U.S. Senate advances their FY 2025 budget proposal for NASA amid deep cuts

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee released and approved a NASA funding proposal in a bipartisan, 26-3 vote. The budget bill includes a 2.2% increase relative to the agency’s budget for Fiscal Year 2024, roughly in line with the funding levels offered in the President’s Budget Request. Overall, the legislation offers a balanced counterproposal to the budget advanced in the House, though fundamental budgetary issues facing NASA go unaddressed. 

Under the 2.2% increase, the bill fully funds the Artemis program at $7.65 billion, with sufficient details on how that money would be spent on individual projects such as the Lunar Gateway, which was notably left out of the House budget. The budget for the Science Mission Directorate is increased by 3.4% over FY 2024 to $7.58 billion, though the Senate proposal is $10 million higher than the request. In its proposal, the Senate took the opportunity to assert its displeasure with the agency’s recent decisions to ramp down operations for the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and cancel the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, priorities for the astrophysics and heliophysics communities respectively. For the Planetary Science Division, the Senate proposal keeps the budget flat, just $10 million shy of the White House request — maintaining the half-billion-dollar cuts levied against the division last year. The budget includes full funding for the Dragonfly mission and the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program, and offers the requested funding level of $200 million for Mars Sample Return (MSR) with strong language requesting that NASA prioritize its selection of a path forward for the program. This is a markedly different tone when compared to last year’s proposal when the Senate bill threatened outright cancellation of MSR, though, unlike last year, NASA is itself proposing cuts to the program, effectively doing the Senate’s job for them. Like the House proposal, the Senate bill is awaiting a full chamber vote.

If we look at the Senate proposal merely in relation to the President’s Budget Request, NASA fares extremely well. In recent years, the request is normally higher than the actual appropriated amount by as much as 8%. And for FY 2025, the Senate proposal actually includes $50 million above the request for NASA. The problem is that this budget proposal exists in the context of deep cuts to the space agency and to nondefense discretionary spending overall. In June 2023, Congress and the Biden Administration struck a deal to prevent a historic default on the national debt, at the cost of arbitrary spending constraints being imposed on the whole of the discretionary budget for fiscal years 2024 and 2025. The deal has resulted in major cuts across the government and a paltry 1% increase to spending between FY 2024 and 2025. This constricted fiscal environment has led NASA leadership to make ever more difficult decisions on which missions or programs move forward, often at the expense of others. The sudden cancellation of VIPER illustrates the depths to which this fiscal affliction permeates the agency. A fully built rover sitting in a California clean room awaiting its final tests before being ready to search for water ice at the lunar south pole — a crucial step to enabling long-term human habitation on the Moon — was canceled due to budget uncertainty.

The fiscal situation has sowed unease amongst the various scientific disciplines, germinating a zero-sum mentality that has put mission teams, NASA centers, and advocates at odds with one another. The fiscal issue doesn’t just affect mid-career and senior scientists who are more likely to hold leadership positions on missions and in scientific societies. Early career professionals, many of whom came up during the steadily increasing budgets of the last decade, are now facing the prospect of fewer jobs and professional opportunities to advance their careers. It’s no wonder that morale amongst the scientific community is lower than at any point in recent memory.

This is why The Planetary Society has partnered with other science advocacy organizations to support a restoration of space science funding to $9 billion. 

This goal may seem far-fetched given the difficult political landscape, but at least 10% of the House of Representatives concur with this stance. And in a floor speech earlier this month, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Washington) railed against the arbitrary fiscal constraints, noting that “the [budget] caps for FY24 are already causing serious pain and serious challenges, and the caps for FY25 are grossly inadequate.” 

Just over a year ago, the NASA budget request predicted ongoing growth that would have brought the agency budget to nearly $30 billion by 2030. Now, the agency is facing major issues across the board and more modest projections to $28 billion, not accounting for ongoing inflation in the aerospace industry. Meanwhile, other nations, companions and competitors alike, are increasing investments in their space capabilities. 

