WASHINGTON - When Vice President Mike Pence called for NASA to speed up its plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, instead of 2028 as originally planned, many derided the directive as fantasy. Other administrations had laid out grand plans for America’s adventure in space, but few funded them.
And no one has been to the lunar surface since 1972.
But on Monday the White House proposed an ambitious spending plan that gives the space agency significant spending boosts over several years, stretching spending from about $19 billion when Trump first came into office to $28.6 billion by fiscal year 2023. While meeting the White House’s goal still has many significant hurdles - both in navigating the vacuum of space and the equally treacherous halls of Congress - the pressure is on NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, who said during a speech Monday, “it is up to us to deliver.”
Space exploration has been a major priority for the Trump administration, which reconstituted the National Space Council and directed NASA to dramatically speed up its moon program. And it shows in its budget, which Bridenstine called “one of the strongest budgets in NASA history.”
The spending plan for next year calls for a total budget of $25.2 billion, a nearly $3 billion increase over the current budget of $22.6 billion. The increase is the first step toward meeting the White House mandate to return humans to the lunar surface by 2024 as part of the so-called “Artemis” program. The White House plans to continue to the increases through fiscal year 2023.
One of the next big steps is awarding the contract for a lunar lander system, which is expected in the coming months. Several companies are vying for the contract, including Boeing, SpaceX and a team led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin that includes Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
For next year, the White House plans includes $3.4 billion for a lunar lander system - “the first time we’ve had direct funding for a human landing system since Apollo,” Bridenstine said.
It also includes nearly $2.3 billion for the Space Launch System rocket being built in large part by Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne and $1.4 billion for the Lockheed Martin-built Orion crew capsule. NASA plans to use those vehicles to get astronauts to the moon.
The SLS rocket has suffered through several years of costly setbacks and delays. But on Monday Bridenstine said it had made significant progress and called it “America’s rocket” that will serve as the “foundation of our 21st century space exploration.”
Still, the budget request showed just how expensive the rocket is. The spending plan called for NASA to look at other commercially available rockets to launch a mission in 2025 to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa. Doing so would save the agency “over $1.5 billion compared to using an SLS rocket,” the budget request said.
If all goes according to plan, NASA’s Artemis program calls for the first launch of the SLS rocket with the Orion capsule for a mission around the moon without crews in 2021. The following year, astronauts would be on board Orion to orbit the moon, with the goal of landing on the surface by 2024.
Instead of going straight to the surface, however, the astronauts would first stop at an out post known as the Gateway in orbit around the moon. They would then fly to and from the lunar surface in the landing vehicles.
The program, however, has met stiff resistance in Congress, especially in the Democrat-controlled House. Recently the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics voted out a bill that directs NASA to land on the moon by 2028, not 2024 and spend most of its energy and resources on a mission to put astronauts in orbit around Mars by 2033.
Democrats are likely to be dismissive of provisions in the White House budget that would cut funding for the Wide Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a key astrophysics mission for NASA. In the past, the White House has tried to defund the program, only to be reversed by Congress.
The White House plan also cuts funding for NASA’s Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) engagement.
First Published: February 12, 2020, 8:30 a.m.
