As chairman of the Senate Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee, Texas Republican Ted Cruz is on a mission — to get NASA back on course regarding it’s original focus, space, and less on what many view as pseudo-science: global warming research.

According to this National Journal report, “The Republican lawmaker argues that the Obama administration is wrongfully neglecting the country’s space exploration operations—like potential missions to Mars and beyond—in favor of global-warming research.”

Now, Cruz is asking NASA’s administrator, Charles Bolden, if he agrees.

“I’d like to start by asking a general question,” said Cruz on Thursday during a subcommittee hearing on the president’s $18.5 billion budget request for NASA for fiscal 2016, which allocates considerable funding for Earth- and ocean-science projects. “In your judgment, what is the core mission of NASA?” Bolden said he’d been contemplating that mission over the past few days, and had read over the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created the agency. “Our core mission from the very beginning has been to investigate, explore space and the Earth environment, and to help us make this place a better place,” he said, adding that the study of aeronautics is important as well. Cruz didn’t seem pleased with the “Earth environment” part of Bolden’s answer. “Almost any American would agree that the core function of NASA is to explore space,” he said. “That’s what inspires little boys and little girls across this country … and you know that I am concerned that NASA in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission.”

Cruz isn’t pleased that Earth sciences funding is up 41% since 2009, “while funding for exploration and space operations” is down 7.6%. Cruz considers the latter “the core function of NASA,” per the same report.