Frank Morring, Jr.

NASA's fiscal 2009 budget request, the last submitted by the Bush Administration, contains "no strategic changes" and tracks the previous five-year funding runout closely.

Still, in addition to maintaining funds to make the shift from the space shuttle to development of the follow-on Ares and Orion crew vehicles, the final Bush budget would find some new money for Earth-science from orbit, and promises an outer-planets "flagship" mission by 2017 and a Mars sample return by 2020.

David Schurr, the agency comptroller, said NASA's senior managers "think this is a very good budget for NASA."

In FY '09, NASA wants a topline of $17.614 billion -- up 2.9% from this year. Within that amount, science would get $4.444 billion; aeronautics $446.5 billion; space operations $5.526 billion, and exploration systems $3.5 billion. A new category -- cross agency support -- would draw $3.3 billion for overhead across all NASA programs that Schurr said would continue to be managed at the program and project levels.

The FY '09 figures would support five more shuttle missions as NASA services the Hubble Space Telescope one last time this fall and builds toward a six-person International Space Station (ISS) crew. Fifteen science missions are scheduled for launch in the fiscal year, and development of two new Earth-science missions would be started.

One of them, the Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission, would measure soil moisture following a planned 2012 launch. The Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission would measure the height of ice sheets, sea ice and forests when it orbits in 2015.

Five-year budget figures reflect the transition from the shuttle, due for retirement by October 2010, to the Ares I crew launch vehicle and the Orion crew exploration vehicle that would ride atop it beginning in 2015. In FY '11 exploration systems would get $3.738 billion, while space operations would get $5.873 billion. In FY '12 exploration jumps to $7.048 billion, while space operations falls to $2.9 billion.

"We moved the entire shuttle budget to exploration," Schurr said.

Other new items in the FY '09 request include a new space-science start - the Joint Dark Energy Mission -- and plans to fund a small lunar science orbiter and two small lunar science landers with $344 million over the five years covered.

NASA managers shifted funds to maintain the full $500 million promised to spur development of a commercial route to the ISS for crew and cargo under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) effort. The request also includes $2.6 billion over five years to buy transportation to the station for U.S. crew and cargo. Most of that money probably will go for space on Russian vehicles, although Schurr said it also could be used for commercial service providers under the COTS program and perhaps for the planned European and Japanese unpiloted cargo vehicles.

The request also reflects plans within exploration systems to begin development of the Ares V heavy-lift rocket, and the Altair lunar lander, in 2011. Richard J. Gilbrech, NASA's associate administrator for exploration, said Jan. 30 that his programs "did very well, with stable funding; our tweaks are in the noise."

Since he arrived in Washington last fall and started making the rounds at the White House and on Capitol Hill, Gilbrech -- the former director of Stennis Space Center -- has found "basically [exploration] still looks like a very well-supported program, both by the administration and bipartisan support."

In an election year the future course of the exploration program could very well change. But until it does, Gilbrech said, "I'm keeping focused on the policy and the law that's on the books now; when the policy and the law changes, that's when we'll re-vector."