The Committee on Science, Space and Technology is a committee of the United States House of Representatives. It has jurisdiction over non-defense federal scientific research and development. Specifically, the committee has partial or complete jurisdiction over the following federal agencies: NASA, the Department of Energy, EPA, ATSDR, NSF, FAA, NOAA, NIST, FEMA, the U.S. Fire Administration, and USGS.
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History
In the wake of the Soviet Sputnik program in the late 1950s, Congress created the Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration in 1958, chaired by majority leader John William McCormack. This select committee drafted the National Aeronautics and Space Act that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A staff report of the committee, the Space Handbook: Astronautics and its Applications, provided non-technical information about spaceflight to U.S. policy makers.
The committee also chartered the permanent House Committee on Science and Astronautics, which officially began on January 3, 1959, and was the first new standing committee established in the House since 1946. The name was changed in 1974 to the House Committee on Science and Technology. The name was changed again in 1987 to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. After the Republican Party gained a majority in Congress in 1994, the name of the committee was changed to the House Committee on Science. With the return of control to the Democrats in 2007, the committee's name was changed back to the House Committee on Science and Technology.
In the 112th Congress, Committee Chairman Ralph Hall added “Space” back into the committee’s name: “The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology” – a nod to the committee’s history, broad jurisdiction, and the importance of space exploration in maintaining American innovation and competitiveness.
On December 1, 2016, the committee's Twitter account posted a link to an article on Breitbart which argued that climate change was the result of natural weather processes. The tweet was criticized by members of the scientific community on Twitter for promoting an unscientific and misleading article. Committee member Eddie Bernice Johnson also criticized the tweet, writing, "False news & false facts put us all in danger."
Subcommittees
There are five subcommittees in the 115th Congress.
Committee chairmen, 1959-present
Chairmen since 1959.