Free fact sheets summarizing and analyzing President Obama’s FY2017 budget requests for NASA and for NOAA’s satellite programs written by SpacePolicyOnline.com Editor Marcia Smith are now available.

Copies can be downloaded from SpacePolicyOnline.com using the following links:

• NASA’s FY2017 Budget Request
• NOAA’s FY2017 Budget Request for Satellites

These fact sheets will be updated as the budget requests work their way through Congress.   Note that when they are updated, the URL changes.  To find the latest version, look under “Our Fact Sheets and Reports” on the left menu of our main webpage.

Note:  This article was updated on February 12 with a new link to the NASA budget report, which itself was updated, and the explanation of how to find the most recent copies of these reports in the future.

The President’s FY2017 budget request for NOAA’s satellite programs holds no surprises.  instead, there is steady funding for the GOES-R and JPSS next generation weather satellite programs and the next two satellites in the JPSS series.

NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) operates the nation’s civil weather satellites in geostationary and polar orbits.   After many years of development, launch of the first of the next block of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), GOES-R, is scheduled for October of this year (a six month slip from its previous launch date of March 2016, which was revealed in December 2015).   It is one of four satellites procured under the “GOES-R” program (the others are -S, -T, and -U, all of which will be assigned numbers once they are in orbit) for which NOAA is requesting $753 million in FY2017.  This is a reduction from FY2016 since the program has passed its peak development phase.

Similarly, the first two Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) spacecraft are past their peak development years.  The request for FY2017 is $787 million, down from $809 million last year.  The first JPSS is scheduled for launch in the second quarter of FY2017 (which is the first quarter of calendar year 2017), with the second expected at the end of FY2021.

NOAA is gearing up to procure the next two JPSS spacecraft for launches in FY2026 and FY2031 under the Polar Follow On (PFO) program.  It had to fight for PFO funding last year, but in the end Congress provided the full $370 million.  The request for FY2017 is $393 million.

NOAA also operates the DSCOVR space weather satellite and is requesting funds to plan for the next space weather satellite.  Last year Congress gave it only half of the $2.5 million request.  NOAA is back this year with another $2.5 million request.

Congress is keenly interested in whether NOAA can procure some of the satellite data needed for its numerical weather models from commercial sources.  NOAA is reticent because it is not certain whether the commercial data are accurate, verifiable and reliable.  To kick things off, Congress added $3 million to the NESDIS budget in FY2016 for a pilot program to purchase, evaluate, and calibrate such data on a competitive basis.  For FY2017, NOAA has named this “Competitive/Adaptive Data Exploitation” and is requesting $5 million.

NASA’s Bill Gerstenmaier said on Wednesday (February 3) that the key to successful commercialization of low Earth orbit (LEO) is for the space industry to become more innovative and nimble.

Commercial satellite systems like Iridium that were intended to provide voice and data services to underserved parts of the globe lost out to undersea fiber optic cables and terrestrial cell phone towers because the aerospace industry moved too slowly, he argued.   “We have to be extremely nimble. … We as an industry were so slow in doing that we got whacked by a terrestrial market that could turn and deliver faster.”

The same threat hangs over potential use of the near-zero gravity environment available in LEO for applications in areas such as pharmaceuticals.  Electrophoresis was once envisioned as a promising area for space commercialization because without gravity much purer substances can be produced.  However, back on Earth, genetic engineering advances made it possible to do almost as good a job.  “We could create a 99% pure insulin on orbit, [but] they could create a 98% pure insulin through genetic engineering.  That won because they could turn to the market faster and be responsive.”

Gerstenmaier, the head of human exploration and operations at NASA, reiterated two points that he and other NASA officials have been stressing in recent months.  First, it is the commercial sector’s responsibility, not NASA’s, to find the demand for future LEO space stations.  Second, future LEO space stations are not likely to resemble the International Space Station (ISS), but be smaller facilities with narrower purposes and they could build on existing or planned spacecraft.

For example, spacecraft that deliver cargo to the ISS can continue to perform additional missions once they depart, he suggested.  Russia’s Progress cargo spacecraft are already used in that manner, sometimes remaining in orbit for days or weeks after undocking from ISS to perform remote sensing or other tasks.  Similarly, U.S. commercial cargo and crew vehicles — Cygnus, Dragon, Dream Chaser, and CST-100 Starliner — could do that or perhaps two such spacecraft could be docked together to serve as a mini-space station.

Decisions on what is needed should be based on what the commercial market requires.  “Don’t assume what we need. … listen to the demand” and be creative in meeting it, he urged.

