NASA seeks small budget increase; mission to Jupiter included
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is asking Congress for a 3.1 percent increase in money for the nation’s civilian space agency.
The budget proposal, prepared long before Saturday’s loss of space shuttle Columbia, seeks $15.4 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
The document, sent Monday to Congress, will almost surely become a historic curiosity as the Bush administration is expected to alter its spending priorities after the shuttle loss.
The budget request is the first for NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe and reflects his emphasis on management reforms and cautious, affordable space exploration programs.
It proposes spending $279 million for Project Prometheus - $3 billion over five years - to build the first nuclear-electric space mission, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. The mission envisions a spacecraft equipped with a nuclear fission engine visiting at least three of Jupiter’s moons that might harbor subsurface oceans.
Project Prometheus is expected to pave the way for future NASA missions by giving craft increased power and maneuverability. If proved, nuclear engines could one day speed humans to Mars, a longtime goal of scientists and space enthusiasts.
The Bush budget sets aside $31 million for initial development of a new optical communications system that would use lasers to transmit data from deep space instead of radio waves. The first mission to use the powerful new system would be a spacecraft launched into Mars orbit in 2009.
Bush’s proposed budget will accelerate spending on a new orbital space plane that ultimately would replace the aging shuttle fleet.
Shuttle program money, perhaps the part of the Bush budget most likely to change, would increase about $182 million to $3.9 billion in the next fiscal year. The budget provides additional financing for shuttle upgrades, but that spending level also is likely to receive additional scrutiny as the White House and Congress react to the loss of Columbia.
NASA now is operating at a spending level equivalent to 2002’s $14.6 billion. The agency had asked for $15 billion in fiscal 2003, which began Oct. 1, 2002, but Congress is months behind on its annual spending bills and has not yet approved NASA’s final budget.