A compromise spending plan for NASA preserves the over-budget replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope and halves US President Barack Obama’s request for money to spur development of commercial space taxis, officials said on Tuesday.
Overall, the US space agency is set to receive US$17.8 billion for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1 — US$924 million less than the White House requested and US$684 million less than it received this year.
The compromise, approved by a House and Senate conference committee, is part of a “minibus” appropriations bill that also includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The full House was expected to consider the bill yesterday.
The spending plan, which was posted on a Congressional Web site on Tuesday, authorizes US$3.8 billion for human space exploration programs, including US$1.9 billion for a proposed heavy-lift rocket and US$1.2 billion for a deep space capsule to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and other destinations in the inner solar system as a follow-on program to the International Space Station.
A House bid to cancel NASA’s over-budget James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, was scuttled.
Overall, NASA’s science programs are set to receive US$5.1 billion, about US$155 million more than its previous budget. About US$530 million of that amount is to go toward the Webb telescope.
NASA has said it would delay other programs to keep the telescope on track for launch in 2018.
The bill cuts Obama’s request for US$850 million to speed up the development of commercial passenger spaceships to US$406 million.
“We’re always appreciative of whatever dollars the appropriators appropriate to us,” Kathy Nado, a manager at NASA headquarters, said at the American Astronautical Society meeting in Houston. “Whatever dollars they give us we will be able to effectively spend.”
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