The President’s Office of Management and Budget has released its
requested for NASA funding for Fiscal Year 2014.
The budget also projects funding for an additional five years. Because NASA’s missions require multiple
years of funding to develop, launch, and operate, these projections are what
NASA’s managers will use to decide what missions they can fly. So if Congress, for example, funds a new
mission for a single year (say an Europa mission, as it did in the final passed
FY13 mission) and that mission isn’t in the five year forecast, NASA’s managers
cannot plan to take that mission to completion.
(Because NASA is part of the President’s administration, NASA managers
are required to support and plan to the projected budgets provided by the
President’s Office of Management and Budget.)
My description below is based on the FY14 budget proposal. The President’s larger budget proposes to
replace the sequester (which began in FY13 and is current law to continue for a
decade) with budget cuts elsewhere in the budget. NASA’s FY12 budget was $17.8B. Under the sequester, the FY13 budget will be
$16.6B. However, the proposed budget for
FY14 is $17.7B. If Congress does not
agree to end the sequester starting with the FY14 budget, the numbers in the
post may well go down.
Because the planning to implement the FY13 budget sequestration will
not be completed for another month or so, the budget document does not list an
FY13 budget amount for most items. The
graphs in this post either use the projected budgets in the FY13 proposal or
the amounts that Congress approved (but that may change because of the
sequester).
The budget does propose to define a mission
to capture an asteroid and return it to the vicinity of the Earth. Very little of this funding is in the
Planetary Science Division, so I will not discuss this program in this post.
Planetary Science highlights from NASA Administrator Bolden’s budget overview.
The good news:
All missions in development or currently flying remain fully funded
(but see below on continuing mission funding).
Missions in development are the lunar LADEE orbiter (2013 launch), Mars
MAVEN orbiter (2013), Mars InSight geophysical station (2016), and the OSIRIS-REx
asteroid sample return (2016) (and
contributions for several foreign planetary missions). In NASA’s Heliophysics program, funding is
maintained for two solar missions, a joint mission with the European Space
Agency, Solar Orbiter (2017), and a NASA mission that repeatedly will approach
very close to the outer atmosphere of the sun, Solar Probe Plus (2018).
The budget proposes to increase the Discovery program ($424-500M
missions) sufficiently to enable the selection of the next mission to begin in
early 2014 instead of 2015. At this
higher funding rate, NASA can afford three to three and a half Discovery
missions per decade (my back of the spreadsheet calculation) instead of two.
The budget fully supports a robust Mars program. Funding is projected for the Mars 2020 rover,
which will be based on the Curiosity rover’s design and entry and descent
system.
The New Frontiers program would continue at essentially the same
funding rate, which would allow slightly less than two missions per decade. The selection of the next New Frontiers
mission is scheduled to begin in 2016.
Funding is provided for producing new plutonium-238 to enable missions
that cannot operate on solar power.
The budget proposed to double funding (to $40M per year) for the search
for Near Earth asteroids.
Funding for Research and Analysis (which supports the planetary science
research community) will have a small increase (from $122M in FY12 to $130M in
FY14). The Technology program, which develops
new technologies to enable future missions, will have a slight budget decline
in FY14 and then relatively flat budgets (but with ups and downs) in the out
years.
Congressionally-approved budgets for major Planetary Science mission
programs (solid lines) and projected budgets from the FY14 budget proposal
(dashed lines). Dotted lines show
projected budgets from the FY13 budget proposal. The Mars and Discovery programs are projected
to have larger budgets in the FY14 proposal than in the FY13 proposal, while
the Outer Planets program is projected to have smaller budgets. The FY13 sequester may cause changes to the
Congressionally-approved FY13 budgets, especially for the Outer Planets
program. Click on the image for a larger version.
The bad news:
The administration really, really does not want to fund a Europa mission. The Outer Planets budget drops precipitously after
FY14 and the end of the currently funded Cassini Solstice mission (but see
below on Cassini’s future). The budget
documents state that, “The Europa Study Team submitted its final report in
response to the recommendation by the decadal survey to immediately examine
ways to reduce the cost of the mission… The budget, however, does not, and
cannot, accommodate any of these mission concepts at this time. ... The Outer
Planets Flagship project is not funded in FY 2014. NASA is not able to support
development of an Outer Planets Flagship mission in the foreseeable future. Instead, as described in the Mars Exploration
Program section, available funding supports a future Mars program that is
consistent with the first priority of the National Academies' decadal survey
for planetary research. “
While Congress added significant new funds to the final FY13 NASA
budget to begin work on a Europa mission, this funding is not continued in the new
budget proposal. [I suspect that this
funding will be deleted from the FY13 budget as NASA adjusts budgets to account
for the sequester (see
this post for more).]
Continuing missions
As mentioned above, the proposed budget appears to fully fund all
operating missions through the end of their currently approved missions. Where a spacecraft is expected to still be
operational at the end of the currently approved funding, the document states that
future mission extensions can be funded if approved by NASA’s Senior Review
process. (This is a review by senior
scientists to evaluate and rank the value of continued mission operations and
funding.)
