Highlights
- The National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) has a budget of $16.6 billion in FY
2006, 2.5 percent or $400 million more than last year, but $350 million
of the increase is emergency funding to repair NASA facilities damaged
by Hurricane Katrina. Excluding emergency funding, NASA receives only
a 0.3 percent increase even as it struggles to juggle its many mission
deadlines. In the final FY 2006 appropriation,
NASA’s R&D funding climbs 6.2 percent or $661 million to $11.4 billion as an
expected decline in Space Shuttle costs frees up money for NASA R&D
programs (see Table). But the entire increase
and more goes to Constellation Systems (up $712 million, nearly tripling
to $1.1 billion) for applied research on the next generation of human
space flight technologies, leaving funding for all other NASA R&D
programs down.
- While the agency
receives additional resources for its ambitious plans to finish construction
of the International Space Station, explore the solar system, and develop
the technologies needed for future moon and Mars missions, there are
steep cuts in other NASA missions. Even from a 2005 base reduced by
mid-year cuts, there are further cuts in NASA’s aeronautics research
portfolio (down 3.4 percent to $930 million), the earth sciences portfolio
(down 8.3 percent to $2.1 billion), and especially biological and physical
sciences research (down 14.4 percent to $791 million).
- The International
Space Station receives $1.8 billion, up 4.5 percent, in anticipation
of the Space Shuttle returning to its role of transporting Station components
into space.
NASA R&D in FY 2006 Final Appropriations
On November 22, President Bush signed into law the
FY 2006 Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations bill (HR
2862), containing NASA’s final 2006 budget. But in December, the final
Defense appropriations bill imposed a 1 percent across-the-board cut
on all discretionary programs, including NASA, and also gave the agency
$350 million in emergency funding to rebuild facilities in Louisiana
and Mississippi that were
damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Together,
the bills give NASA a total budget of $16.6 billion in FY 2006, an increase
of 2.5 percent or $400 million (see Table) that falls
short of the request. (For details of R&D in the
FY 2006 request, please see Chapter 10 of
AAAS Report
XXX: R&D FY 2006 or the March 9 AAAS
R&D Funding Update.)
Because
of an extensive reorganization of appropriations bill jurisdictions,
in FY 2006 NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are funded
for the first time with the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State. NSF
and NASA were formerly funded in the now defunct VA-HUD appropriations
bill alongside the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing/
NASA does relatively
well in the FY 2006 budget, but the agency faces a tight squeeze from
trying to get the Space Shuttle back to safe flight, finish construction
of the International Space Station, embark on an ambitious plan to return
humans to the moon and send them onward to Mars, and also support R&D
across a broad range of fields,
all within a flat budget. The FY 2006 $16.6 billion NASA
budget is only a 0.3 percent increase, far less than inflation, after
taking out Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction funds, for a key
year in which a dramatic ramp-up of R&D efforts on human space vehicles
coincides
with a much-delayed resumption of regular shuttle flights and resumed
construction of the Space Station.
In order
to keep up with changing shuttle launch schedules and shifting timelines
for ending the Space Station and returning to the moon, NASA’s budget
has been in flux for the past few years with major changes happening
even in mid-year. NASA’s R&D (two-thirds of the agency’s budget) totals $11.4 billion
in 2006, a 6.2 percent increase that is the second-largest percentage
increase among the major R&D funding agencies (see Table
and Figure 1). R&D funding grows far faster than the total NASA
budget because the agency anticipates a reduction in the non-R&D
Space Shuttle program from a record $5.0 billion funding level last
year down to $4.5 billion this year, and also because NASA made mid-year cuts in the
Figure 1. (click on the image for PDF)
With these two
big-ticket current programs provided for in the EC account, the
Science, Aeronautics, and Exploration (SAE) account, which funds most
of NASA’s research, climbs $586 million or 6.5 percent to reach $9.6
billion. The entire increase and more goes to the new Constellation
Systems program to develop replacements for the Space
Shuttle which will ;
Congress finalized its appropriation before an internal memo surfaced
showing the agency’s plan to devote up to $1.6 billion to Constellation
Systems to accelerate development of the CEV and CLV for a 2012 launch
instead of the previously announced 2014.
The large increase for next-generation space vehicles comes at the cost
of sharply reduced funding for biological and physical sciences research,
and new propulsion technologies.
Constellation Systems is part of a larger Exploration Systems account
geared to next-generation human space flight technologies; the overall
Exploration Systems account gets $2.9 billion, a 25 percent boost over
2005, but the entire increase goes to the Constellation Systems effort.
Congress thus winds up
endorsing NASA’s proposal to dramatically restructure and downsize
its biological and physical sciences research portfolio into
a Human Systems Research and Technology program more narrowly focused
on research topics relevant to human space flight. Human Systems R&T
within Exploration Systems receives $791 million, down 14.4 percent
from $925 million last year. But NASA plans to reduce the portfolio
even further in order to
would provide a clear policy
direction for the federal role in the civil aviation industry, and calls
on NASA to prepare a report on how the FY 2006 aeronautics investment
would enhance U.S. competitiveness in aeronautics, lead to breakthrough
technologies, and contribute to other NASA goals. That said, NASA’s
aeronautics support has been in steady decline over the last decade
and FY 2006 appropriation leaves the portfolio at little more than half
the size of a decade ago.
Congress allocates $271 million for the Hubble Space
Telescope, to follow on $291 million provided last year. The allocation
follows
Congress
deletes funding for the Centennial Challenges program to award competitive
prizes for new technologies. The request of $34 million would have funded
NASA attempts to replicate the X-Prize program, but Congress has criticized
NASA for requesting the funds but leaving the technology challenges,
prize levels, and other milestones unidentified in a program that has
yet to be authorized in law.
Despite tough budget times, one part of the NASA budget
that continues to increase is congressional earmarks. Congress
allocates a record-breaking $317 million
for performer-specific projects in the FY 2006 NASA appropriation, far above the $217 million
in similar earmarks in FY 2005. The earmarks are distributed throughout
the SAE account, but many of them are in Education Programs, resulting
in a dramatic boost of 53 percent in its budget
to $273 million. Although
many of the earmarked projects fund R&D or R&D facilities related
to NASA missions in earth, space, and physical sciences, the earmarks
also fund science education programs, science museums, and high school science labs.
Impacts of NASA R&D
Figure 2. (click on the image for PDF)
The large increase to NASA’s R&D
portfolio in FY 2006 continues a modest upward trend for the last few
years, as shown in Figure 1, except for the drop in the 2005 budget.
NASA’s R&D funding has just kept pace with inflation going back
to FY 1991, and recent increases have been just barely ahead of inflation.
NASA has committed to carrying out its ambitious plans with a budget
that would just keep pace with expected inflation over the next decade.
Although inflationary increases are more than most R&D funding agencies
are likely to get in the next few years, NASA’s big plans will still
require NASA to reshuffle its resources and to meet ambitious targets
for deployment, construction, and then phase-out of the Space Shuttle
and Space Station programs to make room for moon and Mars programs.
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
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 increases dramatically in the FY 2006 budget, but the increases
will overwhelmingly go to expand the engineering share of the portfolio
because of the focus on next-generation space vehicles. There are likely
to be cuts in NASA support for other disciplines.
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.
Figure 3. (click on the image for PDF)
-
December 29, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