The panel discussion at the second day of the FAA’s Commercial Space Launch conference, moderated by Michael Lopez-Alegria, focused broadly on commercialization of LEO.  George Washington University professor Henry Hertzfeld reviewed the “waves” of interest and investment in LEO space commercialization since the 1980s that fell victim to the space shuttle Challenger accident and the “technology bust” at the turn of the century.  “We’re in a new wave” now, he said, “let’s hope it continues.” “We’ve been riding these waves and, even if they stagnate, every new one has been larger and bigger and I think that will continue into the future.”

Tauri Group Managing Partner Carissa Christensen explained that investment, supply and demand are the three critical elements of a LEO economy.  She delineated the types of investors interested in commercial space – “advocacy” or “affinity” investors with personal enthusiasm; “strategic” investors with a related business looking for associated or aligned benefits like improvement of an existing product; and “financial” investors looking for return on their investment.  The supply and demand of commercial LEO activities contemplated today vary widely.   Overall, the challenges of this emerging economy are more business than technical, she concluded.

John Elbon, Vice President and General Manager for Space Exploration at Boeing, discussed some of those business challenges.  Boeing was the prime contractor for building ISS and supports it today through an engineering services contract.  It is also building one of the two commercial crew vehicles (CST-100 Starliner) that will begin taking crews back and forth in another year.

To illustrate what it would take to have a commercial space station, he postulated building a comparatively simple station, more akin to Skylab than ISS.  He theorized that it might cost about the same as Starliner ($2.5 billion) to which operations costs would have to be added.  He put the annual cost of operating ISS at $4 billion a year ($2.7 billion from NASA plus $1.3 billion from the other partners).  Imagining those costs could be cut in half, he used $5 billion as the amount Boeing would have to invest.  “If I took that to the Boeing board and said I want to invest $5 billion in building this station, they would look at me…” and want to know where the return on that investment would come from.  They would want a minimum of a 15 percent return, which would be $750 million, plus annual operating costs of perhaps $2 billion a year, meaning revenue of $2-3 billion per year would be needed, he continued.   He listed a number of experiments being conducted on ISS today that have promise, but not enough without more R&D investment than is likely to come from the corporate world.  The possibilities need to be pulled together to  “create a revenue stream that’s single digit billions as a minimum to close a business case that would allow us to then put a capability like this in orbit.”  He added that tax credits could make a significant difference.

Gerstenmaier also used the opportunity to argue in favor of extending ISS beyond 2024.  The Obama Administration proposed extending ISS operations from 2020 to 2024 in 2014.  Congress agreed and codified it in the November 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act.  Most of the other ISS partners — Russia, Canada and Japan — have agreed, but the European Space Agency (ESA) is still considering the matter. 

Getting agreement on operating ISS beyond 2024 may be challenging.  As Elbon said, it costs $4 billion a year to operate ISS.  How long the ISS partners are willing to invest that level of resources in ISS is questionable.   For example, aerospace industry expert Tom Young said at a congressional hearing that was taking place at the same time as the panel discussion that he does not think NASA can afford to both operate ISS and move forward with human exploration beyond LEO.

A House hearing yesterday (February 3) underscored the dilemma facing NASA as it looks ahead to the future of its human spaceflight program while facing a presidential transition less than a year away.  Committee members and witnesses agreed that NASA needs a plan with more specifics that it has offered so far, but not on what the plan should be.  While most accept that the long term goal should be human trips to Mars, what the steps in between should be remains as divisive as ever.

The hearing was before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. chaired by Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX).  Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) is the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.  The hearing was about NASA’s human spaceflight program, but in this case there were no NASA witnesses.   Instead three “outside” (non-NASA) experts shared their views:  Tom Young, an aerospace industry icon who is retired from Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin and a member of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC), though he was testifying only for himself not NAC; Paul Spudis, senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, a fervent advocate of returning humans to Moon before going to Mars, also speaking only for himself, not LPI; and John Sommerer, retired from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and testifying in his capacity as the former chairman of the Technical Panel of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee that wrote the 2014 Pathways To Exploration report.

Republican members of the subcommittee and the chairman of the full committee, Rep, Lamar Smith (R-TX) continued their attacks on the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) as unnecessary and a waste of resources.   Democratic members, including the ranking Democrat of the full committee, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), did not defend ARM, and Edwards said NASA’s current Evolvable Mars Campaign strategy does not answer the question of whether an asteroid mission is a necessary element of the humans-to-Mars goal.  Johnson and Edwards reiterated their strong support for NASA to produce a roadmap for the future of the human spaceflight program as required by the 2015 NASA Authorization Act that passed the House last year (no further action has been taken).  

