Five months into the fiscal year under consideration, Congress finally passed a budget for NASA on March 8, 2024. It provided $24.9 billion, a cut of 2% (about half a billion dollars) relative to 2023. This is NASA’s first year-over-year cut since 2013, a direct result of congressionally mandated spending caps passed in the summer of 2023.
As a result, funding for most NASA programs remained flat relative to 2023. The notable exception was Artemis, which saw a slight budget increase of $200 million to $7.7 billion. NASA’s return-to-the-Moon effort again demonstrated the resilience of its political coalition by continuing to grow despite this year’s budgetary pressure.
Funding for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, on the other hand, shrank by $457 million.
This cut was directed at a single project the Planetary Science Division’s troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) project. Originally requested at $949 million, Congress provided “no less” than $300 million, but removed $522 million from the Planetary Science Division’s total budget. If NASA wants to provide additional funds to MSR in FY 2024, money would have to come from other projects. Whether this will occur is uncertain given the negative politics of such a decision and the program’s current development freeze during its extended reformulation/replanning process.
Regardless, it’s not too much to say that MSR took it on the chin in FY 2024 to preserve the space agency’s other science initiatives.
Despite these difficulties, many of The Planetary Society’s top advocacy and policy goals ended up fully or partially included in the final congressional budget.