NASA held a press conference Monday afternoon to provide more details about the FY07 budget submission, in conjunction with the release of detailed budget documents. (Be warned that the “Full Document” weighs in at 451 pages; it’s going to take some time to digest.)
Arguably the biggest news to come out the press briefing was the announcement by Administrator Griffin that NASA had “solved” the gap in shuttle funding through the final years of the program: the $3-5 billion difference between what had been projected to be the run-out costs of the program and what those costs are turning out to be. In the Q&A session, Griffin said that the shortfall came from cutting “a couple a billion out of science and a billion and a half out of the exploration line”. An NPR reporter (who either had been tipped off about this or who had really done her homework) immediately followed up by noting that at the rollout of the ESAS report last September, Griffin claimed that the exploration plan would not “take one thin dime out of the science program.” Griffin’s straightforward response: “Yup; that’s right. I wish we hadn’t had to do it. I didn’t want to, but that’s what we needed to do.”
Those science cuts will come by delaying some missions (such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder, Space Interferometry Mission, and Solar Dynamics Observatory). NASA has also put SOFIA, an airborne astronomy observatory, “into review”, like what the agency did last year with the Dawn asteroid mission. That’s actually better than what some had expected—SOFIA was rumored to be on the verge of cancellation—but this review may only delay the inevitable.
Another interesting development: NASA is now planning 16 shuttle missions to ISS (plus one to Hubble) before the program ends in 2010, down from the 18+1 previously announced, apparently hoping that commercial and/or international partners can pick up some of the slack transporting cargo to the station, allowing NASA to trim two logistics flights from the schedule.
