NASA Budget Research Articles

Let NASA Do What NASA Does Best: Increasing NASA's budget would ease pressure and allow the agency to dream even bigger.

Let NASA Do What NASA Does Best: Increasing NASA's budget would ease pressure and allow the agency to dream even bigger.

Humans beyond Earth

Humans have been a wildly curious species for millennia. From traveling across unmapped oceans to the first lunar steps, mankind had the ambition to explore dangerous, uncharted destinations. In 1966, the NASA budget was 4.41% of the Federal budget. Fifty years later, NASA’s budget was 0.50% of the Federal budget. While there is still strong interest in intermediate space, that's because it’s in the comfort zone of commercial interests with profit motives. We as a species need to resist this sole motivation. Many companies and governments won’t invest in a manned expedition to Mars since the profits would take decades to manifest (if there are any profits at all). However, recently a new breed of billionaires, including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, realized the importance of investing in a Mars mission because of the positive impact for humanity later. Making a habitable colony for humans on Mars will be extraordinarily difficult - Mars is a hostile environment, but over time, impossible journeys evolve from difficult challenges to success. A trip to Mars would represent a leap in our maturity, a revitalization of the human spirit that charges into the unknown to understand and use it. This paper will research the challenges of getting to Mars and why we should go there. Who knows, we may find life under the dunes of Mars and discover we aren't the only ones.

Five Takeaways from Trump's Proposed Budget for NASA

Exploration and privatization dominate the president’s proposed budget for the space agency in the 2019 fiscal year, whereas a major cut to a flagship mission surprises scientists.

Advanced concept for a crewed mission to the martian moons

This paper presents the conceptual design of the IMaGInE (Innovative Mars Global International Exploration) Mission. The mission's objectives are to deliver a crew of four astronauts to the surface of Deimos and perform a robotic exploration mission to Phobos. Over the course of the 343 day mission during the years 2031 and 2032, the crew will perform surface excursions, technology demonstrations, In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) of the Martian moons, as well as site reconnaissance for future human exploration of Mars. This mission design makes use of an innovative hybrid propulsion concept (chemical and electric) to deliver a relatively low-mass reusable crewed spacecraft (approximately 100 mt) to cis-martian space. The crew makes use of torpor which minimizes launch payload mass. Green technologies are proposed as a stepping stone towards minimum environmental impact space access. The usage of beamed energy to power a grid of decentralized science stations is introduced, allowing for large scale characterization of the Martian environment. The low-thrust outbound and inbound trajectories are computed through the use of a direct method and a multiple shooting algorithm that considers various thrust and coast sequences to arrive at the final body with zero relative velocity. It is shown that the entire mission is rooted within the current NASA technology roadmap, ongoing scientific investments and feasible with an extrapolated NASA Budget. The presented mission won the 2016 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts - Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition.

Planetary Science Up, Earth Science Down in Proposed NASA Budget

The agency’s acting administrator says that the fiscal year 2018 White House budget request tells NASA to stay the course.

US boosts budget for NASA

US boosts budget for NASA

Congress Examines NASA Budget, Space Station, and Relations With Russia

Concerns about recent Russian activities related to Ukraine loomed over an 8 April congressional hearing focusing on NASA's fiscal year (FY) 2015 budget request. Rep. Frank Wolf (R‐Va.), chair of the House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, and several other committee members questioned NASA administrator Charles Bolden about the agency's contingency plans if tensions between Russia and the United States cause key joint scientific endeavors between the two countries to break off. That concern is particularly critical given the countries' longtime partnership on the International Space Station (ISS) and with the United States currently relying on Russian transport to and from the station until U.S. commercial vehicles are ready to transport astronauts back and forth.

Funding for two space missions absent from NASA budget request

Funding for two space missions absent from NASA budget request

Transforming solar system exploration: The origins of the Discovery Program, 1989–1993

The Discovery Program is a rarity in the history of NASA solar system exploration: a reform program that has survived and continued to be influential. This article examines its emergence between 1989 and 1993, largely as the result of the intervention of two people: Stamatios “Tom” Krimigis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and Wesley Huntress of NASA, who was Division Director of Solar System Exploration 1990–92 and the Associate Administrator for Space Science 1992–98. Krimigis drew on his leadership experience in the space physics community and his knowledge of its Explorer program to propose that it was possible to create new missions to the inner solar system for a fraction of the existing costs. He continued to push that idea for the next two years, but it took the influence of Huntress at NASA Headquarters to push it on to the agenda. Huntress explicitly decided to use APL to force change on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the planetary science community. He succeeded in moving the JPL Mars Pathfinder and APL Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission proposals forward as the opening missions for Discovery. But it took Krimigis's political skill and access to Sen. Barbara Mikulski in 1993 to get the NEAR into the NASA budget, thereby likely ensuring that Discovery would not become another one-mission program.

