,” said Sen. Cornyn. “I am proud to lead the effort to finally bring Discovery home to Houston, where future generations of Texans and Americans can come to learn about the city’s integral role in our nation’s space shuttle program.”

“Home to the Johnson Space Center and its famed Mission Control, Houston has an unparalleled reputation and history in the exploration of the new frontier,” said Sen. Cruz. “It is past time that the Space Center Houston Museum houses a space shuttle, given the unique relationship between the entire program and its support staff in Houston. Bringing the Discovery to its final home will offer hundreds of thousands of visitors each year the opportunity to engage with a living piece of NASA’s history and understand why Houston is known worldwide as ‘Space City.’”

“Since its very inception, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has been the epicenter for manned spaceflight, propelling Texas as the national leader in the U.S. space industry,” said Gov. Abbott. “The first word spoken from the moon was ‘Houston.’ To honor that legacy, it’s long overdue for a retired NASA Space Shuttle to rest at Houston’s Johnson Space Center so Texans can see, learn from, and enjoy it for generations. I thank Senator John Cornyn and Senator Ted Cruz for spearheading this effort to bring this historic Space Shuttle to Texas, the proud home and command center of NASA’s space operations.”

Background:

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 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 is the only shuttle still owned by the federal government and able to be transferred to Houston. This legislation would authorize the movement of the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to a nonprofit near the Johnson Space Center in Houston.