NASA’s Artemis program to land humans on the moon by 2024 faces new challenges after a NASA fiscal spending account for 2021 allocated less money to the human landing system than what the agency requested.
Congress released an omnibus spending bill on Monday (Dec. 21) allocating $ 23.3 billion to NASA. The bill was released a day after Congress passed an accompanying coronavirus package worth $ 892 billion; all US agencies (including NASA) are now funded through December 28 to avoid a possible government shutdown.
While NASA will receive $ 642 million more than fiscal year 2020, the bill is about $ 2 billion short of the agency’s $ 25,246 billion request, according to SpaceNews. In particular, Artemis’s Human Landing System (HLS) program received just $ 850 million, about a quarter of NASA’s $ 3.3 billion request.
Related: NASA unveils the first ‘Artemis Team’ astronauts for lunar missions
However, other elements of NASA’s reconnaissance programs were at or above the agency’s request, including the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System’s lunar megarocket (which seeks to overcome ground equipment testing challenges for the 2021 test flight), and reconnaissance ground systems.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine did not yet comment on Twitter about the new spending bill, but on December 18, he thanked the Senate for unanimously supporting their version of the NASA Authorization Act. “This 100-0 vote underscores the Senate’s strong support for NASA and conveys a clear message of bipartisan approval for the Artemis program and the human landing system,” Bridenstine said on Twitter.
However, Senate law designated $ 1 billion for HLS, while the House version had about $ 600 million, SpaceNews said in the same report. Earlier this month, Bridenstine told the National Space Council that full funding would likely be needed to meet the Trump administration’s 2024 moon landing deadline.
“The budget request gave us what we needed to achieve a moon landing in 2024, and as of now this agency is reaching all its milestones,” Bridenstine said on December 9. “Ultimately, if we don’t get the $ 3.3 billion, it’s going to get harder.”
The upcoming Biden presidency has not yet committed to a timeline for the moon landing, but his Democratic Party expressed general support for human moon landings in a document entitled “Building a stronger, fairer economy.”
Some of the other key elements of the NASA release note, according to SpaceNews, include:
- Funding for several science missions the Trump administration originally tried to cancel, including the PACE and CLARREO Pathfinder Earth Science missions, the Roman Space Telescope, and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
- Funding NASA’s education programs (which the administration tried to remove.)
- NASA’s commercial development program for the successors to the International Space Station has drastically reduced to $ 17 million, about 10 percent of the $ 150 million request.
- $ 1.1 billion for space technology programs, at the same level as in 2020, but far less than the government’s $ 1.6 billion request. (Some programs, such as space maintenance and nuclear thermal propulsion, have received more money than requested.)
- Telling NASA to launch the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon on the SLS, provided it is available and the spacecraft is compatible with the rocket, suggesting concerns about these matters over the summer.
- Providing $ 156.4 million for NASA’s planetary defense programs, asking the agency to “request sufficient funds” for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – expected to be launched next year – and the Near Earth Object Surveillance Mission (NEOSM) space telescope expected to be launched in 2025. However, NASA said earlier in December that it had delayed the review of NEOSM due to uncertainty about the budget for the mission.
In related news, the Department of Commerce received $ 10 million for the Office of Space Commerce in 2021. The bill tells the office that the funding is for a space traffic management “ pilot program ” with other agencies and industries, SpaceNews said. The US spending bill for 2021 also included $ 2 billion for Space Force, the newest branch of the US armed forces.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.