The US government is about to give NASA a $19.3 billion budget in 2016, which is almost $1.3 billion more than it got last year, according to a preliminary spending bill released on Wednesday December 16.
The steep increase means nearly every department within NASA will get funded at or above the amount it requested for 2016.
But the cash influx isn't finalized — yet.
NASA's budget is part of a colossal spending bill called an omnibus, which Congress strung together from multiple pieces of legislation. Lawmakers are expected to pass it on Friday, Dec. 18, according to The Hill. Then it's off to President Barack Obama to sign into law.
Although NASA got a budget increase last year, the space agency's funding has declined so much over the decades that many programs and missions have been canceled or delayed.
NASA's budget peaked during the Apollo moon mission heydays, at about 4.4% of the federal budget. But by the end of the 1970s it had dropped to well below 1%. Since 2010, it's hovered around 0.5% of the federal budget, fluctuating a little year to year.
The increase —almost $1 billion more than the budget the Senate was leaning toward earlier this year in July — is critical in keeping current NASA projects on track and rescuing the floundering ones.
And it's particularly good news for NASA's shiny new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which is slated to be largest rocket ever made (unless Elon Musk makes his "Big F***ing Rocket" first). SLS could get a whopping $2 billion chunk of the budget — about half a billion dollars more than President Barack Obama asked Congress to work up.
NASA wants to use SLS for its highly anticipated mission to Jupiter's ice-encrusted, water-filled moon Europa — a world scientists believe is one of the most likely places we'll find life beyond Earth. The budget also calls for a Europa lander as part of that mission, in addition to a flyby.
The space agency's planetary science division will also see more funding than the administration asked for, about $1.63 billion total (roughly $175 million of that is earmarked for a Europa mission). This translates to a 27% increase for the division, since average funding has hovered around $1.27 billion for the last few years, according to the Planetary Society.
Further, the new budget should help NASA's plan to recruit private space companies to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Right now US astronauts have to hitch a ride into space on a Russian Soyuz rocket, and each seat costs the US about $75 million.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden wrote a blog post for Wired earlier this year titled "Congress, Don't Make Us Hitch Rides With Russia. Love, NASA." With this new spending bill, NASA will have about $1.2 billion to fund its commercial crew development next year — the exact amount that Bolden said NASA needed to stay on track.
Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX is working on an astronaut-carrying space capsule called the Dragon for NASA, while Boeing is working on a similar design called the CST-100 Starliner. They could be ready to fly as soon as 2017.
But it's not over until it's over — the omnibus is not yet a law.
Fortunately for scientists, according to The Planetary Society, the Obama administration fully intends to sign the legislation as soon as Congress approves it.
