For America’s direction in space, the course set by Vice President Kamala Harris during the Biden administration has been less to boldly go where no one has gone before and more like when on “Star Trek” Captain Kirk gave the command “Steady as she goes.”
Vice presidents historically have seen many limits to their political power, but President Biden appointed Ms. Harris to lead the National Space Council, a body that coordinates space policy across the federal government.
And as much of American politics has fractured along red vs. blue fault lines, space in general — and NASA, in particular — has managed to remain an arena that has stayed out of that fray. It continues to garner bipartisan support and public approval.
The Biden administration has largely sustained the directions set during the Trump administration. NASA is still working to send astronauts back to the moon. The Space Force has become an established branch of the military. SpaceX remains the domineering entity in governmental spaceflight, even as its owner, Elon Musk, has become a strident advocate of a second Trump presidency.
One sign of continuity in space policy is that Mr. Biden even set up a space council. Over the past 50 years, only three presidents — George H.W. Bush, Donald J. Trump and Mr. Biden — thought that space issues were weighty enough to warrant setting up a White House-level body to handle them.
While Ms. Harris has not made major shifts, she has added personal touches to U.S. space policy, including placing a greater emphasis on international diplomacy and highlighting how space technology can be employed to improve life on Earth.
Some space industry representatives who have worked with Ms. Harris’s space council have lauded her efforts. At the same time, other outside observers are unenthusiastic about what she has done.
“Neutral to slightly negative,” Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, said of Ms. Harris’s leadership. “It’s been a different kind of council under Harris.”
When President Trump re-established the space council in 2017, he put his vice president, Mike Pence, in charge. Mr. Pence was fervent in carrying out revised space priorities during the Trump administration, holding eight public meetings replete with pomp and circumstance and unveiling a series of sweeping “space policy directives.” The first called for the United States to send astronauts back to the moon. Another set the stage for the creation of the Space Force.
Over the past three and a half years, the space council under Ms. Harris has been more low-key, with just one yearly public meeting. It has issued no new space policy directives.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Mr. Harrison said the Biden administration “could have undone a lot of those changes,” but kept them because “they were objectively smart things to do.”
America’s course in space exploration has often veered after an election with a new president wanting to put a personal stamp on NASA — or trim the pipe dreams of the outgoing president. The U-turns have wasted money on canceled programs and left NASA in limbo.
“The broad contours have remained pretty consistent,” said Jamie Morin, the executive director of the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that advises the federal government.
Mandy Vaughn, chief executive of GXO, a space industry consulting firm, and a member of the space council’s user advisory group, said the council has focused on less splashy tasks out of public view.
“There’s been a lot of effort to say, ‘OK, how is this actually implementable?’” Ms. Vaughn said. “It’s been, over the last few years, just a deep focus on executing the policy.”
Lester Lyles, a retired Air Force general who leads the advisory group, said Ms. Harris was also key in a diplomatic push in 2022 to get nations to pledge not to test antisatellite weapons, which can endanger the International Space Station and other orbital craft. The United States was the first to make that pledge, and more than 30 nations followed.
“That was her lead on that,” General Lyles said.
Mr. Harrison noted that key countries with the capability of destroying satellites — Russia, China and India — had declined to support the measure.
Another diplomatic push has been the Artemis Accords, which lay out the United States’ interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, including allowing the mining of space resources on a first-come, first-served basis.
The Trump administration started the Artemis Accords, and by the end of 2020, nine countries, including the United States, had signed on. Under the Biden administration, the number of signatories has jumped to 47, with the latest two, Cyprus and Chile, signing last week.
Reflecting her priorities of promoting science, math and technology education, Ms. Harris announced a Space4All campaign to raise public awareness about the practical uses of space and to draw more students into aerospace careers.
“When you look at that, there’s a lot of meat in there,” Ms. Vaughn said. “That work force bit is a huge passion area for her.”
Where might the United States be headed in space during the next four years? Ms. Harris has barely mentioned the topic while campaigning.
“I think space is not going to be at the top of her issue list,” Mr. Harrison said. “I wouldn’t expect it to be for any president.”
But experts say the next president, whoever that is, will need to adjust the agency’s plans to return astronauts to the moon. All of the main components of that program are years behind schedule. Some experts question whether NASA could succeed before the end of the decade, when China aims to land astronauts there.
On the campaign trail, including during an appearance this month at a rally in Butler, Pa., Mr. Trump, standing next to Mr. Musk, pledged that the United States would “reach Mars” before the end of his second term. That could hint at major upheavals in the space policies set during Mr. Trump’s first term. However, achieving Mr. Musk’s full Mars ambitions will be much harder to achieve than sticking to NASA’s current moon-bound course.
Whatever direction space policy takes in 2025, the next president could decide that the National Space Council is not needed, with federal efforts effectively coordinated by other bodies.
“I can make the case for why you would definitely want to keep it,” said Mark Albrecht, who served as the executive secretary of the space council during George H.W. Bush’s presidency. “And I can make a case where you don’t need it.”
Others like Mr. Harrison argue that space issues are now more important and more complex. A space council with the vice president in charge, he said, “gives it some clout within the government that it otherwise would not have.”
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