Shrinking NASA Budget Forces Tough Trade-offs
By Brian Berger and Dan Leone
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposal to roll back NASA spending to its lowest level since 2008 puts the squeeze on planetary science and other agency activities in order to accommodate a massively overbudget space telescope and a congressionally mandated heavy-lift rocket while doubling funding for a controversial commercial crew initiative.
Obama submitted the final spending proposal of his current four-year term Feb. 13 to a deeply divided Congress unlikely to pass a 2013 budget before a November election shaping up as referendum on taxes and spending. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden was among the senior government executives called upon Feb. 13 to extol the virtues of their respective portions of a $3.8 trillion budget proposal the White House says holds total discretionary spending to its lowest level in 10 years. NASA’s proposed $17.71 billion share, down 5.4 percent from the high-water mark set in 2010, represents only the fourth time since 1999 that a president has called for reducing NASA’s budget.
“There’s no doubt tough decisions had to be made, here at NASA and all across government,” Bolden told reporters during a televised budget rollout at agency headquarters here. “However, ours is a stable budget that allows us to support a diverse portfolio of human exploration, technology development, science, aeronautics, and education work.”
Among the priorities supported in the NASA budget proposal now before Congress:
• Nearly $3 billion for the congressionally mandated Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket, Orion deep-space capsule and related ground systems and infrastructure. NASA has yet to define a mission for these vehicles.
• Almost $830 million for the Commercial Crew Program, which NASA is counting on to restore independent U.S. access to the international space station.
• Some $700 million for the Space Technology program, $125 million more than last year.
• Roughly $630 million for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which Congress threatened to terminate last year due to huge cost overruns. The $109 million increase was needed to keep the now $8.8 billion astronomy flagship mission on track for 2018.
Accommodating these priorities forced NASA to accept cuts elsewhere.
Science
Hardest hit was the Science Mission Directorate’s Planetary Science Division, a $1.5 billion portfolio that drops below $1.2 billion next year in the president’s plan and keeps falling until 2017. There are no guaranteed new starts in that time frame; planning for a flagship-class mission to Europa or some other outer-planet destination is tabled indefinitely, and a lunar science campaign initiated when NASA still planned to return astronauts to the Moon goes away.
More controversially, spending on robotic Mars exploration would drop nearly 40 percent next year, with further big reductions planned for 2014 and 2015.
The shrinking Mars exploration budget reflects a pullback from plans to partner with Europe on a pair of missions that would launch in 2016 and 2018 to set the stage for retrieving samples from the red planet.
With NASA’s $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover set to land in August, the $600 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter launching late next year and another Mars mission in the running for the Discovery 12 flight opportunity, Bolden said NASA will take a timeout to devise a new Mars exploration strategy that melds science and human spaceflight goals with an eye toward cobbling together cheaper missions for 2018 and 2020.
A significant share of NASA’s downsized planetary science budget would fund continued development of four U.S.-led space missions. Two of those — MAVEN and the Moon-bound Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) — are slated to launch in 2013. The other two — the $900 million Osiris-Rex asteroid sample-return mission and a Discovery 12 mission that will be selected this summer — would launch in 2016.
The 2013 budget also establishes a $10 million-a-year Joint Robotics Program for Exploration that NASA says would “develop instruments relevant to human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.”
LADEE will cap the short-lived Lunar Quest program. The $175 million spacecraft is scheduled for a six-month mission whose original objectives included gathering data engineers would use to design lunar outposts and robots suitable for the Moon’s dusty environment.
NASA’s Astrophysics Division, meanwhile, would see its budget reduced slightly, to $660 million. That figure that does not include the $628 million sought for the JWST program, which now reports directly to NASA Associate Administrator Chris Scolese, the agency’s third in command.
The Astrophysics Division budget is largely focused on operating roughly a dozen missions, including the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy — a telescope-equipped 747 jetliner that continues to undergo development even as science flights begin.
Planning for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, the astrophysics community’s top-priority large-scale mission after JWST, has been shelved after garnering $3 million in 2011 to get going.
Projects still on the books include the $170 million NuSTAR telescope launching this spring, another Small Explorer-class mission called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism launching in late 2014, and completion of an instrument NASA is building for Japan’s Astro-H spacecraft.
