Provisions in the House bill

• Establishes a Moon to Mars program within NASA that includes the twin goals of conducting a crewed lunar landing by 2028 and a crewed mission to orbit Mars by 2033
• Delineates between “critical enabling activities” deemed essential to Mars exploration and “noncritical path activities” that would fall outside the Moon to Mars program and be separately budgeted
• Designates lunar in-situ resource utilization and the establishment of a continuously occupied lunar outpost or research station as noncritical path activities
• Requires construction of a “Gateway to Mars” staging post but states it would “not be required for the conduct of human landing operations” on the Moon
• Extends NASA support for the International Space Station through 2028
• Requires NASA to plan for how it will maintain its communications infrastructure in orbit around Mars “into the 2040s”
• Directs NASA to select a launch vehicle for the Europa Clipper Mission “taking into account the probability of mission success and based on cost, schedule, vehicle availability, and impact on science requirements”
• Requires NASA to report quarterly to Congress on the progress of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope with respect to a baseline cost and schedule estimate the agency will set

Provisions in the Senate bill

• Directs NASA to follow a “steppingstone approach to exploration” that would set Mars exploration as an ultimate goal with a “timetable determined by the availability of funding”
• Directs NASA to “establish sustainable lunar exploration by 2028"
• Directs NASA to “establish an outpost in orbit around the Moon” that demonstrates Mars exploration technologies and functions as a staging post for missions to the lunar surface or other destinations
• Extends NASA’s support for the International Space Station through 2030
• Expresses support for the $3.2 billion cost cap Congress has previously established for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope
• Directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to determine how NASA or other agencies can best support “missions of national need” such as near-Earth object detection and orbital debris mitigation