A Look at the Proposed NASA Budget by Line Item

Doug Messier News 4 Comments

The table above does not include full budget figures for FY 2018 because Congress and the president have not figured those out yet, even though we’re now 4 1/2 months into the fiscal year. It leads one to wonder whether we’ll be in a similar situation this time in 2019.

Deep Space Exploration gets a big boost in this budget, as does the Exploration R&D program. The space agency would reorganize its R&D programs and focus them on exploration activities.

Planetary Science gets a good boost in spending while Earth Science is reduced. And the Education Office is again zeroed out, something Congress has rejected in the past.

Commercial LEO development is funded at $150 million. The goal is to spur development of alternative platforms for the International Space Station (ISS), which would have direct federal support ended in 2025. There is already a lot of opposition to that plan in Congress, so we’ll see what happens there.

  • James Bull

    Where is Commercial Crew & Cargo? COTS? Normally it gets allocated about 600-800m ? Is it under a new name?

    Commercial LEO will be private space habitats like bigalow I assume?

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  • mattmcc80

    COTS was the cargo vehicle development program that concluded in 2013. Commercial Crew funding seems to have moved from exploration in previous years to space transportation. The operational cargo contracts (CRS) are also under space transportation.

    Useful report for 2012-2017 for comparison: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/space/R43419.pdf

  • JS Initials

    So the White House plans to put the building blocks of a lunar-orbiting station into lunar orbit in 2022? Take that with a grain of salt. Plans for STS-Orion are to have it send astronauts to orbit the moon in 2023. Take that with a salt shaker.