NASA’s Earth science and heliophysics activities fare better than astrophysics and robotic planetary exploration in the 2013 proposal. Both climate-centric pursuits would see modest funding increases.
The Earth Science Division would continue to grow through 2015, as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, Global Precipitation Measurement satellite, Soil Moisture Active-Passive mission and IceSat-2 proceed toward launch.
Work on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), a copy of a satellite lost in 2009 in the first of back-to-back Taurus XL rocket failures, is expected to conclude in time for a 2013 launch. But NASA says the switch to a different rocket for OCO-2 could delay launch until 2015, adding considerable expense.
NASA also expects to pick a Venture Class small satellite Earth science mission later this year that would launch in 2017. Selection of the Venture Class program’s first mission-of-opportunity instrument — so called because it would hitch a ride on non-NASA spacecraft — is slated for 2013.
A number of the bigger proposed missions in NASA’s Earth science queue, including Ascends, Clarreo, Desdyni and the GRACE Follow-On, face additional budget-driven delays of one to two years or more.
Heliophysics is something of a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy science budget. The $1.4 billion Solar Probe Plus mission stands to find its footing, as NASA seeks to double its budget to $112 million in 2013 and keep it tracking toward a late-2018 launch.
Likewise, NASA still plans to join the European Space Agency on the Solar Orbiter Collaboration. NASA’s share of that 2017 mission, which includes providing the launch and two instruments, is expected to top $400 million.
Spending on the $860 million Magnetospheric Multiscale mission is also slated to rise in 2013, although not as much as previously projected, as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center works to complete development of the four identical spacecraft in time for a 2015 launch.
NASA also plans to launch the $680 million Radiation Storm Belt Probes mission in September followed by the $170 million Iris satellite in mid-2013. The agency also plans to select and begin development on the next Heliospheric Explorer mission next year.
Overall, the heliophysics budget would rise to $647 million — a 4 percent increase — and remain at about that level for several years.
Human Spaceflight
William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said his nearly $8 billion portion of the agency’s budget includes more money for international space station operations, space communications networks upgrades and the purchase of a third Tracking and Data Relay Satellite from Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems.
Nearly half of Gerstenmaier’s 2013 budget is set aside for the SLS, Orion and the Commercial Crew Program, which is soliciting proposals for a 21-month effort aimed at keeping at least two competing spacecraft on track to enter service in 2017.
Of the $3 billion requested for SLS and Orion, roughly 10 percent would be spent on related ground systems, infrastructure and other activities. As a result, the funding directly available for SLS and Orion vehicle development would be down about $325 million from the level Congress approved for 2012. Gerstenmaier said the budget is sufficient to keep both on track for a 2017 unmanned test launch.
The Commercial Crew Program budget, meanwhile, would rise by more than $420 million, approaching the level NASA requested for the program last year without success.
Phil McAlister, NASA’s director of commercial spaceflight development, said if Congress halves the commercial crew request, as it did last year, the program may not be worth pursuing since the vehicles might not be ready in time to support the space station. “I would say it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to do this program,” McAlister told reporters Feb. 14 in Cocoa Beach, Fla. “Just one test flight is going to be a couple hundred million dollars, probably. So that’s your whole year’s funding, right? So it really doesn’t make sense at that kind of funding level. If we felt like that’s all we could get, we would definitely need to re-evaluate the program.”
Commercial crew’s big increase was not lost on Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a strong backer of SLS and Orion. “The Administration remains insistent on cutting SLS and Orion to pay for commercial crew rather than accommodating both,” Hutchison said in a Feb. 13 press release.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a frequent Hutchison ally on NASA matters, cast the administration’s request as a “balanced approach” to human spaceflight. He told attendees of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference here Feb. 16 he would like to see the Commercial Crew Program funded above the $406 million it received for 2012.
Nelson said a successful launch of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s unmanned Dragon capsule to the space station this spring would help make the case for increased funding. “If that occurs in April, that is going to be right at the right time, because that’s about the time that the decisions are starting to be made with regard to appropriations,” he said.
Whether Congress finishes the appropriations process before November’s general election is another matter.
“I think the most likely outcome is no budget and maybe a continuing resolution for all of fiscal 2013, because it’s all tied up in election-year politics,” said John Logsdon, a space policy expert at the George Washington University here.
Howard McCurdy, a public policy professor at American University, agreed. “I doubt that any of the controversial bills will be enacted before November,” he told Space News.
