Two prominent Texas lawmakers are pushing to move the Space Shuttle Discovery out of its place at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly to bring it to Texas — and Virginia’s senators aren’t happy about it.
Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn have filed new legislation called the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act.” This would transfer the Discovery to a nonprofit near the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“It is past time that the Space Center Houston Museum houses a space shuttle, given the unique relationship between the entire program and its support staff in Houston,” Cruz said. “Bringing the Discovery to its final home will offer hundreds of thousands of visitors each year the opportunity to engage with a living piece of NASA’s history and understand why Houston is known worldwide as ‘Space City.’”
In a news release, Cornyn said that the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 agreed to put four retired shuttles in states with historical relationships to NASA but Texas did not get one. The Space Shuttle Discovery is the only shuttle still federally owned and able to be transferred to Houston.
But the senators in the Discovery’s current home disagree. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine both oppose this legislation, WUSA9 reported.
“Every year, millions of people visit the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly to learn about aviation and space exploration and see exhibits like the Space Shuttle Discovery. Virginia has made significant contributions to aerospace development, and moving the Discovery to another location would be a significant waste of taxpayer resources,” Kaine said.
In its 27 years in service, the Discovery ran 39 space flights. It arrived in Chantilly in 2012, when it was flown in “piggy-back style” on a modified 747 while many people in the Northern Virginia area stood out on the side of highways to welcome it to the museum.
Feature image by Eric Long, courtesy National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
