Highlights
- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) emerged as one
of the winners in the FY 2005 budget process with a $16.1 billion total
budget in FY 2005, 4.5 percent more than last year. The budget allows
NASA to embark on an ambitious plan to send humans back to the Moon
and onward to Mars (see Table).
- Most of NASA’s
budget increase goes to returning the Space Shuttle to flight in spring
2005 and to use the Shuttle to resume construction of the International
Space Station. NASA R&D, which excludes the Shuttle, rises at a
more modest 2.0 percent rate to $11.1 billion (see Table).
The R&D increases allow NASA to initiate development of new technologies
for the moon-and-Mars missions, to plan for a repair mission to the
Hubble Space Telescope, and to resume construction of the International
Space Station.
- These higher priorities will require NASA to make deep cuts in its research
programs, which fall 5.5 percent to an estimated $5.3 billion for basic
and applied research in astronomy, earth sciences, and aeronautics.
NASA R&D in FY 2005 Final Appropriations
On November
20, Congress came to an agreement on an FY 2005 omnibus appropriations
bill (HR 4818), which incorporates the final version of the FY 2005
VA-HUD appropriations bill. The House is expected to give final approval
on December 6, and President Bush is expected to sign the bill into
law on December 8. The omnibus bill keeps funding for domestic programs
flat in FY 2005, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) escaped the tight funding squeeze facing other domestic programs.
In fact, an across-the-board cut of 0.80 percent to all domestic programs
was added to the omnibus bill at the last minute partially to boost
funding for NASA accounts. (All figures in this analysis reflect the
across-the-board cuts, which also apply to NASA.) The omnibus bill gives
NASA a total budget of $16.1 billion in FY 2005, $693 million more than
FY 2004 for a 4.5 percent increase at a time when most domestic agencies
are held to flat funding (see Table). The
additional funds from across-the-board cuts allow the agency to avoid
the steep budget cuts contained in an earlier House budget plan, which
would have cut $1 billion from the NASA budget, and to avoid emergency
spending designations that the Senate used to fund its proposed NASA
increases. The additional funds allow NASA to embark on grand new plans
for space exploration involving a return to the moon and a possible
human flight to Mars in coming decades.
NASA’s R&D (two-thirds of the agency’s budget) totals an estimated
$11.1 billion, a 2.0 percent increase, less than the request but an
improvement over the House-proposed 6.2 percent hit to R&D programs.
Exact figures for NASA’s programs are provisional estimates, because
the omnibus bill allows NASA almost unlimited flexibility to transfer
funds between accounts in order to address NASA’s many competing needs
in the coming year. (For details of NASA R&D in FY 2005 House
appropriations, see the July 28 AAAS R&D Funding
Update. For details of R&D in the FY 2005 request, please see
Chapter 10 of AAAS
Report XXIX: R&D FY 2005.)
With the January
presidential announcement of plans to send humans to the moon again
on the way to Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) was supposed to embark
on a new era in its history, with a major commitment of new resources
to enable the agency to begin preparing for a new lunar mission. The
February release of the FY 2005 budget request of $16.2 billion for
NASA made the agency one of the few domestic agencies favored with a
proposed increase (5.6 percent) in tough budgetary times even as other
R&D funding agencies faced cuts or flat budgets. But on closer examination,
nearly all of the increase would have gone to returning the non-R&D
Space Shuttle to flight (up 9.5 percent to $4.3 billion) and resuming
construction of the Space Station (up 24.3 percent to $1.9 billion).
