{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/news/cornyn-meets-with-nasa-administrator-nominee-jared-isaacman-2/", "Cornyn Meets with NASA Administrator Nominee Jared Isaacman", "2025-12-01", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "TX", "John Cornyn", "C001056", "www.cornyn.senate.gov", "cornyn", "https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "Background:\n\nSen. Cornyn spearheaded the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from Virginia to its rightful home near NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston. This provision was included and passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill, now law.\n\nMission Control at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center led all of the space shuttle flights throughout the program\u2019s history, and the astronauts who flew aboard the shuttles lived and trained in the area Houston. Four space shuttles were retired from NASA in 2010, and one of them was expected to go on display in the Space City. Congress stated in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 that the four space shuttles were to be given to states with a \u201chistorical relationship with either the launch, flight operations, or processing of the Space Shuttle orbiters or the retrieval of NASA-manned space vehicles, or significant contributions to human space flight.\u201d Unfortunately, this directive was unlawfully ignored by the Obama administration, who played politics to keep Houston from getting one of the shuttles. Notably, the administration gave one of the four shuttles to New York City, which has not made any major contributions to the nation\u2019s history of space exploration and is not home to a NASA center\u2014unlike Houston.\n\nFurthermore, provisions led by Sen. Cornyn, including the Mission to Modernize Astronautic Resources for Space (MARS) Act, as well as funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration\u2019s (NASA) Artemis program and resources to support the International Space Station (ISS) were also included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.\n\nLast month, Sen. Cornyn introduced the Space Research And Continuing Exploration (RACE) Act to bolster America\u2019s space exploration and research capabilities through the creation of a National Institute for Space Research and ensure the nation is equipped to lead in the next space race. As the International Space Station (ISS) approaches retirement, there is an urgent need to ensure uninterrupted access to microgravity research capabilities that underpin advances in national defense, biotechnology, and space manufacturing.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/news/cornyn-meets-with-nasa-administrator-nominee-jared-isaacman-2/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.58366234973073, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}