President Obama has directed NASA to get astronauts to Mars by the mid-2030s. NASA officials stress that the agency is still committed to exploring Mars, both for scientific purposes and to enable future manned missions to the Red Planet. "Finishing Webb is being given a higher priority than starting or committing to new Mars missions," Logsdon told. The White House proposes giving JWST $628 million in fiscal 2013, compared to $519 million in the current year. The telescope is now slated to cost $8.8 billion, and to launch in 2018 at the earliest. NASA's first official appraisal, performed in 2008, estimated a cost of $5 billion, with a launch coming in 2014. Back in 2001, the National Academy of Sciences pegged the telescope's price tag at $1 billion. JWST has suffered numerous cost overruns and delays over the years. NASA's planetary science funding is likely being slashed in part to help pay for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a huge instrument that NASA bills as the successor to its Hubble Space Telescope. Obama requested a total of $18.7 billion for NASA last year, but Congress eventually approved just $17.8 billion.Īrtist's depiction of NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018. Last year, the White House allocated $850 million for CCDev activities in fiscal 2012, though Congress ended up granting only $406 million. The agency wants several different private spaceships to be up and running by 2017 or so. Since the space shuttle retired in July 2011, NASA has been completely dependent on Russian Soyuz vehicles to perform this taxi service. The president slotted $830 million for NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, NASA's effort to encourage American private spaceflight companies to start ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA hopes the combo is operational by 2021.Ĭommercial space transportation gets a vote of confidence in the 2013 budget request. The SLS and Orion, which are designed to carry astronauts to destinations in deep space such as asteroids or Mars, received $3 billion in fiscal 2012. Obama's proposal also allocates about $2.9 billion for NASA's next-generation manned transportation system, which consists of a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and a capsule called the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. "The Administration's commitment to enhance NASA's role in aerospace technology development aims to create the innovations necessary to keep the aerospace industry - one of the largest net export industries in the United States - on the cutting edge for years to come," the White House wrote in a summary outlining the budget request. The White House also prioritizes space technology, as evidenced by the 22 percent increase requested in the 2013 budget proposal. The space agency's Earth sciences program, for example, would receive $1.78 billion, slightly more than the president allocated in his fiscal 2012 budget request. Other NASA programs fare better than planetary science in the request for fiscal year 2013, which runs from Oct. The White House's proposed allocation for NASA in fiscal 2013 represents less than 0.5 percent of the overall federal budget request, which is $3.8 trillion.
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