Budgets
Choose an organization below, and click the links to view the budget update from a specific year.
FY 2003 Appropriations for the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)
(numbers are in millions)
| NASA | FY 2002 Estimate | President's FY 2003 Request | FY03 House | FY03 Senate | FY03 Omnibus | % Change FY02 vs. FY03 |
| Science, Aeronautics & Technology | 8,047.8 | 8,844.5 | 9,144.5 | 9,044.5 | 9,207.6 | 14.4% |
| Office of Space Science | 2,867.1 | 3,414.3 | 3,556.2 | 3,414.3 | 3,665.0 | 27.8% |
| Sun-Earth Connections/Living with a Star | 93.9 | 161.3 | 161.3 | 161.3 | — | — |
| Solar-B | 25.4 | 16.2 | 16.2 | 16.2 | — | — |
| Office of Earth Science | 1,625.7 | 1,628.4 | 1,675.0 | 1,628.4 | 1,719.0 | 5.7% |
| EOS | 385.4 | 410.9 | 410.9 | 410.9 | — | — |
| Aura (formerly Chemistry) | 70.4 | 85.3 | 85.3 | 85.3 | — | — |
| EOS Follow-on | 109.6 | 238.5 | 238.5 | 238.5 | — | — |
| Climate Change Research Initiative | 0.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | — | — |
| GLOBE | 5.0 | 0.0*** | — | — | — | — |
| Office of Aerospace Technology | 2,507.7 | 2,815.8 | 2,883.3 | 2,815.8 | 2,891.0 | 2.7% |
| Aviation Safety Program | 96.1 | 95.0 | — | — | — | — |
| Weather Safety Technologies | 17.9 | 20.9 | — | — | — | — |
| Academic Programs | 227.3 | 143.7 | 178.9 | 202.3 | 203.5 | -10.5% |
| Minority Univ. Research & Education | 84.7 | 82.1 | 82.1 | 82.1 | — | — |
| TOTAL, NASA | 15,013* | 15,117* | 15,30 | 15,200 | 15,414 | 2.7% |
NOTES on the House Appropriations Committee mark (9/14/02)
The House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the VA-HUD bill on 10/9 — nine days into the new fiscal year. The next step is for the House and Senate conferees to reconcile the two versions of the bill. It will then go to the House and Senate floors for a vote and then to the President for approval. There is no indication of when any of this will happen, as Congress plans to adjourn Oct. 18. It is expected Congress will agree on a Continuing Resolution to run through Nov. 22.
The House Appropriations Committee provided NASA with a 1.91 percent increase over FY 2002, and a 24 percent increase for Space Science (however this includes a $200 million transfer from the Human Space Flight account; not including this transfer, Space Science received a 17 percent increase) and 3 percent increase for Earth Science.
Office of Space Science:
The House Appropriations committee provides the Office of Space Science $3.556 billion, an increase of $141.9 million over the budget request. The Committee report language makes several specific additions to the request, including $105 million for the Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission (to develop spacecraft for a 2006 launch to Pluto), $40 million for Europa Orbiter mission to Jupiter's moon (including $10 million for a university-based technology development program), $19.9 million to cover Mars program cost overruns and a series of earmarks. The Committee lowers the funding levels for the Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) Program (from $46.5 million to $36.5 million) and the Nuclear Power System (NPS) Program (from $79 million to $72 million). Both of these programs were new starts, however, so no existing programs were cut.
Office of Earth Science:
The Office of Earth Science receives $1.675 billion, an increase of $46.6 million above the request. The Committee directs NASA to implement its plan for a widely competed remote sensing applications program and specifically eliminates any funding for remote sensing applications centers. The only other major addition is $15 million for the Institute for Software Research (West Virginia) for the development and construction of research facilities.
Office of Aerospace Technology:
The Committee provides the Office of Aerospace Technology $2.88 billion, an increase of $67.55 million (+15 percent). This includes an increase of $20 million for Intelligent Propulsion, 23 earmarks, and $62.7 million for the Alternative Access to Station program. To pay for some of the earmarks, the Subcommittee cut $30 million, without prejudice, from the Space Launch Initiative.
NOTES on the Senate VA-HUD Subcommittee's mark (7/26/02)
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the VA-HUD bill on 7/25, providing NASA with a one percent increase. Science, Aeronautics & Technology would increase by over 12%, however that increase includes numerous earmarks in the Senate bill. The House isn't expected to mark up its version of the bill until after the August recess.
Although no program numbers are specifically called out in the Committee report, because the Senate mark for the Offices of Science and Earth match the President's FY03 request, it can be assumed that programs within these offices will be funded at the requested levels.
The entire Senate VA-HUD report can be found at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R?cp107:FLD010:@1(sr222):
NOTES on the President's FY 03 request (2/4/02)
* The final FY02 final conference number for NASA was $14,790 — this new, higher figure of $15,013 includes full funding of all federal retiree costs attributable to NASA and $108.5 million of supplemental appropriations for security related expenses.
