NASA's Human Moon Lander Program Finally Gets Full Funding in New Budget Bill

If Congress' sweeping new spending bill is signed, it would finally provide full funding to some major NASA projects that have been underfunded over the last few years. From a report: Notably, NASA's program to develop a new human lunar lander would be fully funded as the president's budget requested, as will a program to develop new commercial space stations in low Earth orbit. Overall, NASA would receive $24.041 billion for 2022 in this new bill, which will fund the US government for fiscal year 2022. NASA's portion is roughly $800 million less than the $24.8 billion that President Joe Biden's budget request called for in May of 2021. However, NASA would still see a slight bump from its total funding for fiscal year 2021, which sat at $23.27 billion. Though Congress's plan would not fully meet the president's budget request, there are a few projects that House and Senate lawmakers are finally agreeing to fund in their entirety. The bill would give NASA's human landing system the full $1.195 billion that the request asked for. Currently, NASA is developing a new human lunar lander as part of its Artemis program, an initiative to send the first woman and first person of color to the Moon. Previously, Congress showed its reluctance to give NASA the money it requested for the lander. For 2021, appropriators only provided $850 million of the requested $3.4 billion for the lander.

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