What we see with this Senate budget proposal is a snapshot of the agency at this moment in time. The legislation works to address issues on the margins, and does so successfully, but the root of the malaise is deep and underpins the entire budget process this year. Let’s take a look at some of the most notable elements of the bill.

Science spotlight

As noted, the Senate budget proposal largely tracks with the President’s Budget Request for FY 2025. But digging deeper, there are some distinctions and clear policy directives coming from the Senate.

In concurring with the President’s Budget Request (PBR), the Senate budget proposal offers modest increases to all of the divisions within the Science Mission Directorate over FY 2024. The most distinct difference is in the Heliophysics Division, where NASA had proposed canceling their next flagship program, the Geospace Dynamics Constellation. The Senate revokes that decision, hence the 3.2% increase over the requested level. In the other science divisions, the difference between the Senate proposal and the PBR level is less than 0.5%. The Senate does not break with the PBR in maintaining the deep cuts to NASA Science, which primarily fell on the Planetary Science Division. PSD is still reeling from bearing the brunt of the half-billion-dollar budget cut it took in FY 2024. Much of that cut is attributed to Mars Sample Return, which has undergone a tumultuous year-and-a-half that has seen major layoffs at the Jet Propulsion Lab and other NASA partners, an independent review, and a comprehensive-and-ongoing replan of the entire mission design.

However, looking at the proposal for Mars Sample Return, the program fares much better than in previous years. The Senate language funds MSR at “not less than” the requested level of $200 million. And that’s not all. The bill directs NASA to prioritize the selection of a path forward within 30 days of enactment of the budget or provide a plan forward for sample return that protects the space workforce and core capabilities of the agency. This at least addresses a major concern following last year’s cuts, which had resulted in the loss of many thousands of jobs across NASA centers, contractors, and the commercial space industry. Further cuts or delays to the planned restart of MSR could result in reverberations that affect the long-term health and stability of the space workforce. 

But the imperative to complete the sample return program is not just economic; there’s a compelling scientific case that has only grown stronger in recent days with the discovery of potential biomarkers in the Cheyava Falls sample collected by the Perseverance rover. While the instruments on Perseverance can confirm the existence of organic compounds in the sample, as the NASA press release notes, “such carbon-based molecules are considered the building blocks of life, they also can be formed by non-biological processes.” We won’t know for sure until we bring these samples home.

A little closer to home, the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP) gets the requested funding in this budget proposal, likely in relation to the Committee’s prioritization of the Artemis campaign (more on that later). Although the proposal doesn’t include an explicit mention of VIPER or any funding increase necessary to sustain the project. Reading between the lines, the Committee clearly states their support for lunar science priorities that also bolster human spaceflight priorities. Of these, uncovering the prevalence of water ice at the lunar south pole is critical for determining the roadmap for future human habitation and infrastructure on the Moon. During the accompanying hearing for this legislation, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) spoke in favor of reversing NASA's decision to terminate the VIPER mission. “This mission would be a major advancement for Artemis,” began Sen. Capito. “I respectfully ask that [Senator Shaheen (D-New Hampshire)] and Senator Moran (R-Kansas) please work with me as the bill moves forward to look for ways to repurpose the lander portion of this mission to advance Moon-to-Mars objectives.” 

Backing out to the outer Solar System, the Senate instructs NASA to maintain a regular cadence of selections of SIMPLEx, Discovery, and New Frontiers missions. The next opportunities for these competed mission programs were pushed from late 2023 to 2026 due to fiscal pressures at the agency. The Senate further requests that the New Frontiers program be fully funded and that Dragonfly receive the full $434.6 million it needs to ensure launch in 2028. Earlier this year, Dragonfly passed a major decision point in the lifecycle of a spacecraft and is now in the process of being built.

