124 STAT. 2839 PUBLIC LAW 111–267—OCT. 11, 2010 (1) establish a program to annually sponsor scientific and educational payloads developed with United States student and educator involvement to be flown on commercially available orbital platforms, when available and operational, with the goal of launching at least 50 such payloads (with at least one from each of the 50 States) to orbit on at least one mission per year; (2) contract with providers of commercial orbital platform services for their use by the STEM-Commercial Orbital Plat- form program, preceded by the issuance of a request for pro- posal, not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, to enter into at least one funded, competitively- awarded contract for commercial orbital platform services and make awards within 180 days after such date; and (3) engage with United States students and educators and make available NASA’s science, engineering, payload develop- ment, and payload operations expertise to student teams selected to participate in the STEM-Commercial Orbital Plat- form program. TITLE XI—RE-SCOPING AND REVITAL- IZING INSTITUTIONAL CAPABILITIES SEC. 1101. SENSE OF CONGRESS. It is the sense of Congress that NASA needs to re-scope, and as appropriate, down-size, to fit current and future missions and expected funding levels. Eighty percent of NASA’s facilities are over 40 years old. Additionally, in a number of areas NASA finds itself ‘‘holding onto’’ facilities and capabilities scaled to another era. SEC. 1102. INSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENTS STUDY. Within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall provide to the appropriate committees of Con- gress a comprehensive study that, taking into account the long term direction provided by this Act, carefully examines NASA’s structure, organization, and institutional assets and identifies a strategy to evolve toward the most efficient retention, sizing, and distribution of facilities, laboratories, test capabilities, and other infrastructure consistent with NASA’s missions and mandates. The Administrator should pay particular attention to identifying and removing unneeded or duplicative infrastructure. The Administrator should include in the study a suggested reconfiguration and reinvestment strategy that would conform the needed equipment, facilities, test equipment, and related organizational alignment that would best meet the requirements of missions and priorities author- ized and directed by this Act. As part of this strategy, the Adminis- trator should include consideration and application of the findings and recommendations of the National Research Council report, Capabilities for the Future: An Assessment of NASA Laboratories for Basic Research, prepared in response to section 1003 of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008 (42 U.S.C. 17812). Deadline. Contracts. Deadline. Establishment. Deadline.
