Proposed Nasa budget funds Moon missions, pushes back walking on Mars

If approved by Congress, Nasa’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget will see a significant increase over last year, especially for the Artemis program

Nasa’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft on the way to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida (Nasa)

Nasa came out a winner in US President Joe Biden’s proposed Fiscal Year 2023 budget, which asks Congress for $26 billion for the space agency, including increases for the Artemis Moon program and new lunar lander competition.

“It is a significant increase over last year’s budget. In fact, it’s 8% more,” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said during a “state of Nasa” presentation following the release of Mr Biden’s proposed  budget on Monday. “It’s the largest request for science in NASA history.”

The funding proposal shows presidential support for near-term Nasa science and space exploration goals, but questions remain regarding the long term sustainability of such operations, and the space agency appears to have pushed back the dates for some lunar landings and a potential mission to Mars.

The proposed budget would provide $7.5 billion for Nasa’s Artemis program, $1.1 billion more than was enacted in 2021, and $1.5 billion for lunar lander development. Although Nasa already contracted with SpaceX to build a lunar lander for the Artemis III mission scheduled to return humans to the Moon in 2025, Nasa recently announced a new contest the agency hopes will generate a second, competitive lander model.

The proposed budget includes nearly half a billion dollars for robotic lunar missions and more than $800 million for Nasa’s sample return mission, which will bring Martian soil samples extracted by the Perseverance rover beginning in 2021 back to Earth for analysis in the early 2030s.

“Just think what we’re going to see in those samples, they could possibly confirm the ultimate question” Did life exist on Mars? Does it exist now?” Mr Nelson said. “If it does, well, where else in the universe does it exist?”

The budget would also provide nearly $3 billion to help Nasa study and mitigate climate change by developing new Earth monitoring satellites and more efficient, lower emissions aircraft technology.

The $26 billion earmarked for Nasa is just a portion of the $5.8 trillion federal budget Mr Biden proposed Monday, and none of the money is guaranteed. The U.S. Congress, including the Senate where Democrats control a narrow majority, will ultimately craft a budget bill that could track or differ from the president’s wishes.

But Nasa has no shortage of objectives to accomplish if Congress approves Mr Biden’s budget.

In its own budget summary released Monday, the space agency detailed how it would divvy up the money, from $482 million to continue developing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope scheduled to launch in 2027, to $525 million to test advanced propulsion technologies and nuclear power for Moon or Mars bases, to more than $1.6 billion for Nasa’s commercial crew and cargo program servicing the International Space Station.

But Artemis and deep space exploration make up a large chunk of the Nasa budget request, with major dollars directed toward developing the Space Launch System Moon rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis missions to follow the uncrewed Artemis I test flight expected later this year.

Just less than $2.6 billion will go toward building the SLS rocket for the uncrewed Artemis II lunar flyby scheduled for 2024 — unlike SpaceX rockets, SLS is not reusable — and the development of the rockets for Artemis III and IV. Around $1.4 billion is earmarked for building the Orion vehicle for Artemis II and $779 million will go toward building the Lunar Gateway, a space station Nasa plans to build in orbit around the Moon to act as a way station to the surface beginning with Artemis III.

According to a Moon to Mars Mission Manifest graphic Nasa published Monday, Artemis III will launch as scheduled in 2025, but there will be one year gap before a follow on the Artemis IV mission in 2027. The manifest ends in 2031 with Artemis VIII, while mentioning the many robotic and vehicle test missions to the Moon all designed, Mr Nelson said, to help Nasa prepare for a mission to Mars.

But a mission to Mars is conspicuously lacking, given that Nasa has been targeting the 2030s for a Mars mission for nearly a decade, and the proposed budget offers smaller chunks of funding for technologies specifically focused on Mars — $121 million for habitations systems research including radiation protection, and $38 million to support “architecture development for Moon and Mars exploration.”

It may be due to Nasa’s perpetual planning challenge of predicting how much future funding promised by Congress or a president will actually materialize, but in his comments, Mr Nelson hinted that Nasa has already pushed back the horizon when it comes to reaching the Red planet.

“Our plan is for humans to walk on Mars by 2040,” he said.