Proposed NASA Budget Includes Asteroid Capture but Cuts Planetary Science and Education

The Obama administration's proposed $17.7 billion budget for NASA for fiscal year (FY) 2014 provides $105 million for several asteroid‐related initiatives, including preliminary studies for a potential mission that would capture an asteroid and drag it into orbit around the Moon. The agency's total proposed budget is down slightly compared to FY 2012 (see Table ; comparisons are to FY 2012 because government agencies had been operating on a continuing resolution for 2013 and final spending levels for 2013 were not available at the time the president released his proposed 2014 budget).

Modest but uneven R&D increases proposed for FY 2013

Uncertainty created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 clouds the outlook for federal science and technologyfunding. Some Department of Energyphysics programs face significant cuts.

Proposed NASA budget cuts planetary science

President Barack Obama's fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request for NASA would sharply cut planetary science while maintaining other science and exploration priorities. The total proposed FY 2013 budget for NASA is $17.7 billion, a slight decrease (0.33%) from the previous year (see Table 1). This includes $4.9 billion for the Science directorate, a decrease of about 3.2% from the previous year, and about $3.9 billion for the Human Exploration directorate, a n increase of about $200 million over FY 2012. The latter would include about $2.8 million for development of a new heavy‐lift rocket system, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), to take humans beyond low‐Earth orbit, along with the Orion crew vehicle.

Priority Planetary Science Missions Identified

The U.S. National Research Council's (NRC) planetary science decadal survey report, released on 7 March, lays out a grand vision for priority planetary science missions for 2013–2022 within a tightly constrained fiscal environment. The cost‐conscious report, issued by NRC's Committee on the Planetary Science Decadal Survey, identifies high‐priority flagship missions, recommends a number of potential midsized missions, and indicates support for some smaller missions. The report states that the highest‐priority flagship mission for the decade is the Mars Astrobiology Explorer‐Cacher (MAX‐C)—the first of three components of a NASA/European Space Agency Mars sample return campaign—provided that the mission scope can be reduced so that MAX‐C costs no more than $2.5 billion. The currently estimated mission cost of $3.5 billion “would take up a disproportionate near‐term share of the overall budget for NASA's Planetary Science Division,” the report notes.

NASA Targeted for Flat Budget for Fiscal 2012

The Obama administration's proposed $18.72 billion budget for NASA for fiscal year (FY) 2012, which begins 1 October, would represent overall flat funding for the agency compared with the FY 2010 budget, the most recent full‐year budget approved by Congress. However, continuing budget resolutions to fund the federal government through the end of the current fiscal year, 2011, add uncertainty to current and future NASA budgets. In addition, while some members of Congress have indicated their overall support for NASA, they are also looking for ways to trim the agency's FY 2012 budget as it wends its way through the legislative branch. “Those in Congress have to speak forcefully on the need for our country to continue to invest in science,” Rep. Chaka Fattah (D‐Pa.), ranking member of the House of Representatives' Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, said at a 3 March hearing, a few weeks after the budget proposal was released. “You have, from the chairman and myself and other members of the committee, lots of support for the work that NASA is doing now and work for the future.”

Analysis: Space glamour moves east

In recent months, the US space industry has been coasting, fully expecting a shuddering halt in the absence of a confirmed budget for NASA. Speaking at a plenary session on the impact on industry of government space policy, Boeing's vice-president for Exploration Launch Systems, James Chilton, confirmed that uncertainty is affecting the way the company does business. While China and Japan back new space programmes, Mark Williamson finds worry replacing excitement for the industry in the Western world.

Obama Administration Proposes Increases for NASA and Energy Department Budgets

Obama Administration Proposes Increases for NASA and Energy Department BudgetsNASA's FY 2011 budget would increase to US$19 billion, up 1.5% from $18.7 billion. In addition, the budget would set the agency on a trajectory to increase by about $6 billion between FY 2011 and FY 2015. Within the overall budget, the Science account would increase to $5 billion (up from $4.5 billion), with Earth Science receiving $1.8 billion (up a whopping 29% from $1.4 billion) in FY 2011 and approximately an additional $1.8 billion between FY 2011 and FY 2014. Planetary Science would get $1.49 billion (up from $1.34 billion), Heliophysics would increase slightly to $642 million from $627 million, and Astrophysics would dip to $1.08 billion from $1.1 billion.

