{"id":19529,"date":"2015-12-16T23:12:16","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T15:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/congress-omnibus-bill-gives-nasa-a-christmas-bonus-a-bigger-19-3-billion-budget\/"},"modified":"2015-12-16T23:12:16","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T15:12:16","slug":"congress-omnibus-bill-gives-nasa-a-christmas-bonus-a-bigger-19-3-billion-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/congress-omnibus-bill-gives-nasa-a-christmas-bonus-a-bigger-19-3-billion-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress\u2019 omnibus bill gives NASA a Christmas bonus: a bigger $19.3 billion budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_218051\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-218051\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-218051\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151216-europa-630x354.jpg\" alt=\"Image: Europa orbiter\" width=\"630\" height=\"354\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151216-europa-630x354.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151216-europa-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151216-europa-1240x698.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151216-europa.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-218051\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows an orbiter at Europa, a mysterious moon of Jupiter. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The 2,009-page&nbsp;omnibus bill that\u2019s been crafted by Congress for the current fiscal year boosts&nbsp;NASA\u2019s budget to $19.3 billion, which is&nbsp;$756 million more&nbsp;than the White House asked for.<\/p>\n<p>The big winners include&nbsp;NASA\u2019s heavy-lift Space Launch System and its planetary science projects&nbsp;\u2013 particularly a mission to Europa, a mysterious ice-covered moon of Jupiter.&nbsp;The measure also provides as much as the Obama administration requested \u2013 $1.24 billion&nbsp;\u2013 for NASA\u2019s commercial crew program. That suggests the space taxis that are being built for NASA by&nbsp;the Boeing Co. and SpaceX will remain on track for their debut in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The long-delayed&nbsp;spending plan&nbsp;for the budget year that started in October, released overnight, isn\u2019t totally a done deal. The House and Senate still have to vote their approval, and that\u2019s not expected&nbsp;to happen until Friday. Then President Barack Obama has to sign it into law. But all the pieces are in place, and today the White House gave the deal&nbsp;its thumbs-up.<\/p>\n<p>In their analyses, Space News\u2019 Jeff Foust and the Planetary Society\u2019s Casey Dreier saw lots of good news for NASA. \u201cDid everybody win? Almost,\u201d Dreier wrote.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Alien Ocean: NASA\u2019s Mission to Europa\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GqTaDCt_F1Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here are the bullet points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>NASA\u2019s Planetary Science Division gets $1.63 billion, about $270 million more than the White House\u2019s budget request for planetary studies. The bill sets aside $175 million to&nbsp;support efforts to send&nbsp;an orbiter and a lander to Europa, which is thought to harbor a deep ocean of water, and potentially life, beneath its icy surface. NASA had requested just $30 million in fiscal 2016 to study a Europa mission. Such a mission wouldn\u2019t be launched until the 2020s. The bill also supports continued operation of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as well as the Opportunity rover on Mars&nbsp;\u2013 two long-running missions that were at risk of losing funding.<\/li>\n<li>The Space Launch System has been a popular program in Congress, so much so that some critics have nicknamed it the \u201cSenate Launch System.\u201d In the omnibus bill, lawmakers set aside $2 billion for the SLS program, which is $640 million more than the White House sought. The SLS is due to have its first uncrewed test flight in 2018, and it\u2019s expected to start lofting astronauts beyond Earth orbit in 2023 or so. NASA sees the SLS and the Orion deep-space capsule as key parts of an infrastructure that will get astronauts to Mars and its moons in the 2030s.<\/li>\n<li>While Orion is meant to go beyond Earth orbit, Boeing\u2019s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX\u2019s upgraded Crew Dragon spaceships are being developed to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told lawmakers that the space taxis wouldn\u2019t be able to start service on schedule in 2017 unless NASA&nbsp;could provide the companies with as much support as had been budgeted. Congress heeded Bolden\u2019s words and decided not to short-change the program.&nbsp;NASA will have to keep paying&nbsp;the Russians $70 million&nbsp;per seat for&nbsp;rides to the space station until the taxis are ready&nbsp;\u2013 and that\u2019s an issue that resonated with lawmakers.<\/li>\n<li>Some NASA programs are getting less than the White House requested: The Space Technology Mission Directorate&nbsp;would receive $686.5 million ($38 million less), and the Earth Science Division is down for $1.921 billion ($26 million less).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Check out Space News and the Planetary Society for more of the details.<\/p>\n<p><em>An earlier version of this story mistakenly used a \u201cb\u201d instead of an \u201cm\u201d when referring to the $70 million price tag for seats on Russia\u2019s Soyuz spacecraft.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows an orbiter at Europa, a mysterious moon of Jupiter. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech) The 2,009-page&nbsp;omnibus bill that\u2019s been crafted by Congress for the current fiscal year boosts&nbsp;NASA\u2019s budget to $19.3 billion, which is&nbsp;$756 million more&nbsp;than the White House asked for. The big winners include&nbsp;NASA\u2019s heavy-lift Space Launch System and its planetary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[631,291,1659,190,4467,787,1306],"class_list":["post-19529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-budget","tag-commercial-space","tag-europa","tag-nasa","tag-politics","tag-space-launch-system","tag-starliner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}