If Congress fails, as it has repeatedly in recent years, to enact spending legislation by the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, NASA and other federal agencies would remain funded at current levels until a reshaped Congress and whoever wins the White House can reach agreement on a new budget.
McCurdy, for one, doubts that NASA would come out ahead under this scenario.
“If anything, NASA’s budget will head down,” he said. “Welcome to the new reality.”
Space News correspondent Irene Klotz contributed from Cocoa Beach, Fla.
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CONVERSATIONS IN SCIENCE
NASA budget cuts could be felt on Mars
Scott Hubbard, a space agency advisor, explains scientists' worries about President Obama's proposed reductions for the planetary sciences division.
By Amina Khan
4:11 PM PST, February 17, 2012
Lean financial times are prompting belt-tightening far and wide — and now that extends to Mars and the rest of the solar system.
President Obama's proposed budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for fiscal year 2013 would eliminate $300 million from the agency's planetary sciences division, a 20% cut from the $1.5 billion it received for 2012. Though the budget plan, released this week, would preserve funding for high-profile projects like the James Webb Space Telescope and manned space missions, scientists were alarmed by the size of the hit to relatively inexpensive programs that explore the solar system with high-tech robots.
Scott Hubbard, a member of the NASA Advisory Council Science Committee and the agency's former "Mars czar," has been assessing the effect the cuts would have on the agency's programs. Now a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, he spoke with The Times about what the future holds for exploration of the Red Planet.
How long have these cuts been in the works?
It was signaled that bad things might be happening well over a year ago, when the fiscal year 2012 budget came out. The decline from the previous budget was really startling, and many of us were worried that this already was indicating that OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] was intending to take the planetary science area and Mars program even lower.
The president's budget is for five years. It shows the budget rising in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. But of course projecting budgets five years from now is pure guesswork.
How does that uncertainty affect NASA's planning?
They have really reduced the program to where it cannot realistically commit to anything large and anything long term.
When I put the [Mars] mission program together in its current form 10 years ago, OMB was willing to talk about a whole decade. They have committed in the past to long-term missions like Voyager, and Cassini to Saturn and Galileo to Jupiter.
NASA has been given, overall, actually a fairly good budget. This hit to the Mars program and planetary science is a real dark spot.
How will this affect the Mars rovers and other missions there?
One thing that is very worrisome: If you look at the details, in a line called "Mars extended operations," that budget is significantly lower than it should be. It raises questions about whether or not OMB intends for NASA to keep operating missions that are there and working successfully, like the Opportunity rover and Mars Odyssey [a satellite looking for evidence of water and volcanic activity] and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [which is studying the history of water on the planet] and so forth.
This cut to Mars seems to threaten the existing missions and their operations as well as the future beyond what's called MAVEN [a mission to study the upper Martian atmosphere that's set to launch in late 2013].
What does NASA stand to lose?
Loss of human capital is an immediate and very serious risk. I just gave a lecture at NASA where I pointed out how close we are to really answering this question of, "Was there ever life on Mars?" We've built up the scientific momentum and we've got the instruments, the spacecraft, the direction to go and do this. And when you take something like this apart, the scientists go elsewhere. You lose the capability, the momentum and the knowledge that you've built up.
Historically, the success rate for missions to Mars is only about 1 in 3. The Russians have tried 21 times and they've never been fully successful at Mars. That's how hard it is. So it's in the skills of people. It's not just a piece of hardware sitting in the corner that you dust off. These are technical capabilities that reside in very highly trained people.
What's the argument that NASA science programs deserve more money?
We've got indisputable evidence of vast amounts of water on Mars, which — coupled with what else we know — leads to the high probability that Mars was habitable in the past. The Kepler mission [a space-based telescope] has found well over 1,000 new planets; Hubble Space Telescope has given us pictures of the galaxy and understanding of things as exotic as black holes. We've really expanded our knowledge of the solar system and the whole universe though NASA's programs.
Is there any chance the cut could be reversed?
I think the best way forward for the people out there in the science community and in the public is, frankly, to appeal to Congress to see if they can't reverse this cut. The administration proposes a budget, but it's Congress that actually enacts the budget and appropriates the money. I think that's what we're going to have to do in order to head off this danger before it gets too far down the road.
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