Spaceflight Now Home



Spaceflight Now +



Subscribe to Spaceflight Now Plus for access to our extensive video collections!
How do I sign up?
Video archive

NASA '09 budget

NASA officials present President Bush's proposed Fiscal Year 2009 budget for the agency.

 Play

Introduction to ATV

Preview the maiden voyage of European's first Automated Transfer Vehicle, named Jules Verne. The craft will deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

 Full coverage

Station repair job

Station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Dan Tani replace a broken solar array drive motor during a 7-hour spacewalk.

 Full coverage

Mercury science

Scientists present imagery and instrument data collected by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft during its flyby of Mercury.

 Play

STS-98: Destiny lab

NASA's centerpiece module of the International Space Station -- the U.S. science laboratory Destiny -- rode to orbit aboard Atlantis in February 2001.

 Play | X-Large

Earth science update

NASA leaders discuss the agency's Earth science program and preview major activities planned for 2008, including the launch of three new satellites.

 Part 1 | Part 2

STS-97: ISS gets wings

Mounting the P6 power truss to the station and unfurling its two solar wings were the tasks for Endeavour's STS-97 mission.

 Play | X-Large

STS-92: ISS construction

The Discovery crew gives the station a new docking port and the box-like Z1 truss equipped with gyroscopes and a communications antenna.

 Play | X-Large

Expedition 17 crew

Pre-flight news briefing with the crew members to serve aboard the space station during various stages of Expedition 17.

 Play

Become a subscriber
More video



NASA's proposed 2009 budget calls for $17.6 billion
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: February 4, 2008

President Bush's budget request for the 2009 fiscal year keeps NASA on track to transition from the space shuttle to the Constellation program and puts additional emphasis on robotic science missions to study the Earth and the universe, senior agency officials said Monday.

The agency's total budget request, the last for this administration, is a 1.8 percent increase from this year's enacted budget, totaling $17.614 billion. The largest uptick is in the exploration systems directorate, which would receive $3.5 billion under the administration's plan.

Much of money for exploration will fund hardware tests for the Ares 1 rocket, including the Ares 1-X mission that will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in April 2009. Other portions of the exploration budget will maintain funding for COTS, a government-sponsored program to incite development of a commercial system to transport crew and cargo to the international space station.

About $2.6 billion would be set aside during the next five years to purchase transportation to the station, which will be unreachable by U.S. government craft for up to five years. That money could either buy services from U.S. companies or foreign vehicles, most likely the Russian Progress and Soyuz resupply and crew rotation ships, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for space operations.

For the first time since Bush directed NASA to return to the moon in 2004, the exploration division will receive more funding the space shuttle program. Many of the space shuttle's contracts will be completed in the next year ahead the vehicle's retirement in 2010, Gerstenmaier said.

Space operations would receive $5.775 billion during the fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. The space shuttle program would get $2.982 billion and the space station is slated for $2.06 billion in funding as the shuttle continues assembly missions to the station.

Responsibility for NASA's ground-based space communications networks was shifted from the science office to space operations, accounting for $256 million of the directorate's budget.

The budget calls for the Constellation program's funding to significantly rise after the shuttle's retirement, reaching approximately $6.5 billion by 2011. The additional money comes directly from the shuttle program and will go toward beginning development of the heavy-lifting Ares 5 booster and a lunar lander before expeditions to the moon could begin late in the next decade.

When asked about potential changes when a new president occupies the White House next year, the head of NASA's exploration programs said he is focusing on the agency's current directives.

"We're under both presidential policy and enacted law to execute the program that we're currently under," said Richard Gilbrech, associate administrator for exploration. "If and when it changes, we will go on an alternate path."

This year's budget request allows NASA to hold to a schedule leading to the first operational flight of the Orion capsule and Ares 1 rocket by 2015, said Shana Dale, NASA deputy administrator.

"The fiscal year 2009 budget does not make any strategic changes in direction for our human space flight efforts to complete assembly of the international space station before embarking on new journeys to our moon and worlds beyond with our international partners," Dale said.

NASA's science mission directorate would get more than $4.4 billion under the president's realigned budget. Savings from other programs will allow seven new missions to get underway during the fiscal year.

"That's more than the last three years combined," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for science.

The 2009 budget request begins funding for a "flagship" mission to the outer solar system, likely a probe to visit Jupiter, an orbiter to study its moon Europa, or a lander to conduct research on Saturn's moon Titan, according to Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary sciences division.

The unnamed mission, projected to cost NASA roughly $2 billion over the next eight years, would be ready for launch by 2017.

Teams would start work on the Joint Dark Energy Mission in the next fiscal year. Managed by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, the project will seek out the 70 percent of the universe comprised of energy in empty space that drives its accelerated expansion. JDEM, which is still in its early definition phase, will launch as early as 2014.

Another mission start for 2009 would be a small lunar science orbiter to study the moon's tenuous atmosphere. That project, known as LADE, could be launched on the same rocket as NASA's already-planned GRAIL mission in 2011.

A cache of three small landers would also be dispatched to the moon in 2014 under the president's budget. Funding for the estimated $344 million mission would begin in 2009.

A reduced cost version of a previous mission called Solar Probe is also back on the books for a 2015 launch.

Although no new Mars probes are firmly included in the 2009 budget request, the document begins setting the table for a Mars sample return mission by 2020. Likely to involve intense international cooperation, the project would be the primary focus of the agency's Mars exploration program after 2013, Stern said.

Two Earth science projects identified last year by a survey of the scientific community would also be started in the 2009 fiscal year. The NASA budget request outlines $910 million of funding for a total of five new Earth science missions over the next five years.

The Soil Moisture Active-Passive mission, which could launch in 2012, will detect moisture levels in soil. Data from the mission will lead to a better understanding of water cycles, which is linked to weather forecasting and predicting climate change.

Scheduled for a 2015 launch, ICESat 2 will be a follow-on satellite to a current mission measuring the rate of ice loss in Earth's polar regions.

"NASA's investments in measuring the forces and effects of climate change are allowing the policymakers and the public to better understand its implications to our home planet," Dale said.