The board that hands out Texas’s space grants will vote Sept. 23 on setting aside part of a $450 million state fund for something it has never spent the money on — helping land a major NASA or Defense Department facility in Texas.
The authority is new. A 2025 law lets the Texas Space Commission spend from its research fund to help establish a federal space office, base or major facility in the state, or to bring in decommissioned space hardware. The governor has to approve. The same law lets the board deliberate those questions behind closed doors so long as it takes any vote in the open. The notice lists a second set-aside alongside it, for low-earth-orbit systems built or operated in Texas. Neither item says how much money is at stake.
The fund is not bottomless. Lawmakers created it in 2023 with $150 million and added $300 million in 2025. The first $150 million is committed — 24 grants, from $19.8 million for the Borderplex Alliance in El Paso down to $175,000 for a council of governments in Abilene, with SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Axiom Space and Rice University in between. The commission says 281 applicants asked for roughly $3.4 billion out of that first round.
Two federal questions hang over the item, and they are not the same one. Texas’s congressional delegation has pushed since April 2025 to move NASA headquarters from Washington to Johnson Space Center when the agency’s lease there runs out in 2028; Florida and Ohio have made competing pitches and no federal decision has been announced. Separately, NASA has approved moving a retired space shuttle to Houston and started contracting for it in March, which fits the new law’s language about decommissioned assets. The agenda names neither.
The board also votes on a resolution to issue requests for information or proposals — the next step after seven similar resolutions in June covering test facilities, launch site studies and a federal grant match — and hears from the chief executive of the Space Foundation. Grant applications can be discussed in closed session, but awards have to be voted in public.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 1 p.m. CT Wednesday, September 23, 2026. The operative notice, TRD 2026005513, was filed September 15 at 2:47 p.m. and supersedes three revised filings.
- Where
- The notice gives two places: Gemini Plaza, 1150 Gemini St., Houston, and a public Austin location where the chairman will sit. The agency’s events page still says the site is undecided.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Space Commission board of directors — nine voting members, three each named by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker, to staggered six-year terms. Gwen Griffin is chair; no seat is vacant.
- Format
- Regular quarterly meeting, twelve items. Four may go into closed session, including deliberation on a federal facility and on grant applications. Public livestream at zoomgov.com.
- Live video
- Streamed live, then archived with agendas and signed minutes on the commission’s past-events page and its YouTube channel.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · commission events page
Board members
- Gwen Griffin — chair; Kemah; chief executive, Griffin Communications Group.
- Kathy Lueders — vice chair; Seabrook; former SpaceX Starbase general manager.
- Kirk Shireman — secretary; Pearland; lunar exploration vice president, Lockheed Martin.
- Nancy Currie-Gregg — College Station; Texas A&M Space Institute director, former astronaut.
- Sassie Duggleby — Friendswood; chief executive and co-founder, Venus Aerospace.
- Evan Loomis — Austin; co-founder of the construction company ICON.
- Brad Morrison — Boerne; founder and chief executive, Atlantis Industries.
- John Shannon — Houston; exploration systems vice president, Boeing.
- Heather Wilson — El Paso; UTEP president, former Air Force secretary.
- Adriana Cruz — Austin; state economic development director; serves without a vote.
Roster from the commission’s board page, checked September 16, and cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases. Griffin was reappointed November 18, 2025; the governor’s release gives her term end as February 1, 2031 and the agency’s page gives January 31, 2031. The agency publishes no term dates for the three lieutenant governor appointees, and the Dispatch found no reappointment releases for them. Norman Garza Jr. has been executive director since July 2024. Four directors were placed on two new subcommittees in June. Meeting contact and media: TSCPressInquiries@space.texas.gov, (512) 463-8575.