NASA FY99 Budget Request: Space and Earth Sciences

President Clinton has requested $13,465.0 million for NASA’s FY 1999 budget. This is a decrease of $173 million, or 1.3 percent, from NASA’s FY 1998 appropriation of $13,638.0 million. This is slightly above the $13.4 billion the Administration projected a year ago for NASA’s FY 1999 budget.

NASA’s Science, Aeronautics and Technology account, which funds research in space, Earth, life and microgravity sciences, would receive $5,457.4 million, a decrease of $94.6 million, or 1.7 percent, from current (FY98) funding of $5,552.0 million. The Human Space Flight account, which funds the space station and shuttle programs, would receive $5,511.0 million. Of NASA’s other accounts, Mission Support would increase 3.7 percent, to $2,476.6 million, and the Office of Inspector General would increase 9.3 percent, to $20.0 million.

The Budget Requests for NASA’s Space Science and Earth Science programs are below. FYI #24 will carry details on the requests for Human Space Flight and Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications. As always in comparing budgets from year to year, keep in mind that some funding changes can result from changes to program content, or to a program entering a different phase (for example, from development to operations.)

SPACE SCIENCE:

NASA FY98 FY99 Percent

Program Approp. Request Change

(In millions)

SPACE SCIENCE TOTAL $1,983.8 2,058.4 +3.8%

MO&DA 528.5 526.6 -0.4

AXAF 95.8 -- *

Gravity Probe-B 57.3 37.6 -34.4

SIRTF 55.4 111.7 +101.6

TIMED 52.7 40.8 -22.6

Payloads 18.0 29.4 +63.3

Explorer Development 113.5 114.3 +0.7

Mars Surveyor prog. 145.2 164.0 +13.0

Discovery 76.5 126.5 +65.4

Supporting Res. & Tech. 541.7 604.4 +11.6

Suborbital program 83.3 99.6 +19.6

Launch Services 215.9 203.5 -5.7

*AXAF was scheduled for a late 1998 launch, but may be delayed to 1999.

According to NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, in written testimony at a February 5 House Space Subcommittee hearing, “The FY 1999 budget includes a major funding augmentation for Space Science.... These funds will support an augmentation to the Mars Surveyor Program to enhance the Mars 2001 lander, initiation of a series of Solar Terrestrial Probes to track solar phenomena and their impact on the Earth, and the initiation of mission development for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope to understand the end states of stars’ lives and to seek out the most extreme environments in space. The budget also continues NASA’s commitment to the search for the origins of life. In response to evidence of possible subsurface oceans discovered by the Galileo mission on Jupiter’s moon Europa, we will begin planning for a mission to launch in 2003 to observe more closely potential subsurface oceans on Europa.”

EARTH SCIENCE:

NASA FY98 FY99 Percent

Program Approp. Request Change

(In millions)

EARTH SCIENCE TOTAL $1,367.3 1,372.0 +0.3%

EOS 704.6 659.1 -6.5

EOS DIS 209.9 256.6 +22.2

Earth Probes Devel. 48.6 85.9 +76.8

Science 294.1 294.9 +0.3

Operations, Data Retrieval

& Storage 70.3 70.5 +0.3

GLOBE 5.0 5.0 0.0

Launch Services 34.8 -- -100.0

“This is an exciting year for the Earth Science Enterprise, formerly known as Mission to Planet Earth,” Goldin said in his February 5 statement, “because we begin the Earth Observing System or EOS’ era. With launches of EOS-AM-1 and Landsat-7, we will begin to collect the necessary data to answer many critical questions about the Earth.” His statement continues, “Looking beyond FY 1999, we are developing a series of light-weight, low- cost science missions, Earth System Science Pathfinders, the first of which will examine and model terrestrial ecosystems and the second which will study ocean currents, ocean heat transport, and the varying size of ice sheets. We are also demonstrating next-generation technologies as part of NASA’s New Millennium Program, a series of small, rapid development missions to flight test promising new instruments.... The success of these small missions is part of the new paradigm of the Earth Science Program, which focuses on front-end technology development investments that will lead to smaller, lighter, and less costly missions which will not compromise the program if a satellite is lost.”