WASHINGTON — “NASA is with you when you fly” was the line uttered by Washington’s Democratic U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell when she referred to the deep ties between NASA and Washington’s aerospace industry.
NASA is now in the throes of its budget process, and on Tuesday morning, Cantwell called on NASA administrator Bill Nelson to continue to support Washington’s aerospace industry, which has contributed so much to NASA missions. Workers in Redmond at Aerojet Rocketdyne created parts of the propulsion system for NASA’s Dart mission, which crashed a craft into an asteroid to see if we could change its orbit. It was part of an effort to see if we can prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth. NASA’s FY2024 budget request is $27.2 billion.
“It is my goal to complete another NASA bill this Congress, this time with a multiyear authorization that will help ensure that the nation’s leading space and aeronautics research agency has stable, predictable funding that it needs to succeed. It would be the first multiyear authorization in 13 years,” said Cantwell.