Bill Nelson: “Are U.S. operations being hampered by the 'safe haven' in the ungoverned areas of western Pakistan?”

It is a real problem, and we are going to have some catastrophic consequences if we cannot get nations that are launching things into space to provide enough fuel to have a controlled reentry.

When we find those, by the way, not only looking for life, we start to understand their development, and we better understand who we are, why we are here, how we got here, and all of this evolution of the cosmos.

Today we find ourselves in yet another space race, this time with China.

One of the reasons you and I were able to accomplish so much on this committee is both of us worked very hard to keep politics out of NASA and to focus on the core mission of exploration.