Senate Appropriations Recommendations on NASA

With Tuesday’s Senate passage of H.R. 2158, the VA/HUD appropriations Bill, House and Senate conferees now need to meet to reconcile their versions into a final bill. The two versions have very different report language on NASA: The Senate would provide funding equal to the amount of the President’s request, while the House would give $148 million above the request. In addition, the House report would give the NASA Administrator transfer authority to reallocate up to $150 million from NASA’s Science, Aeronautics and Technology, and Mission Support, accounts to the space station program “if necessary to keep the space station program on schedule.” The Senate report makes no mention of this transfer authority, although it does permit reallocation of some current year funding (see below.) If the House language is not specifically reversed in the conference report, it will remain in effect. FYI #89 provides details of the House Appropriations Committee report language. Below are highlights from the Senate Appropriations Committee report language (S Rept. 105-53); FYI #92 contains further information on the Senate’s bill.

The Senate Committee recommends $13.5 billion for NASA for FY 1998, with a caution that “the survival of its major programs may depend on its continuing efforts to downsize and increase the efficiency of its operations.” It encourages the agency to “adhere to the consolidated space operations contract [CSOC] proposal submission date of mid-January 1998...” and “to expand the scope of work in CSOC to ensure inclusion of commonality of functions at all centers.”

HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT:

This account would receive the full request of $5.327 billion, fully funding both the space station and the space shuttle. This amount, however, “does not include additional funds which may be needed for space station contingencies, due to the Russian partners, the United States contractor, or other unforeseen contingencies. The Committee agreed to reallocate $200,000,000 from other programs in this account in fiscal year 1997 funds to cover the impacts from Russian contingencies and some of these funds are expected to remain available as reserves for fiscal year 1998.”

SCIENCE, AERONAUTICS, AND TECHNOLOGY (SA&T):

The Committee would provide the full request of $5.642 billion. Space Science: Within the SA&T account, the Committee fully funds space science at $2.044 billion. This level, the report states, “includes the President’s request for the space infrared telescope facility [SIRTF] and for gravity probe-B [GP-B], and $6,000,000 for solar terrestrial probes of which $3,000,000 is for the solar-B mission and $3,000,000 is for solar stereo.” Report language also expresses the Committee’s concern “about the absence of competition in the selection of funding recipients for the new millennium, advanced space technology, and portions of the supporting research and technology program elements,” and directs NASA to submit an operating plan “that lays out a specific strategy to implement this competitive framework...so that approximately one-half of these funds are made available to extramural academic institutions or private industry, with selection by external peer review panels.” The Committee recommends an additional $10 million for advanced technology development for the Origins program, to fund additional optical astronomy test beds.

Mission to Planet Earth: According to the report, “The Committee strongly believes that the Mission to Planet Earth provides a critical opportunity to obtain new and needed data on information related to the weather, the environment, agriculture, and natural disasters, among others. These data may someday help to ensure adequate food supplies for the world through new understanding of our environment, as well as help predict the timing of and damage from floods and earthquakes. This Committee supports the President’s full budget request ($1,417,300,000) for Mission to Planet Earth, and includes an additional $5,000,000 for the lightning mapper sensor. The Committee also commends the efforts of the commercial remote sensing activities at Stennis Space Center, particularly in managing the purchase of Earth science data from private industry, and encourages that these activities continue.” The report warns, however, that the program’s Earth observing system [EOS] and its data and information system [EOSDIS] “today face continuous technical challenges.... Since EOS was approved as a new start in fiscal year 1991, the Committee has directed NASA to resist efforts continually to change the architecture and program baseline of EOSDIS. To guarantee this occurs as EOS nears the AM-1 launch, the Committee directs NASA to maintain the EOSDIS focus on the critical schedule milestones to minimize any adverse effect on the launch schedule. This emphasis should continue until EOSDIS version B.1 becomes operational in early 1999.” The report says the Committee is also “highly skeptical of the inherent value of evolving EOSDIS to a federated system run by the program’s principal investigators without a system wide developer or software integrator.”

The Committee’s recommendation includes $96.4 million for science education within SA&T, “with program impacts minimized by improved management of uncosted carryover balances.” The full request of $2.513 billion would be provided for the Mission Support account.

Conferees on the VA/HUD bill are not likely to meet until after Congress returns from its August recess.