FY 2017 Budget Request: Large Cuts to NASA Science and Exploration

While the Obama Administration is calling for funding increases for some federal science agencies in the fiscal year 2017 budget request, NASA is not among them. The space agency would see large cuts to major science and exploration programs under the President’s proposal, namely to Planetary Science, Astrophysics, and development of the Orion crew vehicle and Space Launch System that are aimed at one day sending a manned mission to Mars.

These proposed funding cuts follow a banner fiscal year 2016 for NASA, in which Congress appropriated a spending increase of $1.275 billion or 7.1 percent for the agency and a similar rate of growth for the Science Mission Directorate. In a “State of NASA” speech at Langley Research Center on Feb. 9, Administrator Charles Bolden reassured NASA employees that, “The state of our NASA is strong.”

In addition, the Administration is attempting to make up most of the cuts through a novel proposal for $763 million in additional mandatory spending that would be spread out across the agency. Historically, nearly all of NASA’s budget has been supported through discretionary funding divided up by Congress through the annual appropriations process. Congressional buy-in for the new mandatory spending is unlikely. See the FY 2017 budget request overview FYI for more details.

The two tables below show the fiscal year 2017 funding request for NASA with and without proposed new mandatory funding. The American Astronomical Society has also posted an analysis of the sections of the NASA budget request important to the astronomical sciences.

Table 1: President’s FY17 request for NASA excluding mandatory spending

* all figures are in millions of nominal U.S. dollars

Table 2: President’s FY17 request for NASA including mandatory spending

* all figures are in millions of nominal U.S. dollars

NASA’s goals include Earth and planetary science, the ISS, and a manned mission to Mars

The budget request funds progress toward a number of overarching NASA goals, which NASA Chief Financial Officer David Radzanowski highlighted on a Feb. 9 budget rollout as including:

• growth of a vibrant American commercial space industry;
• partnership with industry to send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) from American soil by the end of 2017, so the U.S. no longer must rely on Russia for our rides;
• operation of the ISS through at least 2024;
• enhanced investments aimed at sending humans to Mars by the mid-2030s, with an emphasis on new technologies needed for deep space missions, such as ground laser communications, satellite servicing, habitation concepts, and advanced space propulsion;
• satellite and research efforts to help us understand the Earth’s systems and climate; and
• implementation of the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan .

Bolden emphasized the Mars destination as a unifying goal during his “State of NASA” address, coining the phrase “Mars matters”:

Other anticipated accomplishments and budget request highlights

According to Radzanowski, NASA’s anticipated accomplishments in fiscal year 2017 include:

• continued assembly, integration, and testing of the Orion crew vehicle and Space Launch System, in preparation for their first joint, uncrewed flight, in fall 2018;
• completion of the ISS’s final international docking adapter for commercial crew vehicles, which will support increased on-board research activity;
• launch of 13 science and cargo missions, including:
  • the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 instrument for placement on the ISS or another space-based platform in order to investigate the distribution of carbon dioxide on Earth;
  • OSIRIS-Rex , which will be the first U.S. spacecraft to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth;
  • GOES-R and GOES-S , joint collaborations with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that will serve as the first two of the U.S.’s next generation line of geostationary weather and Earth-observing satellites; and
  • JPSS-1 , also a joint collaboration with NOAA, the first of two satellites that will serve as the next generation U.S. polar-orbiting weather and Earth-observing platform.
• testing and integration of major components of the James Webb Space Telescope , which is still set to launch on schedule and within budget in fall 2018; and
• arrival in July of the Juno mission to Jupiter, to observe and understand the physical characteristics and evolution of our solar system’s largest planet.

Other fiscal year 2017 budget request highlights within the NASA Science Mission Directorate include:

Earth Science

• a multi-decadal sustainable land imaging program, including progress toward a Landsat 9 launch as early as 2021;
• support for the formulation and development of numerous missions, including PACE , NISAR , ICESat-2 , GRACE Follow-on , SWOT , TEMPO , RBI , OMPS-L , CLARREO , and TSIS-1 ;

Planetary Science

• continued development of the Mars 2020 rover mission;
• continued formulation of a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, with an expected launch by the late 2020s;
• initiation of studies for the next New Frontiers mission;

Astrophysics

• continued development of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission for launch by 2018;
• a program start for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope , which will enable scientific discoveries on dark matter, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics following a mid-2020s launch;

Heliophysics

• continued partnership with the European Space Agency on the Solar Orbiter Collaboration , scheduled for launch in 2018;
• continued development of Solar Probe Plus , Ionospheric Connection Explorer , and Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, also all to be launched in 2018; and
• tripling of funding for the CubeSat Launch Initiative from $5 million to $15 million.