WASHINGTON — Without fanfare and a public ceremony, President Barack Obama on Monday quietly signed into law legislation steering the nation’s space program toward Mars.
The wide-ranging measure adds a third and final shuttle flight next June, extends space-station operations for five years to 2020, provides federal support for commercial spacecraft and hastens the development of deep-space exploratory craft to reach an asteroid by 2025 and orbit Mars a decade later.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs merely issued a 71-word written statement announcing Obama’s signature, a low-key bookend to a contentious nine-month struggle with Congress over the future of the U.S. space program.
A White House photo showed Obama seated alone as his Oval Office desk, without the customary backdrop of senior officials or lawmakers.
The legislation killing the Bush-era back-to-the-moon space program represented the most dramatic course change since President John F. Kennedy made the moon the nation’s destination in 1961 in the midst of the U.S.-Soviet space race.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate subcommittee with direct control over the space agency and a king maker in the electoral battleground of Florida, lavishly praised Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the top Republican on the Senate panel with jurisdiction over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for collaborating on the compromise legislation that Obama signed.
“Kay Bailey and I were joined at the hip as we were trying to stop all the misinformation and trying to build a consensus among our colleagues,” Nelson recalled.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden read a prepared statement but took no questions during Monday’s telephone conference call with reporters.
The Obama administration faces uncertainty over whether Congress will provide NASA the full $19 billion for the current fiscal year called for in the law.
Congress is scheduled to return to Capitol Hill after the Nov. 2 midterm congressional elections to approve spending for federal agencies through next Sept. 30.