Over in the Astrophysics Division, the Senate proposal includes a slight increase to the division budget. The crux of the Senate language is in rejecting the agency’s proposal to preemptively cease operation of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory as it provides “key capabilities that augment and complement the JWST and help secure U.S. leadership in space and science.” The proposal includes a 5.6% increase to Chandra’s budget and acknowledges that the agency will eventually need to decommission the telescope at some point in the future. Additionally, the proposal funds the Habitable Worlds Observatory at the requested funding level of $50 million, which will be used to advance the work of the HWO program office that was established in the FY 2024 budget. According to the Astrophysics Decadal Survey, HWO will require an investment of $1 billion in technology development by 2030, putting the agency behind schedule on meeting this objective. Clearly, the ramifications of the arbitrary fiscal constraints on NASA’s budget are felt across all of the programs and missions in this section.

And finally, the Senate proposal certainly can’t be knocked for not being forward-thinking. Though most of the legislative text focuses on the immediate needs of the agency, the proposal does include a $10-million down payment on the formulation of the subsequent top priority of the decadal survey after Mars Sample Return, the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP). This comes a full three years before the baseline start date (or one year late of the recommended timeline, depending on your point of view) of the project to meet launch opportunities in the early 2030s. UOP would be the first orbiter sent to the ice giants and would investigate one of the most unique and puzzling worlds in our Solar System.

Back to the Moon

NASA’s Artemis has now survived a presidential transition and indiscriminate cuts to federal spending. No previous effort to return humans to the Moon has made it this far. And with the language present in the President’s Budget Request, the House proposal, and now the Senate budget, Artemis is clearly a top priority for the federal government.

Artemis is primarily funded out of the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. For FY 2025, the White House requested a total budget of $7.6 billion for Exploration. The Senate meets that request and then some. In its supporting text for the bill, the Senate reinforces that Artemis represents the future of American leadership in space.

The President’s Budget Request and Senate proposal are nearly identical in their support for Artemis. 

One major distinction between this proposal and the House’s is in how the funding is allocated for the different elements of the Artemis campaign. Artemis is funded under the Exploration banner. The House proposal moved funding to bolster both the transportation (Orion, SLS) and infrastructure (surface mobility and landing) systems above the White House request while avoiding any mention of where that funding would come from. Doing the math, this implied steep cuts to the Gateway Lunar Space Station program. The Senate proposal, in concurring with the White House request, identifies Gateway as a critical component to long-duration human stays in cis-lunar space. 

The Senate proposal also goes into detail about the need for reliable and redundant access to the lunar surface. Relying solely on one provider could lead to a situation where access to the Moon is restricted for long periods of time. The Senate also instructs NASA to pursue a competitive process, a la the Human Landing System or Commercial Lunar Payload Services programs, to acquire reliable cargo delivery services. 

What now?

The sprint to the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30) doesn’t begin just yet. Both the House and Senate will be out on the customary August recess, with plans to reconvene on Sept. 9. This gives the Congress a mere 15 legislative days to iron out the differences between the two funding proposals or, more likely, pass a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. In the latter scenario, we can expect the provisional budget would last until an unknown date after the U.S. General Elections determine the control of Congress and the White House. The new Congress and Administration will then likely take up the budget for the remainder of FY 2025.

In the meantime, The Planetary Society will be focused on rallying our support on and off Capitol Hill to promote increasing the NASA topline budget and getting funding for space science and exploration back on track. The effects of the arbitrary fiscal constraints can be felt in every program at NASA and across the federal government. Once a foregone conclusion, the budget caps grow more unpopular on both sides of the Hill and both sides of the aisle with each passing day. This offers an opportunity going into 2025 to reverse course and get NASA back on track with delivering on the inspirational vision of exploring the Cosmos.

You can help by asking your representatives to join the Planetary Science Caucus, the only organization in Congress dedicated to advancing space science, research, and exploration. Going into 2025, we will need strong allies in Congress and determination from advocates like you to get NASA the support it needs. By sending in your request, you are helping amplify and direct our advocacy efforts.