Highlights
- The National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA) continues to face daunting challenges,
even as it receives favored treatment in the federal budget. In the
latest House action, the total NASA budget of $16.5 billion would
be a 1.7 percent increase, but NASA’s R&D would increase 5.0 percent
or $552 million in FY 2006 because of money freed up by the Space
Shuttle’s expected return to flight this summer (see Table).
- While the agency would receive 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 would also be tough
budget choices. While the House would add funds to keep NASA from making
steep cuts to aeronautics research, the House would agree to proposed
cuts in the earth sciences portfolio (down 2.7 percent to $2.1 billion)
and biological and physical research (down almost a quarter to $782
million).
- The House would
agree to NASA’s plans to shift resources to solar system exploration
and R&D for moon and Mars mission technologies. There would be large
boosts for robotic moon and Mars exploration (up 17 percent to $858
million) and development of a Crew Exploration Vehicle within a new
Constellation Systems program (doubling to $1.1 billion).
- The International Space Station would receive $1.8
billion, up almost 10 percent, in anticipation of the Space Shuttle’s
return to flight.
NASA R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On June 7, the House Appropriations Committee approved
its version of the FY 2006 Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations
bill (HR 2682). The House bill would provide NASA with a total budget
of $16.5 billion in FY 2006, $275 million or 1.7 percent above this
year’s budget. (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) will be funded for
the first time with the Departments of Commerce, State, and Justice.
NSF and NASA were formerly funded in the now defunct VA-HUD appropriations
bill alongside the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban
Development. As a result, the former Commerce, Justice, and State appropriations
bill now has “Science” in its name. The Senate Appropriations Committee,
however, has proposed a different reorganization for its new Commerce,
Justice, and Science bill: although Commerce, Justice, NASA, and NSF
will still be funded together in the Senate, the Senate bill excludes
the Department of State. The differing jurisdictions in the House and
the Senate bills will make agreeing on a final (conference) bill extremely
difficult.
Unlike last year,
when the House Appropriations Committee draft a billion-dollar cut to
the NASA budget request on the 35th anniversary of the first
moon landing, the House would mostly endorse NASA’s plans for its FY
2006 budget. In an extremely tough budget environment of rising deficits,
restraints on domestic spending, and cuts for many programs, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would escape the tight funding
squeeze facing other domestic programs in the proposed FY 2006 budget.
But the proposed increases for NASA would not be enough to keep the
agency from making tough choices as it juggles a full plate of high-priority
missions along with its traditional R&D programs. NASA’s total budget
of $16.5 billion would be a $275 million or 1.7 percent increase after
an $820 million increase in 2005 (see Table).
The House would add $15 million to the request and shift some funds
from the Space Station and moon-and-Mars missions in order to shore
up NASA support for aeronautics, but would mostly stick closely to the
request. The House appropriation should allow NASA to keep going on
grand new plans for space exploration involving a return to the moon
and a possible human flight to Mars in coming decades, after first returning
the Space Shuttle to flight this summer and using the Shuttle to finish
construction of the International Space Station. The House would go
along with the NASA 2006 budget proposal to once again restructure NASA’s
budget accounts, from 7 enterprises in two major budget accounts to
4 directorates in two major accounts (all amounts in the Table are adjusted
for comparability to reflect the proposed new structure), but the bill
warns NASA that it should stop restructuring its budget every year.
NASA’s R&D (two-thirds of the agency’s budget) would total $11.5 billion
in the House plan, a 5.0 percent or $552 million increase that is likely
to be the largest percentage increase among the major R&D funding
agencies (see Table and Figure 1). R&D funding would grow faster
than the total NASA budget because the agency anticipates a reduction
in the non-R&D Space Shuttle program from a record $4.7 billion
funding level this year down to $4.5 billion next year after the Shuttle
returns to flight. Currently, the long-awaited and much-delayed return
to flight is scheduled for July. With the Shuttle safely back in space,
the current plan is to trim the program’s budget down to $4.5 billion
in FY 2006, which would still be high in historical terms.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
The House would concur with NASA’s
plan to increase funding for the International Space Station by $160
million or 9.6 percent to $1.8 billion next year, just $20 million less
than the request. 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. After shrinking to $1.4
billion last year, the current plan envisions Space Station construction
resuming at $1.7 billion after the Shuttle returns to flight, and proceeding
full speed ahead next year. The Space Station and the Space Shuttle
make up the Exploration Capabilities (EC) account, which totals $6.7
billion in the House, a decline of 1.7 percent (see Table).
