A Space for Diplomacy: The Clinton Administration's Relationship with NASA

“Investing in science and technology is investing in America's future.… During the campaign and in my first days in office, I committed to reorganize and strengthen the White House science and technology function in order to implement my science and technology agenda”

Remarks by President Bill Clinton, November 23, 1993

National Science and Technology Council

President Clinton officially established the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) as part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy on November 23, 1993, to strengthen and streamline the White House science and technology policy function with the issuance of Executive Order 12881. The council is co-chaired by the President and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other members include the Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries, Agency Heads with significant science and technology responsibilities, and other White House officials where necessary.

President Clinton intended for the NSTC to significantly improve decision making by consolidating and elevating functions previously carried out by interagency councils.

The NSTC establishes national goals for federal investments in all areas of science and technology, including health research, information technologies, and fundamental research. The Council recommends strategies to be utilized across federal agencies to accomplish national goals.

National Space Policy

On September 19, 1996, the administration issued a new, integrated national space policy, which served as the first assessment of American space goals and activities since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The new policy committed the nation to a stronger program in space that addressed both U.S. civil and national security requirements.

The new National Space Policy consolidated a number of previous policy directives into a single, coherent vision of the future for the civil, commercial, and national security space sectors.

The policy reaffirmed a U.S. commitment to the International Space Station, revived by President Clinton in 1993, and to the next generation of launch vehicle programs. It called for the continued robotic exploration of Mars, sample return missions from celestial bodies within the solar system, and a long-term program to identify and characterize planets around other stars. It also maintained the nation’s commitment to a long-term program of environmental monitoring from space.

To stimulate private-sector investment, the National Space Policy committed the U.S. government to purchase commercially available goods and services for its space programs. The government was also mandated to offer stable access to federal space-related hardware, facilities, and data to the private-sector. For national security, the policy directed closer coordination between the Department of Defense and intelligence community activities that related to space policy.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan announced the idea for space station Freedom in his State of the Union Address. The space station was designed to be a valuable resource, a site where equipment needed to be carried into space only once and could be used again and again by visiting astronauts and cosmonauts while also enabling scientists on Earth to analyze experimental results and modify follow-up investigations much more quickly than before. Freedom was intended to be a permanently manned Earth-orbiting station, but the project was stalled due to budget constraints. Freedom remained in limbo until April 1993, when President Clinton requested that NASA redesign Freedom and create more cost-effective alternatives from which he could choose, as Congress and the administration endeavored to reduce NASA’s budget. In June of 1993, President Clinton approved NASA’s proposal to keep much of Freedom’s design but add an existing spacecraft bus as an initial building block with the option to add more to the design over time. Congress approved the proposal and NASA began work on the International Space Station (ISS).

The administration used the International Space Station as a tool of foreign diplomacy by forming a 14-nation partnership consisting of: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This international project provided scientists from all over the world an opportunity to conduct research in space regardless of their own country’s space infrastructure. These partnerships also lessened the United States’ financial burden of researching and constructing the ISS.

Since the inception of the new International Space Station, the Clinton administration pushed to make Russia a primary partner in the endeavor. The first stage of this collaboration was the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, created by President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Vancouver Summit in April 1993. In December 1993, the United States officially invited Russia to become a full partner in the creation of the International Space Station and Russia agreed. This agreement began a new era of cooperation in space as the former American and Russian rivals became partners in a series of joint missions.

The International Space Station project gave Russia incentive to adhere to nuclear non- proliferation by providing other technological advancement aspirations and allowed Russian scientists and engineers the opportunity to develop projects and earn income outside of the military and intelligence apparatus. This incentive was made explicitly clear in the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, in which Section 6 bans U.S. payments to Russia in connection with the ISS unless the President of the United States determines that Russia is taking steps to prevent the proliferation of weapons to Iran. Collaborating also stabilized the struggling Russian economy, as the United States provided monetary support. Highly visible U.S.-Russian cooperation in human space flight was intended to be emblematic of a changed U.S.-Russian relationship overall.

On June 23, 1994, Vice President Gore announced the Gore- Chernomyrdin Commission had agreed upon a contract that funneled $400 million into the Shuttle-Mir project. For the first time Russia was included in the planning, and the International Space Station (ISS) officially commenced.

STS-63 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried out the first rendezvous of the American Space Shuttle with Russia’s space station Mir.

Known as the 'Near-Mir' mission, the flight used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off on February 3, 1995, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. STS-63 marked the first time a space shuttle mission had a female pilot, Eileen Collins, and was done in preparation for STS-71, the first mission to dock with Mir. In addition to the American crew, STS-63 included Russian cosmonaut Vladamir Titov.

On February 6, 1995, President Clinton and Vice President Gore shared a phone call with the crew of Discovery while in space. This was a strategic call, as it brought further attention to the first visible step of the International Space Station program. The mission was a success and paved the way for the completion of the ISS.

On June 29th, 1995, mission STS-71 launched. An American space shuttle docked with Mir for the first time and conducted the first joint in-orbit operations. During mission STS-71, the Space Shuttle Atlantis delivered the new Mir-19 crew and picked up the returning Mir-18 crew in the first Shuttle crew transfer.

Construction of the ISS began in late 1998 with the launch of the first modules aboard a Russian rocket and the American Endeavour. The first live-aboard crew, known as Expedition One, arrived on ISS in October 2000.

Colonel Eileen Collins was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in 1990 and successfully completed training in 1991. After participating in two space flights, Colonel Collins was chosen in 1995 to become the first female space shuttle pilot. Collins piloted mission STS-63, which involved a rendezvous between Discovery and the Russian space station Mir. STS-63 launched on February 3, 1995 and returned on February 11, 1995.

On March 3, 1998, it was announced that Colonel Collins would make history again by becoming the first female shuttle commander. The announcement was the centerpiece of a week-long effort by the Clinton administration to highlight achievements in science and math and coincided with the beginning of National Women's History Month. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered the landmark announcement and christened Collins’ achievement "one big step for women and one giant leap for humanity,” a reference to Neil Armstrong’s famous first words on the moon.

The mission that Collins commanded (STS-93, July 1999) launched the most advanced X-ray telescope ever flown, allowing scientists to examine some of the astral bodies most distant from Earth.

In 1996, at 75 years old, former astronaut and then-Senator from Ohio John Glenn began lobbying NASA to allow him to go back into space for the agency to conduct geriatric studies. His request was granted, and at 77 years old, Glenn became the oldest person ever to travel in space. He returned to space in October 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery during mission STS-95 and participated in experiments to study the connections between space flight and aging during his 1998 Shuttle flight.

The flight aboard the shuttle lasted nine days and orbited the Earth 134 times, traveling 3.6 million miles in 213 hours and 44 minutes. The mission's objectives involved investigating life-sciences experiments, using the SpaceHab module to perform these experiments on Senator Glenn.

Clinton personally requested to attend Glenn’s space launch, as indicated in a note written by the President to Stephanie Streett, assistant to the president and director of scheduling. On October 29, 1998, when NASA launched the STS-93 mission and sent Glenn back into orbit, President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton were on the ground at the Launch Control Center to witness history. The president simultaneously made history of his own, as this became the first shuttle launch ever personally witnessed by an American president.

President Clinton and Senator Glenn further made history on November 7, 1998, when Glenn emailed President Clinton from the shuttle. The email was received by Clinton while visiting friends in Arkansas and necessitated Clinton borrowing a laptop from White House physician, Commander Robert Darling. Clinton’s reply back was the first presidential email sent to space.