NASA « Space Politics

Concerns about planetary funding in 2013 and 2014

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 24 at 1:08 pm ET

While much of the attention in the upcoming hearings this afternoon and tomorrow morning on NASA’s proposed fiscal year 2014 budget will be on items like the agency’s new asteroid initiative, SLS and Orion, and commercial crew, one other topic that may get some notice is the agency’s planetary science budget. Congress moved to partially [...]

A busy week of NASA hearings

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 23 at 7:18 am ET

Several hearings this week by House and Senate committees will examine NASA’s 2014 budget request and its overall space exploration plans. The hearings start this afternoon with one on “Challenges and Opportunities for Human Space Exploration” by the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee. Scheduled to testify are NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations [...]

Smith’s continued skepticism about NASA’s asteroid mission

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 19 at 12:00 pm ET

When the administration released its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal last week, Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, expressed some skepticism about NASA’s new asteroid initiative contained in it, including plans to redirect a small near Earth object to lunar orbit to be visited by astronauts. “Seemingly out of the blue, this [...]

Garver: role for private sector in NASA’s asteroid mission plans

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 16 at 10:52 am ET

NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver made a surprise appearance yesterday morning at the opening session of the Planetary Defense Conference 2013 in Flagstaff, Arizona (she said she had planned to attend months ago, but her appearance was only formalized relatively late and not included in the agenda for the session.) She provided an overview of [...]

Congressional tensions between SLS and commercial crew, FY2014 edition

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 13 at 10:03 am ET

NASA’s commercial crew program and the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion programs have been sources of heated debate on Capitol Hill that last couple of years. But, as both efforts make progress, could the tensions that often pit the two programs against one another be easing? Not necessarily, based on comments from a couple [...]

People re-DSCOVR an existing program

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 12 at 1:00 pm ET

While a proposed asteroid retrieval mission got the bulk of the attention in NASA’s 2014 budget proposal, another mission also got an outsized share of attention compared to its budget. A number of media reports played up the inclusion in the budget of funding for the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR. This spacecraft’s long, [...]

Reaction to the NASA budget proposal

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 11 at 1:33 pm ET

The fiscal year 2014 budget proposal for NASA is, as previously noted, fairly similar to the agency’s 2013 proposal, with the notable exceptions of the new asteroid initiative and changes to NASA’s education programs as part of the administration’s broader STEM education consolidation. That may be why the budget has, so far, not gotten a [...]

New bill would redirect NASA back to the Moon

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 11 at 9:10 am ET

Just days after NASA admininstrator Charles Bolden said that a NASA-led human return to the Moon would not take place “probably in my lifetime,” a group of mostly Republican members of the House introduced a bill that would require NASA to do just that, and within a decade.

The “RE-asserting American Leadership in Space Act,” [...]

Quick look at NASA FY14 budget proposal

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 10 at 11:41 am ET

The White House has released its documents for the FY14 budget proposal, including a fact sheet for NASA. The administration is seeking approximately $17.7 billion for NASA, about the same as its FY13 proposal. The proposal, as expected, includes funding to begin work “on a mission to rendezvous with—and then move—a small asteroid.” There’s also [...]

Final tweaks to the 2013 budget

By Jeff Foust on 2013 April 9 at 7:13 am ET

Everything is set for tomorrow’s unveiling of the administration’s fiscal year 2014 budget proposal. The overall budget proposal will likely show up on the OMB website Wednesday morning, with NASA posting its detailed budget proposal documents at 1 pm Eastern. At 1:30 pm, the Office of Science and Technology Policy will hold a budget briefing, [...]

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