No More Excuses: NASA in Line to Get Funding Needed for Artemis Plan
upstart writes:
No more excuses: NASA in line to get funding needed for Artemis plan:
President Joe Biden on Monday released his budget request for the coming fiscal year, and NASA is a big winner. The administration is asking Congress to fund $25.9 billion for the space agency in 2023, an increase of nearly $2 billion over the $24 billion the agency received for fiscal year 2022.
The budget request for NASA includes a healthy increase for the Artemis Program, which seeks to carry out a series of human landings on the Moon later this decade. Notably, funding for a "Human Landing System" would increase from $1.2 billion for the current fiscal year to $1.5 billion, allowing for a second provider to begin work. Additionally, funding for lunar spacesuits would increase from $100 million to $276 million. NASA would also receive substantial funding-$48 million-to begin developing human exploration campaigns for the Moon and beyond.
All of this new funding in the proposed budget comes in addition to the billions that NASA has been spending annually to develop the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. Overall funding for Artemis, therefore, would increase from $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2022 to $7.5 billion in the coming fiscal year, which begins October 1, 2022.
This means that, for the first time, the agency could have all of the money it needs for major programs to carry out the Artemis Moon landings. "This budget puts us on the right course," NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana said during a telephone call with reporters on Monday afternoon.
[...] Beyond the Artemis Program, the budget request would fund NASA's science programs to higher levels than ever before, due in large part to cost overruns for the Europa Clipper mission. The cost of the mission, which will make dozens of flybys of the intriguing Jovian moon from whence its name derives, has increased by $703 million to about $5 billion. To accommodate the cost overruns, several other missions would be delayed, including NEO Surveyor, a mission to detect near-Earth asteroids.
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