A political effort to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston has been merged with the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill," a major economic and policy package now nearing a vote in the US Senate.
The "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," first introduced by Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn in April, has now been added to the Senate's version of the bill championed by President Donald Trump. While the latter legislation primarily focuses on tax cuts and spending increases, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, chaired by Cruz, added the retired orbiter's relocation as part of an additional $9.995 billion in funding for NASA's programs, including the return of astronauts to the Moon and sending humans to Mars.
"One of the things in the Big Beautiful Bill we're talking about, there's about a $10 billion appropriation for NASA," said Cornyn at a June 20 press conference at Space Center Houston. "We're optimistic that bill that started out as a beautiful bill in the House will become even more beautiful in the Senate this week."
Out of that appropriations, $85 million is directed to carry out Cornyn's Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act, which calls for Discovery to be removed from its home of the past 13 years, the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and put it on display at Space Center Houston, the official visitor complex for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas.
The Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill provides "no less than $5 million" for the "transportation of the space vehicle'' and the remainder to go towards the construction of a facility to house it.