None of the witnesses offered support for ARM, either, although Young noted that NAC is enthusiastic about the development of Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP), which is part of the ARM program.  NAC considers SEP to be a critical element of any effort to send humans to Mars and recommended that NASA send an SEP-powered probe all the way to Mars as a test instead of to an asteroid.  NAC worries that ARM itself, as a program, will cost more than the $1.25 billion advertised by NASA officials and divert resources from the real goal of humans-to-Mars.

Sending people to Mars was widely, but not universally, accepted by committee members and witnesses as the long term goal of NASA’s human spaceflight program.  Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was one exception, who thinks other missions — such as planetary defense and solving the space debris problem — are more important and champions private sector activities.  He said he believes SpaceX founder Elon Musk will get to Mars before NASA.  He and other Republican members also expressed concern about the costs involved in a humans-to-Mars mission when the national debt is so high.   Rohrabacher argued for an incremental program that can change directions if, for example, an asteroid threatens Earth and planetary defense becomes a higher priority, instead of a “20 year program of gigantic spending that will suck the money away from all the other projects” that NASA might initiate.  He said the only affordable way to send Americans to Mars is on a one-way trip.

NASA’s Evolvable Mars Campaign was criticized for lacking the specifics needed to win support, especially in a vulnerable period of time when the presidency will change hands.   Many of the committee members, Republican and Democratic, stressed the need to have a baseline program and a roadmap in place before the presidential transition to avoid another disruption like what occurred when President Obama took office and cancelled the Constellation program.  Edwards called NASA’s Evolvable Mars Campaign a strategy, but insufficiently detailed for mission planning.   It does not answer questions such as whether a return to the lunar surface or an asteroid mission is necessary to reduce risks for the longer-term Mars goal, she said. 

The need for a “plan,” rather than a broader strategy that lacks details, was also emphasized by the witnesses.  Young calculated that if NASA’s current level of funding for human spaceflight, about $9 billion in FY2016, is maintained for the next 20 years, $180 billion will be available over that period of time.  He concludes that although this is a great deal of money, it is not enough to both send humans to Mars and support the International Space Station beyond 2024 and a choice must be made between them.  He thinks that choice should be sending humans to Mars.  He cited the 2015 study by the Planetary Society as one option for how to accomplish it, although he wants humans to land on Mars not just orbit it and he thinks it will cost more than the $180 billion. 

Sommerer said that his panel estimated that it would take 20-40 years to get people on Mars and cost “half a trillion dollars.”  He and Young both stressed that the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft are just the beginning of the systems that are needed for a Mars mission.  Sommerer noted that there are only a handful of destinations for human spaceflight today — the Moon, asteroids and Mars — and what is needed is agreement on the sequence of missions with a “logical feed forward” that minimizes “dead ends,” is affordable, has acceptable development risks and a reasonable operational tempo.  The NAS Pathways committee looked at three options, but did not recommend any of them, concluding that in the current fiscal environment there are “no good pathways to Mars.”    

Later in the hearing, Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) argued for adopting the goal of sending humans to Mars by 2033 — he displayed a bumper sticker with that date on it.  He asked if that could be achieved if $200-300 billion — a percent of the federal budget — was allocated over that period of time.  Sommerer replied, yes, if you have a plan —  “if you give them the date and the money and help with the discipline [to make difficult choices], the answer is yes.  If any of those three things is missing, the answer is almost certainly no.” 

Despite the consensus that a specific plan is needed, there was no agreement on what the plan should be.  Although Perlmutter wants to focus on Mars, Spudis insists that returning to the surface of the Moon first is essential, for example. The decades-long debate over Moon versus Mars remains unresolved.  Even if there might be agreement on Mars, there is debate over whether to land on the surface, as Young advocates, or put humans in orbit first as outlined in the Planetary Society report.  That makes crafting a detailed plan, especially in the few months before a new President is elected, a daunting challenge.   Without it, though, as committee members and witnesses expressed yesterday, there is concern that the current elements of the program — SLS and Orion — could end up on the chopping block. 

Young wryly commented that “We have a graveyard today … that has headstones of human spaceflight programs that consumed a lot of resources and ended up with no basic product.  I don’t think we need any more headstones in that cemetery.  What we really need [are] monuments to accomplishment.”