The Obama administration is requesting $17.7bn for NASA in its fiscal 2013 budget, down slightly from 2012 levels.
On Monday, NASA administrator Charles Bolden put a positive spin on the proposed budget for 2013, which cuts funding for Mars missions. Image credit: NASA
It is aiming to double the amount spent on development of new commercial manned spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and is giving a substantial boost to the delayed and over-budget successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Funding for the space station and ongoing development of new rockets and capsules for deep space exploration remains roughly constant, but the agency's hugely successful Mars exploration programme will be sharply scaled back, in large part to offset gains in other areas.
Putting an optimistic spin on the numbers, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on Monday: "It's a $17.7bn [£11.3bn] blueprint for NASA and the nation to embark on an ambitious plan of space exploration that will take us farther into the solar system than we've ever gone.
"Despite a constrained fiscal environment, this budget continues to aggressively implement the space exploration programme agreed to by the president and a bi-partisan majority in Congress."
The budget request represents the opening round in the administration's annual negotiations with Congress over federal spending and while the total for NASA may remain relatively constant, the emphasis given to various programmes — and how much money they will receive — likely will change in the months ahead.
Funding breakdown
As it now stands, nearly $3bn would go to International Space Station operations, including $1.3bn for crew and cargo transportation. That figure includes the cost of launching US and partner astronauts on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
– Charles Bolden, NASA
Despite a constrained fiscal environment, this budget continues to aggressively implement the space exploration programme agreed to by the president.
Some $830m is budgeted for the administration's ongoing drive to develop private-sector spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and to end the agency's post-shuttle reliance on the Russians. That is roughly what the administration requested in fiscal 2012, but Congress cut that figure in half, to $406m, during budget negotiations. How the commercial space initiative will fare this time around remains to be seen.
NASA's fiscal 2013 budget includes $1.88bn for ongoing work to develop a new heavy-lift booster and ground systems, along with another $1bn for continued development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle that will be used for eventual missions to deep space targets ranging from nearby asteroids in the mid 2020s to the environs of Mars in the mid 2030s.
The costly James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's follow on to the Hubble Space Telescope, would receive $628m in 2013, a $109m increase over 2012 levels, while Earth and solar science missions would receive $1.8bn and $647m respectively, both reflecting slightly increased spending.
But the president's 2013 budget proposal reduces the scope of NASA's Mars exploration programme, calling proposed joint missions with the European Space Agency "unaffordable". Overall, the budget would reduce funding for planetary science from $1.5bn to $1.2bn, with additional reductions expected through to 2017.
If approved, the near-term impact would be to force NASA to back out of a 2008 agreement with the European Space Agency to share the costs of two ambitious Mars missions known as ExoMars, which called for launch of an orbiter in 2016 and two rovers in 2018. Along with searching for signs of past or present life on the red planet, the missions also would have tested technologies needed for a long-sought sample return mission.
For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see NASA budget boosts manned space, cuts Mars exploration on CNET News.
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