Vice President Mike Pence will chair the next meeting of the National Space Council at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville on Tuesday, the White House says.

The council includes leaders of various executive agencies and departments including Defense, State, Commerce, Homeland Security, national intelligence and NASA. It was originally founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, disbanded in 1993 and reactivated by President Trump in 2017.

The meeting in Huntsville, which opens at noon CDT, will be the council’s fifth since being reactivated. Its focus will be the administration’s plans to send Americans back to the moon and then to Mars.

The meeting comes two weeks after NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine electrified the nation’s aerospace community by telling Congress that NASA is considering commercial rockets instead of the agency’s own Space Launch System (SLS) for launching an Orion space capsule on a planned test flight around the moon in 2020. The flight is called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), and the NASA center leading development of SLS is the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

“I think we as an agency need to stick to our commitments….," Bridenstine told a Senate panel. “If we tell you and others that we’re going to launch in June of 2020 around the moon, which is what EM-1 is, I think we should launch around the moon in June of 2020. And I think it can be done. We as an agency need to consider all options to accomplish that objective.”

During the meeting, Pence and the council will hear from two panels on human space exploration. The vice president will also lead a public discussion and discuss space policy recommendations for the president. Bridenstine is expected to attend, but the other council members who will be there have not been released.

The first panel – “Ready to Fly” – includes Gen. Les Lyles, USAF (ret.), former vice chief of staff of the Air Force; Col. Eileen Collins, USAF (ret.), former Space Shuttle commander; and Dr. Sandy Magnus, former shuttle astronaut.

The second panel – “Ready to Explore” – includes Dan Dumbacher of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Dr. Jack Burns of the University of Colorado at Boulder and independent consultant Wanda Sigur.

The meeting will be held in the Saturn V Hall of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, home to Space Camp, Space Camp Robotics, Aviation Challenge and U.S. Cyber Camp. The hall also displays the Apollo 16 moon mission capsule and the National Historic Landmark Saturn V rocket. It is the official visitor center for NASA Marshall and also displays national defense technologies developed at the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.