With these two
big-ticket current programs provided for in the EC account, the
Exploration, Science, and Aeronautics (ESA) account, which funds most
of NASA’s research, would rise 4.2 percent in the House bill for a gain
of $391 million to $9.7 billion. The FY 2006 budget would provide funds
for moon-and-Mars programs, especially within the new Exploration Systems
(ES) account. In the new budget structure, NASA would create the
Constellation Systems program within ES as the focal point for R&D
efforts in the space flight technologies needed to return humans to
the moon and then onward to Mars. From $527 million this year, Constellation
Systems funding would double to $1.1 billion, primarily for R&D
on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), a project to develop a next-generation
spacecraft capable of taking humans beyond low-Earth orbit. The first
demonstration flights are currently planned for 2008. Exploration Systems
R&T (research and technology) would surge 24 percent to $894 million
in the House plan for R&D to meet the technical challenges lying
ahead for the moon and Mars missions, $25 million shy of an even larger
proposed increase. At the same time, the Prometheus Nuclear Systems
and Technology program to develop new power and propulsion technologies
based on nuclear power for future NASA missions would see its funding
decline 26 percent to $320 million in a restructuring of program milestones.
Funding for the Mars and Lunar Exploration programs for robotic exploration
would total $858 million in combined funding, up 17 percent from this
year to build on recent successes of the headline-grabbing Mars rovers
and to gear up for a 2008 robotic mission to the moon.
The
House would try to add funds to NASA efforts in earth sciences and aeronautics,
but would leave funding for both programs well below the levels of recent
years. The House would add $34 million to NASA’s Earth-Sun System
request to bring the program to $2.1 billion, still a 2.7 percent cut
from this year. This NASA program is a key part of the interagency Climate
Change Science Program and is responsible for space-based observations
of the earth environment. The House would also reject NASA’s proposed
6 percent cut in its aeronautics research portfolio and instead keep
funding at this year’s level of $906 million (see Table).
Language accompanying the NASA appropriation makes clear the Appropriations
Committee’s support for sustaining NASA’s investment in aeronautics
research, especially at a time when other industrial nations are increasing
their investments. The report language calls on the Bush Administration
to develop a National Aeronautics Policy within the next year that 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 (see Figure 2), and even the House appropriation would leave
the portfolio at little more than half the size of a decade ago.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
The House would endorse NASA’s
proposal to dramatically restructure and downsize its biological and physical
research portfolio into a Human Systems Research and Technology program
more narrowly focused on research topics relevant to human space flight. Human
Systems would receive just $782 million in the House bill, $25 million less
than the request and far less than the $1.0 billion current budget.
Elsewhere in the bill, the House would make the unusual move of adding $50
million in R&D earmarks to the NASA budget, but without specifying
them. The report accompanying the bill states that the allocation of
the earmarked funds will be specified only in the final bill, which
may not be ready until the late fall.
Although there
is no specific appropriation for the Hubble Space Telescope, the House
would applaud the recent decision by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin
to reassess the possibility of a servicing mission to the telescope.
NASA attracted strong criticism last year for canceling a planned shuttle
servicing mission to extend the life of the Hubble, instead focusing
on robotic servicing. Congress spoke up in its FY 2005 NASA appropriation
by allocating funding for a servicing mission, but the FY 2006 budget
proposal in February, prepared under the watch of the previous administrator,
would have canceled any servicing mission.
Impacts and Next Steps
The House increase to NASA’s R&D portfolio in
FY 2006 would continue a modest upward trend for the last few years,
as shown in Figure 1. 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 plan 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 for the next few years 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.
The House
is expected to debate and approve the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce
appropriations bill the week of June 13. The Senate Appropriations Committee
is expected to draft its version later this month.
-
June 14, 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
