This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s mission to land on an asteroid and its Earth science division both drew angry criticism from lawmakers on Thursday, as administrator Charles Bolden defended the agency on Capitol Hill.

At a House hearing on Nasa’s 2016 budget, space subcommittee chairman Lamar Smith criticized what he called “the disproportionate increase” in funding for Earth science research, saying that over eight years almost $2bn had been added to its budget. Smith and other Republicans argued that Nasa should not devote so many resources to studying the climate when it could work on space.

“There are 13 other agencies involved in climate-change research, but only one that is responsible for space exploration,” Smith said. “The administration continues to starve Nasa’s exploration programs to fund a partisan environmental agenda. Nasa simply deserves better.”

Bolden, a retired marine corps general and former astronaut, defended the division, saying: “Nasa since its inception has responsibility for exploring the universe and also taking care of Earth, my favorite planet.”

When representative Mo Brooks asked whether Bolden would support moving Earth science research under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), saying “Nasa is ‘aeronautics and space’, not ‘Earth science’,” Bolden balked.

“There’s no ‘s’ in Nasa for ‘science’ and some think we shouldn’t do science, but that’s absurd,” Bolden said.

The administrator bluntly denied that increased funding for Earth sciences came at the expense of other divisions.

“We do not divert money from human exploration and science,” he said.

Republicans have made a concerted effort to drain funding from government research into climate change, directing most of their wrath toward the EPA, which they argue handcuffs business. While most Republicans support Nasa generally, they have recently taken aim at its Earth science program, which studies rising ocean temperatures, pollution and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, among other areas.

In March, Ted Cruz, chair of the Senate committee that oversees Nasa, sparred with Bolden over the program, saying: “I am concerned that Nasa in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission.”

Bolden replied: “It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth’s environment, because this is the only place we have to live.”

Bolden also testifed to the same Senate committee on Thursday. He was grilled by senators incensed about whether bases in their states might lose funding in the coming year.

Democrat Barbara Mikulski became particularly curt, pressing Bolden to keep Goddard Space Flight Center – in her state, Maryland – in business.

“Satellites are on my mind,” Mikulski said, alluding to Goddard’s satellite servicing program, “and I would like that in the budget.”

Bolden caught himself in the middle of an exasperated protest.

“I was about to get cute,” he said.

“Don’t,” Mikulski shot back.

Eventually, Bolden accepted the senators’ complaints. “I don’t want you to think that I’m satisfied because I’m not,” he said.

The first objective of Nasa’s charter, as laid out by Congress, is “the expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space”.

House Republicans also criticized Nasa for its “asteroid redirect mission” (ARM), which has the objective of eventually tearing a boulder off an asteroid and placing it in orbit around the moon, where it could then be studied. Smith called the mission “uninspiring”. Representative Steven Palazzo said Nasa had failed to explain a cost, timeline, plan or even justification for the mission.

Bolden defended the asteroid mission by saying it was both a step on the path to Mars and an opportunity to “inform our ability to deflect asteroids”. Asked why he had ignored recommendations about the program, he said: “I believe in constancy of purpose.”

He was then forced to defend Nasa’s inchoate plans for a manned mission to Mars and did not satisfy the lawmaker’s demands for a “roadmap” for that mission or ARM.

A final point of tension was US reliance on Russian space shuttles to send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Brooks said that since the American shuttle program was cancelled – omitting that it was president George W Bush who scheduled its end – “the US hitches rides from Russia, we are no longer preeminent space program”.

Bolden argued that so long as Congress provides funding, the missions will launch from US soil again in 2017, and Nasa will “stop writing checks to the Russian space agency”. Pressed for a backup plan should Russia stop allowing Americans to join its launches, Bolden was stymied – although he did point out that Russia does not want to bar Americans from the ISS and had shown no sign it would do so.

The lawmakers however harped on a joke tweeted by the Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin last year, about American astronauts reaching the ISS “using a trampoline”.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who has elsewhere argued in defense of Russia, suggested the US should outsource a mission to Mars to a private contractor, like SpaceX.

Bolden countered that “no commercial company is going to independently go to Mars without support of government”, and said that relying on a private company would slow the mission.