A couple bits of good news for space scientists yesterday: NASA reversed its earliest decision to cancel the Dawn asteroid mission, reinstating it after a review at NASA headquarters. NASA also announced Monday that it has partially restored funding cut from the agency’s astrobiology program.
Good news for scientists, right? Well, sort of. It’s definitely good news for those working on the Dawn mission, and also for some astrobiologists. However, there doesn’t appear to be any net increase in science funding in the agency’s FY06 operating plan or FY07 budget proposal. Instead, NASA will scrounge up money from other programs to pay any additional costs for flying Dawn (which is funded in the FY07 budget, but may still need additional money to be ready for launch next year), most likely from other projects in the Discovery program. The increase in astrobiology funding is modest (on the order of $10 million a year for the next few years) and presumably at the expense of other research and analysis programs, although the details weren’t clear as of yesterday in part because the plans are still being finalized.
