A whole other spacefaring countryby Jeff Foust
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| “There are a couple countries that are going to be landing on the Moon in this calendar year,” Bonnen said. “Japan and Texas.” |
That was a reference to Japan’s ispace, whose Resilience lander is set to land on the Moon in early June, as well as to Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines, who at the time of the conference were days away from their lunar landing attempts. Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 lander successfully touched down on the Moon just a few days later (see “Firefly lands on the Moon,” The Space Review, March 3, 2025).
Things didn’t go as well for Intuitive Machines, whose Athena lander reached the surface of the Moon last Thursday on the IM-2 mission. At a press conference a few hours after the landing, company executives acknowledged that the lander was “somewhat on our side,” as was the case with its first mission a year earlier. The next morning, the company said the mission was over: the lander was indeed on its side in a shaded crater, unable to generate enough power to operate its payloads and stay warm.
The landing was a major setback for Intuitive Machines, but a bump in the road, at worst, for the growing Texas space industry. Bonnen, a member of the Texas House of Representatives in a district near JSC who is also chair of the chamber’s appropriations committee, is one of the architects of a major new effort to build up that industry.
That efforts had its roots in supporting JSC and the companies in the area, he recalled at the conference, but he expanded that scope. “Texas was kind of that 800-pound gorilla in the country when it came to space, but yet we really weren’t putting forth a lot of effort” to support the industry, he said. “We didn’t have focus or intentionality. We didn’t have a strategic plan. We were largely resting on our legacy, on our laurels.”
That put the state at risk of losing that leadership position “and missing out on an amazing opportunity” as the space industry evolved, he warned. “We had every reason in the world to want to up our game.”
That resulted two years ago with legislation to create the Texas Space Commission, a new state agency devoted to promoting the development of the state’s space industry, along with the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium (TARSEC), an advisory group for the commission. That effort, more significantly, included $350 million in state funding.
Of that funding, $200 million will go towards a new research center to be built at Exploration Park, a parcel of land at JSC that will be used for a business park anchored by that center. (Ironically, a similar business park just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is called… Exploration Park.) That center, to be managed by Texas A&M University, will include facilities that simulate lunar and Martian terrain as well as labs and related facilities.
The remaining $150 million was set aside for grants to Texas companies, universities, and other organizations for space-related projects. First, though, the commission had to get up and running. The members of the commission’s board were named in March 2024 and in July it hired its director, Norm Garza. By September, the commission was ready to start soliciting applications for that funding.
| The demand for grants, Garza said, “might encourage the legislature, because Texas is sitting in a very nice spot with a surplus, to consider increasing the available funding to the space commission.” |
“Back in September, when we opened that application period, I was thinking it would be great if we got 100 applications,” Garza recalled in a talk at the conference. The most optimistic prediction was from Nancy Currie-Gregg, a former astronaut and current director of the Texas A&M Space Institute who serves on the commission’s board. He said her estimates was more than 200 applications with a combined value exceeding $1 billion.
“Well, it was a lot more than that,” he said. When the application deadline closed in January for what is formally known as the Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund, he said the commission received 284 applications from 140 unique entities. The combined value of the proposals was $3.46 billion, 23 times the available funding.
The commission has been evaluating those proposals on a rolling basis as it completed “administrative completeness or compliance checks” of them, he said. In January, the commission awarded a first tranche of $21.5 million to four organizations.
Most of that money, nearly $19.8 million, went to an El Paso-based economic development group, the Borderplex Alliance, to support construction of classified and unclassified office space for companies in the area working with the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. The rest went to El Paso County and two “councils of government” in West Texas for feasibility studies on space activities in the region, including commercial launch and landings.
On February 10, the commission approved a second tranche of awards totaling $47.7 million to five space companies based in or operating in the state. Among the awardees were Firefly and Intuitive Machines, although neither directly for their lunar lander work. Firefly received $8.2 million to fund an expansion of a spacecraft development facility and related infrastructure. Intuitive Machines received $10 million for work on a commercial orbital return vehicle.
A third recipient is Starlab Space, a company working on a commercial space station. Its $15 million award will go towards development of a systems integration lab in Houston to support work on its station.
“To ensure the success of our future space missions, we are starting with state-of-the-art testing facilities that will include the closest approximation to the flight environment as possible and allow us to verify requirements and validate the design of the Starlab space station,” Tim Kopra, CEO of Starlab Space, said in a statement about the award.
The other two awards raised some eyebrows. Blue Origin received $7 million to upgrade facilities at its West Texas engine test site, allowing the use of densified propellants to enable higher thrust from engines. SpaceX got $7.5 million to build a new vertical integration facility for its Starship vehicle at Starbase in South Texas.
The commission didn’t explain why those companies, with billionaire owners and billions in NASA awards, needed a handful of millions from the Texas state government, particularly when demand for the state funding was so high from organizations that lack the financial backing of Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Garza, in his ASCENDxTexas speech, noted the commission selected “big brands” for that second round of awards, “big brands that, for many years, have already been putting some of their own money into the communities in and around Texas, and so it kind made sense that the board, identifying what their big ideas were, truly met the threshold” for awards.
The commission plans to meet again this month, and in April and May, to disperse the remaining funding. He suggested universities would be in line to get some awards to support “awesome ideas” that can move from the drawing boards to testing and evaluation. “Some of the ideas coming from universities are quite robust.”
The high interest in that funding, he said, should be a “demand signal” to the Texas Legislature as it meets to consider plans for the next two years. “It might encourage the legislature, because Texas is sitting in a very nice spot with a surplus, to consider increasing the available funding to the space commission.”
Among the key decisionmakers will be Bonnen, the appropriations committee chair. “Hopefully, in the budget we’re going to see some further allocation of resources on top of what we’ve already done,” he said at the conference.
| “I think there’s an opportunity,” Bonnen said, “for Texas to partner with the private sector on a Texas commercial station.” |
However, he said he is looking at ways other than grants that the commission and the state government can support the Texas space industry. That could include direct investments in space companies or loans, something that would require changes to the law creating the commission to give it that authority.
“We’re working very diligently to come up with legislation that would stand up an effort that would provide those capabilities to the state,” he said, an authority that could be used not just for space companies but also for those in other advanced industries, like artificial intelligence and semiconductors. “Those are some things that are on my list of things to try to get done by the end of May,” when the legislature adjourns.
That could enable a bigger role for the state in the development of commercial space stations. “I think there’s an opportunity,” he said, “for Texas to partner with the private sector on a Texas commercial station. That would be a powerful marker to anchor in our state and in our community that we’re going to lead on this.”
Asked about that later in the conference session, he said there could be several ways for the state to support development of a station. That could include funding an option for access to the station for Texas researchers. “There would be a lot of value in that beyond just the dollars that change hands,” he argued, such as helping companies secure additional investment to build that station.
That prompted a followup question from the audience: what about a Texas moonbase? “I don’t know,” Bonnen responded. “It’s good to think about these things. That might be a little bit further in the future.”
After all, Texas is still learning how to land on the Moon.
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