In 2023, the Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill to create the first Texas Space Commission. The new commission also came with $350 million in funding for programs designed to keep Texas at the forefront of space exploration.
Some $200 million of that funding was directed toward a new Texas A&M Space Institute, which held a ceremonial groundbreaking in November for a facility adjacent to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Institute Director Dr. Nancy Currie-Gregg, a former astronaut and an engineering professor, says the U.S. and Texas face competition from many other nations when it comes to space.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Congratulations on the groundbreaking. Can you give us a big-picture idea of the institute’s mission and how you fit into further space exploration in Texas?
Nancy Currie-Gregg: I think first and foremost, the legislative bill originated with the purpose of keeping Texas at the forefront of space. When people hear Texas and the Houston area, they immediately think of the spaceflight program.
And within the last 20 years, you look at the resurgence of new space programs – I mean, literally multiple countries across the globe that weren’t previously involved in space, whether it be Australia, Great Britain, Scotland, have really come to the forefront.
And so it’s really important that we keep this nation a leader in space going into the future. So I think the time has come that operations in low-Earth orbit will be wrapping up from a NASA perspective within the next decade. And then the natural step is beyond low-Earth orbit.
$200 million seems like a healthy investment in the future of space. What kinds of projects will you be focused on?
So the facility will be extremely unique. If you look at the current facilities today, particularly around the Johnson Space Center, it’s all geared on training for missions in microgravity.
And training for missions and developing technologies for missions beyond low-Earth orbit in partial-gravity conditions – 1/6G [that of Earth on] the surface of the moon, 1/3G on the surface of Mars – is very different.
And so our facility, which will be roughly around 400,000 square feet, will feature a large lunar scape and a large Mars scape, each the size of roughly – as all Aggies can relate to – Kyle Field. So as big as a football field.
It will be a three-story building. And on the first floor, we’ll have a series of what we call garages where you can do rover development, spacesuit development, maybe even develop concepts for a space-based hospital. And then when you roll up your garage door or slide it open, you would roll right out onto the, you know, surface of Mars.
Wow. You’ve really painted a vivid picture for us there. How does this look, though, from the standpoint of students? Is this like a program within a department, or is this stand alone? Or will students be able to get a degree in, say, space science or what exactly?
So it’s very much separate, although somewhat connected to, our academic program. So we won’t be conducting any degree programs per se within the facility.
It’s really meant for collaboration between academics, industry and government to achieve government goals or to achieve, just quite frankly, commercial space goals. But it’s all about collaboration.
With respect to students, we are also kind of concurrently, at the urging of the governor – when he introduced the Space Commission members, of which I am one of the nine, he challenged all the universities throughout the state of Texas to create a space engineering degree program.
And so we are rolling that out this fall. We’ll have our first set of undergraduates actually enroll in space engineering. We have a long legacy in aerospace engineering. But now we’ll be starting specific space engineering degree programs.
So whereas students, particularly at the graduate level, could be working in the facility on their research, the facility is more geared towards, again, partnership between academics throughout the state of Texas.
And this is not about A&M. A&M is building the building, but this is collaboration throughout the state.
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I know that a lot of your stakeholders here include civilian space-related industries, as well as defense-related industries and commercial-related industries. Is there a tension between, say, a science-approached space effort and, say, a civilian or a defense one?
I don’t think so. I think there’s a lot of synergy. And that’s what we’re trying to draw on, is the synergy. So whether a piece of equipment is designed to go into a next-generation spacesuit that could then be used to enable, say, an environmental control system on a commercial space station, which is doing manufacturing in space. Those are the types of synergies that we’re looking for.
And throughout the history of the entire space program, we’ve always touted the spinoffs, if you will, of those technologies that have been developed for space but have applicability here on Earth. And I think that’s really important.
This is not just about creating technologies and equipment for the few people like me that have the extreme privilege of leaving the Earth. This is about what we can do in space to enable and better the life of all Texans.
What’s the long-term goal? Has everyone got their eyes on Mars right now, or is it more the moon or what? Where do you see people sort of thinking about how do you apply this?
So long-term, absolutely, is Mars. But in order to have the technologies, in order to have the understanding on human physiology that we need, we really need to return to the lunar surface. When you look back at the Apollo missions, which were extremely memorable …
Defined a generation. It’s just amazing.
My hero was Neil Armstrong, and I’m from Ohio and Ohio’s produced an awful lot of astronauts. And so it was life-changing for all of us. But when you look at it, the duration was literally a few short days. Apollo 11 was on the surface of the moon less than 24 hours.
And so what we need to do is we need to study how to live in a long duration setting on the lunar surface before we embark on a mission to Mars where we can’t bring somebody back within a few days. It could be many, many months before we could enable the return of the crew.
You talked about how Ohio’s proud of the many astronauts they’ve had. I know Texas A&M is proud to have you. And there are several other Aggie astronauts associated with the space program, obviously.
I wonder if part of A&M’s position here with this Space Institute is because of that connection or if it’s just, you know, you all stood up at the right time, right place and made the bid. I’m just curious about the connection between the astronaut alums and this new institute.
Well, I’ve been here since 2017. And I think my perspective on this is, you know, not only Texas A&M, but University of Texas and Rice University and all the many universities throughout the entire state … just supporting the space program from a multitude of perspectives. It’s not just about engineering.
For example – and yes, this is a A&M example – A&M has produced many items for space food that has flown throughout the shuttle program and into the International Space Station program and now with commercial space endeavors.
And so I think it’s a long legacy of universities throughout the state supporting the space program and having the right knowledge and the right tools to enable that support.
The groundbreaking has happened. When’s the launch date?
So physical groundbreaking will be just after the first of the year. Of course, we’re building on federal land, so we are outside the physical gate of the NASA Johnson Space Center. But we are on NASA’s land.
And so there’s quite a bit of approvals that we have to seek in order to build on that land. We’re almost through that entire process. We should be able to break physical ground right after the first of the year, and then we’ll complete this project within about 18 months. So quite a feat for such an extremely large facility and a very unique facility.
But the entire team, our construction team and our architectural team, both based out of Houston, are extremely excited about this project. It’s the kind of project that they never thought in their careers they’ve been involved with, and they go home and talk to their kids and their families about, look at this space facility that we’re building.
So their energy is being transmitted and I think to achieving this pretty robust timeline.