AGU Council to Consider Three Position Statements

Two AGU position statements—on NASA issues and ocean research—are being revised, and one position statement written by the American Meteorological Society (AMS), about geoengineering, is being submitted to the AGU Council for consideration. In December, Council will vote on adopting these three statements as official Union position statements. AGU members have the opportunity to provide comments during the AGU position statement writing process.The position statement panel revising the NASA statement (see box) has been charged with updating it to reflect current policy and budgetary developments of concern to the geophysics community. The statement is meant to reflect the recent condition of NASA's budget and missions and concerns about these matters in the near future. A separate AGU statement is aimed at the more long‐term subject of the role of the U.S. government in supporting Earth and space science research.

The “Vision for Space Exploration” of President George W. Bush, space science, and U.S. space policy

On January 14, 2004 President George W. Bush announced a major overhaul of U.S. space exploration strategy and infrastructure, stipulating that NASA complete the International Space Station (ISS) and retire the Space Shuttle fleet by 2010, develop a new suite of launch and exploration vehicles for deployment shortly thereafter, and embark on a program of human exploration of the solar system with crewed landings on the moon by 2020 and, eventually, Mars. The “Vision for Space Exploration” would be funded by resources liberated by the end of the International Space Station construction and the Shuttle program, assuming a very modestly increasing NASA budget. While this decision marks a decisive attempt to grapple with longstanding issues concerning the Space Shuttle and station, it has stimulated both optimism and fear within the space community. There is skepticism about its intent, its feasibility, and concern for the effects on various areas of space science and technology. This decision is similar to other, major such initiatives in the history of NASA and space flight, relies on longstanding scenarios and models, and much of its content has been proposed unsuccessfully in the past.

ESSC-ESF Position Paper—Science-Driven Scenario for Space Exploration: Report from the European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC)

In 2005 the then ESA Directorate for Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration (D-HME) commissioned a study from the European Science Foundation's (ESF) European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) to examine the science aspects of the Aurora Programme in preparation for the December 2005 Ministerial Conference of ESA Member States, held in Berlin. A first interim report was presented to ESA at the second stakeholders meeting on 30 and 31 May 2005. A second draft report was made available at the time of the final science stakeholders meeting on 16 September 2005 in order for ESA to use its recommendations to prepare the Executive proposal to the Ministerial Conference. The final ESSC report on that activity came a few months after the Ministerial Conference (June 2006) and attempted to capture some elements of the new situation after Berlin, and in the context of the reduction in NASA's budget that was taking place at that time; e.g., the postponement sine die of the Mars Sample Return mission. At the time of this study, ESSC made it clear to ESA that the timeline imposed prior to the Berlin Conference had not allowed for a proper consultation of the relevant science community and that this should be corrected in the near future. In response to that recommendation, ESSC was asked again in the summer of 2006 to initiate a broad consultation to define a science-driven scenario for the Aurora Programme. This exercise ran between October 2006 and May 2007. ESA provided the funding for staff support, publication costs, and costs related to meetings of a Steering Group, two meetings of a larger ad hoc group (7 and 8 December 2006 and 8 February 2007), and a final scientific workshop on 15 and 16 May 2007 in Athens. As a result of these meetings a draft report was produced and examined by the Ad Hoc Group. Following their endorsement of the report and its approval by the plenary meeting of the ESSC, the draft report was externally refereed, as is now normal practice with all ESSC-ESF reports, and amended accordingly. The Ad Hoc Group defined overarching scientific goals for Europe's exploration programme, dubbed "Emergence and co-evolution of life with its planetary environments," focusing on those targets that can ultimately be reached by humans, i.e., Mars, the Moon, and Near Earth Objects. Mars was further recognized as the focus of that programme, with Mars sample return as the recognized primary goal; furthermore the report clearly states that Europe should position itself as a major actor in defining and leading Mars sample return missions. The report is reproduced in this article. On 26 November 2008 the Ministers of ESA Member States decided to give a high strategic priority to the robotic exploration programme of Mars by funding the enhanced ExoMars mission component, in line therefore with the recommendations from this ESSC-ESF report.

NASA budget passes full House S&T committee

NASA budget passes full House S&T committee