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Brief Introduction

NASA

NASA's FY2010 Budget and FY2011 Budget Request

U.S. Civil Space Policy

For More Information

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

The 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to conduct a civil space program, while assigning military space activities to the Department of Defense.

Over the past five decades, other U.S. government agencies have taken leadership roles in various aspects of civil space activities, but NASA remains by far the largest and most visible U.S. civil space agency.   Others with significant roles in civil space include:

• The Department of Commerce, which operates the country's civil weather satellites and oversees commercial remote sensing satellite companies through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA);
• The Department of Transportation, which facilitates and regulates commercial space launch activities through the Office of Commercial Space Transportation in the Federal Aviation Administration; and
• The Department of the Interior, which operates the Landsat land remote sensing satellites through the U.S. Geological Survey.

Other agencies also have roles in the space program.  The President submits to Congress an annual Aeronautics and Space Report of the President that provides funding and programmatic information about all U.S. Government agencies involved in space activities.  The most recent version is for fiscal year (FY) 2007.

NASA

NASA conducts both aeronautics and space activities.  This website is devoted to space policy and thus does not discuss NASA's aeronautics programs as critical as they are to the nation.  For information on NASA's aeronautics programs, visit the website of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

NASA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has nine field centers around the country:   Ames Research Center (Mountain View, CA);  Dryden Flight Research Center (Palmdale, CA); Glenn Research Center (Cleveland, OH); Goddard Space Flight Center(Greenbelt, MD), which also operates Wallops Flight Facility (Wallops Island, VA), the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (New York, NY) and the Independent Verification and Validation facility in Fairmont, WV ; Langley Research Center (Langley, VA); Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX), which also operates White Sands Test Facility (White Sands, NM); Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral, FL); Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL); and Stennis Space Center (in South Mississippi).   Many consider the Jet Propulsion Laboratory(Pasadena, CA) as another NASA center, but it is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) operated for NASA by the California Institute of Technology.  Nonetheless, NASA is usually referred to as having 10 centers around the country, in addition to its headquarters in Washington, D.C.

NASA's FY2010 BUDGET AND FY2011 BUDGET REQUEST

For FY2009, NASA received $17.8 billion in the FY2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act (compared to the $17.6 requested by President Bush).  In addition, Congress added $1 billion for NASA in FY2009 in the stimulus bill (America's Recovery and Reinvestment Act), bringing the total funds available to NASA in FY2009 to $18.8 billion.

President Obama's FY2010 request for NASA was $18.686 billion.  NASA's budget website provides FY2010 budget request documentation for the agency and transcripts of related press conferences.  Funding for NASA was incorporated Into the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3288, P.L. 111-119), which provides $18.724 billion for the agency.  A SpacePolicyOnline.com fact sheet tracked the NASA budget as it worked its way through Congress.  One of the major points of contention was the future of the U.S. human space flight program.   The White House directed NASA to establish a blue ribbon panel, the Augustine committee, to develop options for the human space flight program.   The President did not make a decision about which option to take during the course of congressional deliberations on the FY2010 budget, so Congress included language in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act prohibiting NASA from spending any funds to terminate the existing program, Constellation, or initiate a new program until Congress approved of such action through another appropriations act.  The exact language on p. 110 of the act (H.R. 3288) is:

"That notwithstanding section 505 of this Act, none of the funds provided herein and from prior years that remain available for obligation during fiscal year 2010 shall be available for the termination or elimination of any program, project or activity of the architecture for the Constellation program nor shall such funds be available to create or initiate a new program, project or activity, unless such program termination, elimination, creation, or initiation is provided in subsequent appropriations Acts."

For FY2011, NASA is requesting $19.0 Billion, 1.5% more than the FY2010 appropriation.  More information from NASA is available on its budget website.   A SpacePolicyOnline.com fact sheet on the budget request is available.  The budget request includes dramatic changes to NASA's plans for the future of the U.S. human space flight program.

Briefly, NASA wants to terminate the Constellation program that is designed to return humans to the Moon by 2020 and someday send them to Mars and is requesting $2.5 billion ($1.9 billion in FY2011, $600 million in FY2012) to terminate that program (on which $9 billion already has been spent).  Instead, NASA wants to turn the development and operation of human space flight systems over to the private sector while NASA would focus only on developing "game-changing" technologies to enable lower cost human space flight in the future.   NASA would subsidize private sector companies to develop new human space flight transportation systems (launch vehicles and spacecraft) and is requesting $6 billion for FY2011-2015 for that purpose.   The proposal is very controversial for many reasons, not the least of which is whether it is cost-effective to spend $17.5 billion to change course:  the $9 billion in sunk costs on the Constellation program (at the time the budget was syubmitted; more has been spent since then), plus $2.5 billion the government would have to spend in termination costs for Constellation (to pay for the contracts it signed with various companies), plus the $6 billion subsidy to the private sector.

The FY2011 budget request also would extend the U.S. commitment to the International Space Station to 2020, five years longer than the current plan; significantly increase NASA spending on technology development; and modestly increase funding for earth science missions.  Funding for the space shuttle program would end by December 31, 2010, although NASA says that is committed to flying the remaining four shuttle missions even if the launch dates slip beyond that day.  The space shuttle program costs about $3 billion a year, so its termination makes available money for the new activities proposed in the budget request.  In addition, the President is proposing an increase in the total amount available to NASA for the next five years (FY2011-2015) by $6 billion compared to his request for NASA last year.  Our fact sheet on the FY2011 NASA budget request includes a table (table 2) comparing what the President had in mind for NASA's total budget last year versus this year. 

NASA Budget Structure

NASA divides its space activities into the following budget categories:

• Science (robotic space and earth science spacecraft that explore other planets in the solar system and study the Earth itself, the interaction between the Earth and the Sun, and the universe),
• Exploration Systems (this did include funding for the Constellation program, research on the International Space Station, a lunar robotic probe, and other technology development, but for FY2011 instead incorporates the subsidy to the commercial sector for developing new human space flight transportation systems, increased funding for NASA to develop new technologies, a new NASA robotic exploration program (in addition to the robotic probes in the Science category), and funding for research on the International Space Station,
• Space Operations (operating the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and space communications)

As noted, NASA also has an Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), as well as budget categories for "Cross-Agency Support," Education, and the Office of the Inspector General.  In the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Congress created another budget category for NASA entitled Construction and Environmental Compliance, and moved money from other NASA accounts into it, making it difficult to compare how much the various NASA mission directorates received in FY2010 compared to FY2009.  For more information, see the SpacePolicyOnline.com fact sheets on the NASA FY2010 budget and FY2011 budget request.   Note that in the FY2011 budget request, NASA has added funds for space technology to the budget category that includes aeronautics and renamed it "Aeronautics and Space Research and Technology." 

U.S. CIVIL SPACE POLICY

U.S. civil space policy is set both by presidential directive and in law.   The most recent presidential national space policy directive was issued by President Barack Obama on June 28, 2010.  It supersedes the policy issued by President George W. Bush in 2006.  

The Obama White House said that it would issue additional specific policies in the coming months for other topics as earlier Presidents have done.   President Bush issued these other space policies in addition to his 2006 national space policy: 

• the 2003 Commercial Remote Sensing Policy,
• the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration,
• the 2004 Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Policy, and
• the 2005 Space Transportation Policy

Congress has set policy most recently in the 2008 NASA Authorization Act (P.L. 110-422).  That and other U.S. domestic space laws, including the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Law that created NASA, are discussed under the Space Law section of this website.

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