After rough sledding
for most of 2004 before a skeptical Congress, the final FY 2005 budget
surprised observers by keeping NASA’s plans on track, though with some
modifications. Congress fully funded the requested increase to $4.3
billion for the non-R&D Space Shuttle, now NASA’s highest priority
in preparation for a return to flight scheduled for late spring 2005,
more than two years after being grounded in the aftermath of the Challenger
disaster.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
Congress trimmed the $1.9 billion
request for the Space Station slightly to $1.8 billion, which is still 19.5
percent more than FY 2004 spending for a substantial increase. With the
original deadline of February 2004 for completion of the core station long
shattered, the Station is now essentially in maintenance mode of two astronauts
supplied by Russian spacecraft, with construction activities in limbo
indefinitely until the Space Shuttle resumes its role of carrying Station
components into orbit. The FY 2005 budget envisions Space Station construction
getting back in high gear after the Shuttle returns to flight, though the
flexibility NASA receives in the omnibus bill will allow for the funds to be
transferred to other programs if Shuttle delays once again result in further
Space Station delays.
With these two
big-ticket current programs provided for, the
final FY 2005 budget also provide funds and a ringing endorsement of
plans to start new moon-and-Mars related programs, especially within
the Exploration Systems (ES) account. NASA could have up to $428
million to begin development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV),
a project to develop a next-generation spacecraft capable of taking
humans beyond low-Earth orbit. The CEV project is designed to replace
the Space Launch Initiative, another program to develop next-generation
space launch vehicles. Congress expresses concern in the omnibus bill
that there has not been enough planning to determine what capabilities
the CEV should have, and therefore an insufficient plan for how to develop
it; the report language accompanying the bill instructs NASA to prepare
a report within 60 days of CEV development goals and their connections
to NASA missions, and of safeguards to keep the project on budget. The
bill also instructs NASA to designate an independent oversight committee
to monitor the project and to keep the program on track and on budget.
NASA receives $1.1
billion for the Human and Robotic Technology (HRT) program, up 64 percent
from comparable programs in FY 2004. The large boost is due to an allocation
of up to $438 million for Project Prometheus to develop new power and
propulsion technologies based on nuclear power for future NASA missions,
a key need if NASA is to launch spacecraft to the Moon and beyond.
The Exploration, Science, and Aeronautics (ESA) account, which funds most
of NASA’s research, is battered with a reduction to $7.7 billion, down
1.9 percent from FY 2004 in a year when the Space Shuttle, Space Station,
and new space exploration technologies are higher priorities (see Table).
The Space Science program sees its budget rise modestly by $21 million
or 0.5 percent to $4.0 billion, but $291 million of the final appropriation
goes to fund a previously unbudgeted servicing mission to the Hubble.
NASA has attracted strong criticism this year for canceling a previously
planned shuttle servicing mission to extend the life of the Hubble,
instead focusing on robotic servicing. The House urged NASA to keep
alive the option of a shuttle mission for Hubble, but did not provide
any additional funds beyond the $130 million request for the overall
Hubble program (down sharply from $241 million this year), which would
not have paid for a mission. The Senate provided core Hubble funding
plus $300 million in dedicated funding for a servicing mission after
the Shuttle eventually returns to flight. The final omnibus bill allocates
$291 million in the regular Space Science budget for a mission, but
leaves NASA with the burden of finding the money from other NASA programs.
Elsewhere in Space Science, Congress agreed to $10 million for the Lunar
Exploration program to develop the new technologies needed for a human
return the moon, down dramatically from the $70 million request.
Outside of Space Science, most of NASA’s research-oriented programs face
cuts. The Earth Science program falls 6.7 percent to $1.5 billion
in FY 2005, confirming the lower priority assigned to space-based observations
of the Earth within NASA’s portfolio of activities. Congress cut Aeronautics
funding by 10.1 percent to $930 million, similar to NASA’s own plans.
NASA’s Education Programs funding falls 5.7 percent to $213 million,
despite congressional boosts for the National Space Grant College and
Fellowship program (to $28 million) and for the EPSCoR
program (to $12 million). At
the same time, Congress added $172 million to the ESA budget for congressional
earmarks, further squeezing the shrinking resources for these programs.
As a result, NASA may have to make deep cuts in its research programs. AAAS estimates
that NASA support of research could fall 5.5 percent to $5.3 billion,
even as funding for development (technologies for the moon-and-Mars
mission) and R&D facilities (the International Space Station) increase
substantially.
