A fiscal year 2018 spending bill that will be marked up by the House Appropriations Committee July 13 includes record funding levels for NASA’s planetary science program, but severely cuts a NOAA weather satellite program.
The committee released July 12 the report accompanying the commerce, justice and science (CJS) appropriations bill, which its CJS subcommittee approved on a voice vote June 29. At that time, the committee had released only a draft of the bill, with limited details about how the nearly $19.9 billion provided to NASA would be allocated.
In NASA’s science account, planetary science emerges as a big winner, with the report allocating $2.12 billion, a record level. That amount is $191 million above the White House request and $275 million above what Congress provided in 2017.
Some of that additional funding will go to missions to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, thought to have a subsurface ocean of liquid water that could sustain life. It provides $495 million for both the Europa Clipper orbiter mission and a follow-on Europa Lander, to be launched by 2022 and 2024, respectively. The administration’s budget request sought $425 million, devoted solely to Europa Clipper.
The report also provides additional funding for Mars exploration, including $62 million for a proposed 2022 orbiter mission. NASA sought just $2.9 million for studies of future Mars missions, raising worries among scientists that NASA would not be able to get an orbiter, with telecommunications and reconnaissance capabilities, ready in time for the 2022 launch opportunity.
Another Mars mission concept, a small helicopter that would fly with the Mars 2020 rover mission, would get $12 million in the House bill. That technology demonstration concept has been studied for some time as a possible complement to the rover, but NASA has not made a formal decision about including it on the mission.
The report includes broad support for other planetary programs, including $60 million for near Earth asteroid searches and development of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft. That spacecraft would collide with the moon of one such asteroid to measure the ability to deflect potentially hazardous objects.
The report also directs NASA to work with industry on a report “on the utilization of asteroid-based natural resources to support U.S. government and commercial space exploration missions and timeframes for when such resource extraction could possibly occur.”
While the report provides additional funding, and direction, for planetary science, it cuts funding for NASA’s Earth science program. It gives that program a little more than $1.7 billion, $50 million below the request and more than $200 million below what it received in 2017.
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