Texas Space Commission completes $150 million in awards

WASHINGTON — The Texas Space Commission has completed awarding $150 million to companies and organizations in the state as it prepares to distribute a second, larger round of funding.

At a Feb. 17 board meeting, commissioners approved $14.15 million for a proposal by Rice University to establish a Center for Space Technologies at the Rice Space Institute. The center would work on technologies for sustainable human lunar exploration and in situ resource utilization.

The grant committed the remaining balance in the commission’s Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund, or SEARF. The Texas Legislature appropriated $150 million for the fund in its 2023 session.

The amount awarded to Rice was slightly less than the $16 million the university requested. The board said it would work with Rice to refine the scope of the proposal to align with the available funding.

Through SEARF, the commission funded 24 projects intended to support the state’s space industry. The awards went to a mix of established space companies, including Blue Origin and SpaceX, as well as startups, organizations and local governments. The funds support projects ranging from factories and other infrastructure to educational initiatives and spaceport studies.

“It was honestly looking across the ecosystem and trying to figure out what’s the best way for us, in the first years as a commission, to lay seeds for future growth,” said Kathy Lueders, vice chair of the commission, during a panel at SpaceCom Expo in late January.

The funding largely focused on later-stage projects, she said, for “companies that need that last bit of investment or a little bit extra push to be able to be more successful.”

The 24 selected projects came from a much larger pool of applicants. “There was a helluva demand signal,” Lueders said. “I don’t think any of us realized we were going to get 280 grant proposals.”

Norman Garza Jr., executive director of the Texas Space Commission, said during the panel that the 280 proposals came from 140 unique entities and represented a combined $3.4 billion in requested funding. While commission staff reviewed applications for compliance with program rules, the board evaluated the technical content and selected the projects for funding rather than relying solely on staff recommendations.

“They are the true subject matter experts. They are the evaluators,” he said of the board.

Although the initial $150 million allocated to SEARF has been committed, the commission has received a new $300 million appropriation from the Legislature.

Lueders said the next round of awards will build on the previous funding cycle. “How do we help from an infrastructure standpoint? How do we help some of these key areas such as LEO, lunar economy growth?” she said. “Ideally that will be rolling out in our next request for grant proposals that we’re shooting for in the next four to six months.”

“Now that we have a new $300 million, we’re hopeful to be able to get through that in-the-weeds bureaucratic process as quickly as possible to put something out on the street,” Garza said.