For the Mars program, the budget proposal shows the operating budget
for FY14 for each mission, and then has a large (>$80M per year) line item
to support extended mission after that.
Other programs do not have this type of funding bucket to pull from for
extended missions. This may be
particularly important for the Cassini mission, where the Outer Planets budget
drops from a projected $79M (FY14) to around $25M by FY16.
Per the budget documents, “The [Cassini] Solstice mission [now funded] will
continue to operate and conduct data analysis through September 2015, at which time
it will undergo competitive Senior Review with all other PSD operating
missions. Pending successful Senior
Review in 2015, the mission will conclude in 2018, after another 155
revolutions around the planet, 54 flybys of Titan, and 11 flybys of Enceladus.” However, if operations are to be funded from
2015 to 2018, NASA will need to find new funds to support Cassini.
Editorial Thoughts: When
I started this blog, I decided it would not be an advocacy blog. Other organizations, particularly the
Planetary Society, do an excellent job of advocacy. As you can read on the Planetary Society
blog, the reaction to this budget is not positive. (See 2014 NASA Budget Cuts $200
million from Planetary Science -- Again and Bad Budget News for NASA's
Planetary Exploration Program.)
I’m pleased to see the increase to the Discovery program that will
increase the number of missions that will fly per decade. This has been an incredibly successful
program; the whack the program took in the FY13 proposed budget, if maintained,
would have been devastating.
I’m disappointed to see the budget ruling out any chance for a Europa
mission, but I had expected this. The
administration has decided to put its planetary Flagship (>$1B missions)
dollars into Mars. I hope that Congress
continues to push for funding for a Europa mission and inserting it into the
budget. I really want to see the Europa
Clipper mission fly.
I am worried about the future of the Cassini mission. While the budget document talks about the
possibility of an extended mission to 2018, there isn’t a budget bucket to pull
the dollars from. My experience with
budgets over a couple of careers has been to view money as either there or
not. So I am worried and hope that my
worry will prove to be for naught. Here
is how the budget document describes what a further extension of the Cassini
mission would do: “In 2017, an encounter with Titan will change its orbit in
such a way that, at closest approach to Saturn, it will be only 3,000
kilometers above the planet’s cloud tops, and below the inner edge of the D
ring. This sequence of approximately 15 ‘proximal orbits’ will provide an
opportunity for an entirely different mission for the Cassini spacecraft, investigating
science questions never anticipated at the time Cassini was launched. Cassini
completed its prime mission in July 2008, completed its Equinox extended
mission in July 2010, and began the Solstice extended mission in October 2010.
The Cassini mission will end when another encounter with Titan will send the
Cassini probe into Saturn’s atmosphere.”
What is at stake is the ability for the Cassini mission to begin an
entirely new mission in its close orbits that will capture much of the science
that the Juno mission will for Jupiter.
More Information
The complete NASA budget document (very long) can be read here
For summaries of the overall NASA budget, see Space
Policy Online and Space
Politics
Changes in budget projects from different proposed budgets. Compared to
the FY11 budget projections, actual budget have been much smaller with steep
declines forecasted in the FY12 and FY13 budgets. The FY14 projects are an increase compared to
the FY13 projections.
Actual (FY10-12) and projected budgets (FY13 and beyond) budgets for
NASA’s science divisions. FY13 budgets
are from the FY13 budget proposal and do not reflect either the final
Congressional budget or the changes possible from the FY13 budget sequester.
Given that there will be zero other outer planets missions, defunding Cassini early would be criminally stupid. That said, in a "competitive" comparison, Cassini is a flagship mission with a gazillion instruments. How can it not shine?
ReplyDeleteIt will likely (depending on the nature of enrgy sources in the future) be necessary to prepare a "Pandorum" contingency, finding a nearby star to colonize/harvest. Finding an appropriate target may happen very quickly. I don't think it is safe to rely upon our Sun. This will necessitate dealing with AI and probably some "breaking the fabric of space" risks.
ReplyDeleteSuch potentials exist for the final extension of Cassini that the Senior Review panel will have to make a fuss and insist that the money be found somewhere, somehow, whatever the cost to other missions. There are, essentially, no other outer planet missions, and won't be for decades and decades. New Horizons and JUNO excluded of course. It would indeed be typical of the dysfunctional Planetary Program to terminate Cassini at this most crucial final mission extension. A cynic would conclude, based solely upon this fact, that premature termination will in fact occur!
ReplyDeleteWe'll have VASIMR before decades and decades. One potential use for the captured asteroid (once the science is finished) could be as a location for an intermediate planetary protection protocol, to take place before sample returns are released from quarantine, to Earth labs. The asteroid could be updated monthly with the best science suite, vs every decade or two with ion engine sample missions. And if the sample return goes a little off course, it will impact the asteroid and be destroyed. If it goes alot off course there is still the infinitesimal risk of an Andromeda Strain...
ReplyDeleteAwesome there, Great work, keep it up. I love returning back to this site and reading the quality content you always have on offer.
ReplyDeleteEver
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