NASA's 2015 Budget: What Does the Future Look Like?

Luckily, we did not experience a government shut down this year, which may be a sign that Congress understands the need for a functioning government regardless of its political differences.  Three cheers for common sense, which has never been very common in Washington, DC.  But now that we are left with a 1,600 page signed "Cromnibus" bill, what is in this document and how did NASA fare? It seems NASA will get $18.01 billion this year for its operations and programs, an increase from what the Agency proposed earlier this year in the White House's budget request.

And what programs will be funded?  Spaceflight Insider put together a list of winners:

•  Orion will be funded at $1.194 billion, roughly $150 million more than NASA requested.
• The Space Launch System, the rocket upon which Orion will be launched in coming years, received an additional $320 million over the White House’s budget submission for a total of $1.7 billion for the rocket and an additional $350 million for ground systems.
• Planetary sciences received a startling bump of $100 million specifically to begin developing a probe to land on Jupiter’s Europa moon. Europa’s hypothesized vast subterranean oceans have long caught the eye of astro-biologists as a favorable location for the development of life.
• An infrared telescope housed inside a Boeing 747, named SOFIA, was allocated a substantial $70 million to rescue it from a proposed grounding.
• The National Space Grant College and Fellowship Project and the Experimental Project to Stimulate Competitive Research were both fully funded to a combined total of $58 million.

It would seem the infrastructure for manned missions is well funded in the year to come, an encouraging sign.  However, it also appears Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz could chair the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology subcommittee overseeing NASA's programs.  As a result, this may be the start of a rocky year at NASA.

You can find all of the FY 2015 NASA budget documents here. 

Image Credit: Artist concept of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) 70-metric-ton configuration launching to space. (NASA/MSFC)