Impacts of the NASA R&D Portfolio
The modest increase to NASA’s R&D portfolio in
FY 2005 would continue a modest upward trend for the past several years,
as shown in Figure 1. NASA’s R&D funding has barely kept pace with
inflation going back to FY 1991, and recent increases have been just
barely ahead of inflation. Although the Bush Administration’s moon and
Mars plan promised new development efforts and increasing resources
in a time of fiscal austerity, a closer look at the final FY 2005 budget
shows that most of the money would come from reprogramming from other
NASA programs rather than large funding increases in FY 2005 and later.
Indeed, NASA has promised repeatedly over the past year that it could
accomplish its ambitious goals over the next decades with a budget just
keeping pace with expected inflation. With a return to the moon nearly
twenty years away and a possible trip to Mars nearly three decades away,
the presidential announcement and the apparently good FY 2005 omnibus
bill did little to change NASA’s near-term budget prospects for R&D,
especially since the bulk of the budget increases go to more immediate
priorities in the Shuttle and Station.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
Although much of NASA’s R&D portfolio funds development and facilities projects
such as the Space Station, NASA is responsible for 10 percent of all
federal support for basic and applied research but with far larger roles
in key fields. Engineering research makes up the largest
part of the NASA portfolio (see Figure 2). NASA funds more than a quarter
of total federal support for engineering research. NASA supplies nearly
all the federal support for some engineering sub-fields such as astronautical
engineering and aeronautical engineering. NASA is the leading federal
sponsor of the environmental sciences (oceanography, atmospheric sciences,
geological sciences). The environmental sciences are a quarter
of NASA’s portfolio, but NASA accounts for a third of total federal support
for environmental sciences research. NASA
also invests heavily in the physical sciences (astronomy, chemistry, and
physics). NASA is the second largest federal sponsor of physical sciences
behind the Department of Energy, and is by far the leading sponsor of
astronomy research with more than 70 percent of the federal total. NASA research falls 5.5 percent in FY 2005
because of cuts in Earth Science, Space Science, and aeronautics research,
which will most likely lead to cuts in NASA support for most of the above
disciplines.
Industrial firms receive half the NASA R&D portfolio. In FY 2004,
industry received 50 percent of the NASA R&D budget. 20 percent
of NASA R&D went to the agency’s own federal laboratories, while
another 14 percent went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California,
a privately-operated (by CalTech) NASA-owned
laboratory. Universities and colleges received 10 percent of NASA’s
R&D.
Figure 3. (click
on the image for PDF)
Because
of NASA’s reliance on large firms and large federal laboratories, NASA’s
R&D is heavily concentrated in just a few states. As shown in Figure
3, fully two-thirds of NASA’s R&D is performed in just the four
states of California,
Texas, Maryland,
and Virginia. California
is home to three major NASA facilities: the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, the Ames
Research Center
in Moffett Field, and the Dryden
Flight Research
Center in Edwards. Texas
is home to the Johnson Space
Center in Houston;
Maryland houses the Goddard
Space Flight Center; and Virginia
houses the Langley Research
Center in Hampton.
These states are also where many industrial contractors on projects
such as the International Space Station are located.
Next Steps
Although NASA’s
budget does well in FY 2005, NASA’s R&D portfolio does less well
and NASA’s research funding actually falls. With NASA and Congress continuing
to put the Space Shuttle first, the Space Station second, and moon-and-Mars
missions third, there seems little likelihood that this state of affairs
will change much in the coming years. Although NASA is projected to
be one of the few domestic agencies to receive budget increases in the
second Bush Administration, NASA’s own plans show its research accounts
(Earth Science, Aeronautics, Biological and Physical Research) declining
in the next few years, with increases going toward development and R&D
facilities investments.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations
process. This analysis includes information on R&D in final FY 2005
appropriations for NASA. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates, including continually updated analyses of R&D by agency
in FY 2005 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2005 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)
- December 6, 2004
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
