The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee released and approved a NASA funding proposal in a bipartisan, 26-3 vote. The budget bill includes a 2.2% increase relative to the agency’s budget for Fiscal Year 2024, roughly in line with the funding levels offered in the President’s Budget Request. Overall, the legislation offers a balanced counterproposal to the budget advanced in the House, though fundamental budgetary issues facing NASA go unaddressed.
Under the 2.2% increase, the bill fully funds the Artemis program at $7.65 billion, with sufficient details on how that money would be spent on individual projects such as the Lunar Gateway, which was notably left out of the House budget. The budget for the Science Mission Directorate is increased by 3.4% over FY 2024 to $7.58 billion, though the Senate proposal is $10 million higher than the request. In its proposal, the Senate took the opportunity to assert its displeasure with the agency’s recent decisions to ramp down operations for the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and cancel the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, priorities for the astrophysics and heliophysics communities respectively. For the Planetary Science Division, the Senate proposal keeps the budget flat, just $10 million shy of the White House request — maintaining the half-billion-dollar cuts levied against the division last year. The budget includes full funding for the Dragonfly mission and the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program, and offers the requested funding level of $200 million for Mars Sample Return (MSR) with strong language requesting that NASA prioritize its selection of a path forward for the program. This is a markedly different tone when compared to last year’s proposal when the Senate bill threatened outright cancellation of MSR, though, unlike last year, NASA is itself proposing cuts to the program, effectively doing the Senate’s job for them. Like the House proposal, the Senate bill is awaiting a full chamber vote.
If we look at the Senate proposal merely in relation to the President’s Budget Request, NASA fares extremely well. In recent years, the request is normally higher than the actual appropriated amount by as much as 8%. And for FY 2025, the Senate proposal actually includes $50 million above the request for NASA. The problem is that this budget proposal exists in the context of deep cuts to the space agency and to nondefense discretionary spending overall. In June 2023, Congress and the Biden Administration struck a deal to prevent a historic default on the national debt, at the cost of arbitrary spending constraints being imposed on the whole of the discretionary budget for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The deal has resulted in major cuts across the government and a paltry 1% increase to spending between FY 2024 and 2025. This constricted fiscal environment has led NASA leadership to make ever more difficult decisions on which missions or programs move forward, often at the expense of others. The sudden cancellation of VIPER illustrates the depths to which this fiscal affliction permeates the agency. A fully built rover sitting in a California clean room awaiting its final tests before being ready to search for water ice at the lunar south pole — a crucial step to enabling long-term human habitation on the Moon — was canceled due to budget uncertainty.
The fiscal situation has sowed unease amongst the various scientific disciplines, germinating a zero-sum mentality that has put mission teams, NASA centers, and advocates at odds with one another. The fiscal issue doesn’t just affect mid-career and senior scientists who are more likely to hold leadership positions on missions and in scientific societies. Early career professionals, many of whom came up during the steadily increasing budgets of the last decade, are now facing the prospect of fewer jobs and professional opportunities to advance their careers. It’s no wonder that morale amongst the scientific community is lower than at any point in recent memory.
This is why The Planetary Society has partnered with other science advocacy organizations to support a restoration of space science funding to $9 billion.
This goal may seem far-fetched given the difficult political landscape, but at least 10% of the House of Representatives concur with this stance. And in a floor speech earlier this month, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Washington) railed against the arbitrary fiscal constraints, noting that “the [budget] caps for FY24 are already causing serious pain and serious challenges, and the caps for FY25 are grossly inadequate.”
Just over a year ago, the NASA budget request predicted ongoing growth that would have brought the agency budget to nearly $30 billion by 2030. Now, the agency is facing major issues across the board and more modest projections to $28 billion, not accounting for ongoing inflation in the aerospace industry. Meanwhile, other nations, companions and competitors alike, are increasing investments in their space capabilities.
What we see with this Senate budget proposal is a snapshot of the agency at this moment in time. The legislation works to address issues on the margins, and does so successfully, but the root of the malaise is deep and underpins the entire budget process this year. Let’s take a look at some of the most notable elements of the bill.
Science spotlight
As noted, the Senate budget proposal largely tracks with the President’s Budget Request for FY 2025. But digging deeper, there are some distinctions and clear policy directives coming from the Senate.
The Senate’s proposed budget bill provides funding levels for NASA Science comparable to the President’s Budget Request for FY 2025, with small increases in specific divisions to account for reversals of recent decisions to decommission or cancel flagship science programs. By comparison, the House funding proposal cuts nearly every science division and sets up an imbalance of priorities in the Planetary Science Division that would exacerbate fiscal concerns.