Within the Science, Aeronautics and Technology (SAT) account, Human Space Flight programs are reduced to $6.131 billion, a reduction of almost $700 million. The beleaguered International Space Station is reduced by almost $230 million from FY 2002 for a total funding level of $1.492 billion. Although there will be work conducted on the Crew Return Vehicle this year, using FY 2002 funds, the President has not requested any funding for FY 2003 for the CRV. This is consistent with the Administration's plan to only build the "Core Complete" part of the ISS, until after the financial problems are worked out, but does leave the door open for future expansion to a seven member crew.
**Within the Office of Space Science (OSS)
Although the Office of Space Science (OSS) appears to be the big winner, $200 million of the $547 million increase is due to the transfer of the operations of the Deep Space Network and the Mission Services for Space Science missions from the Human Space Flight account to the Office of Space Science. This is simply a management transfer, without any significant budgetary impacts. The result is that the actual increase for OSS programs is about $347 million or 10%.
Within the OSS, NASA has completely changed the outer planets exploration program. The missions to Europa and Pluto have both been eliminated, although $30 million is requested for the continuation of some of the Europa hardware useful to other missions. In their place, NASA is beginning the "New Frontiers" program. Similar in design to the Discovery program, the New Frontiers program will support Principal Investigator driven, competitively awarded, mid-sized planetary missions costing no more than $650 million. The request for FY 2003 is $15 million and an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) will likely be made this spring.
Also within OSS, the Administration proposes a major investment into nuclear power. Known collectively as the Nuclear Systems Initiative, the three components are the Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) program, the Nuclear Power (NP) program and the nuclear power system for the Mars 2009 Smart Lander. The NEP program is funded at $46.5 million in FY 2003; will be managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center; and is intended to develop a new propulsion system combining nuclear power and the ion engine demonstrated on Deep Space 1. The NP program will be conducted at the Glenn Research Center and will be funded at $79 million. The purpose of the NP program is to develop nuclear power systems for the operations of spacecraft, and scientific instruments which will enable the spacecraft to operate months and possibly years longer than solar powered systems. The Mars 2009 Smart Lander is now slated to utilize such a system. NASA will be working with the Department of Energy and the U.S. Navy on these projects.
Also key in OSS is the funding provided the Sun-Earth Connections activities. There are several missions, both planned and on-going, in the budget request; including TIMED, Genesis and the Magnitospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. Although the budget request does not provide an overall funding level for the development and operations for all SEC missions, it appears that the SEC operations budget receives an increase of $6.5 million to go from $37 million in FY 2002 to $43.5 million in FY 2003, while the SEC technology program is more than doubled from $56.9 million to $117.8 million.
The request for the Next Generation Space Telescope is $126.2 million (FY02 level: $92.1 million). Implementation start for it is scheduled for FY04.
Although no number is called out for Solar Probe (which received $3 million in FY02), it is listed within SEC's "Focused Technology Program." However, this program is only up 3.6% from FY02, and it includes many activities, including Solar Probe.
Within the Office of Earth Science
The Office of Earth Science is funded at $1.628 billion, an increase of only $2.7 million over FY 2002. However, since the development and launch of the initial Earth Observation System (EOS) satellites is almost complete, the Administration was able to double funding for the EOS follow-on missions from $109.6 million in FY 2002 to $238.5 million for FY 2003.
The budget request for EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) for FY 2003 is $74.3 million, a reduction of $219 million from the FY 2002 funding level of $293 million. However, this is due to a transfer of the operational segments of EOSDIS to Mission Operations. In fact, Mission Operations for the Office of Earth Science increases by $200 million over FY 2002 to a level of $247.8 million, reflecting the fact that the EOS satellites are now in operational orbit and the EOSDIS is processing the data from those missions.
NASA will participate in the President's Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI), which will focus on "answering key gaps in knowledge, will adopt performance metrics for accountability, and will deliver products useful to policymakers in a short timeframe (2- 5 years)." NASA's piece of this $40 million initiative is $3 million (NOAA: $18 million, NSF: $15 million, DOE: $3 million, and Agriculture: $1 million).
***GLOBE (resides within Office of Earth Science)
In FY 2003, NASA will continue conducting workshops to train teachers in the use of Earth Science education products, and coordinate with the education organizations to affect systemic integration of ESE content into established curricular materials and learning venues. The K- 16 Formal Education will place particular focus on systemic improvement activities by identifying and filling content/ concept gaps in the array of curriculum support materials, and on establishing a scalable and affordable approach to educator enhancement. GLOBE will be integrated into the K- 16 Formal Education with increased emphasis on systemic improvement so that the numerical performance goals of GLOBE migrate from a focus on schools to a focus on educators, classrooms and district-wide participation in science learning. K-16 Formal Education received $7.1 million in the request.