View of WFIRST focusing on supernova SN1995E in NGC 2441. The high-priority but embattled space telescope would, if congressional support continues, add greatly to knowledge about dark energy and dark matter, supernovae, and exoplanets. (NASA)
A quick update on a recent column about whether our “golden age” of space science and discovery was in peril because of cost overruns and Trump administration budget priorities that emphasized human space travel over science.
The 2018 omnibus spending bill that was passed Wednesday night by the House of Representatives and Thursday night by the Senate represents a major push back against the administration’s earlier NASA budget proposals. Not only would the agency receive $1.6 billion more funding than proposed by the administration, but numerous projects that had been specifically eliminated in that proposal are back among the living.
They include four Earth science satellites, a lander to accompany the Europa Clipper mission to that potentially habitable moon and, perhaps most important, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) space telescope.
Funding for that mission, which was the top priority of the space science community and the National Academy of Sciences for the 2020s, was eliminated in the proposed 2019 Trump budget, but WFIRST received $150 million in the just-passed omnibus bill.
A report accompanying the omnibus bill is silent about the proposed cancellation and instructs NASA to provide to Congress in 60 days a cost estimate for the full life cycle of the mission, including any additions that might be needed. So there appears to be a strong congressional desire to see WFIRST launch and operate.
Still hanging fire is the fate of the James Webb Space Telescope, which has fallen behind schedule again and is in danger of crossing the $8 billion cap put into place by Congress in 2011. NASA officials said this week that they will soon announce their determination about whether a breach of the program’s cost cap will occur as a result of further delays.
NASA has a fleet of 18 Earth science missions in space, supported by aircraft, ships and ground observations. Together they have revolutionized understanding of the planet’s atmosphere, the oceans, the climate and weather. The Obama administration emphasized Earth studies, but the Trump administration has sought to eliminate future Earth missions. This visualization shows the NASA fleet in 2017, from low Earth orbit all the way out to the DSCOVR satellite taking in the million-mile view. (Goddard Space Flight Center/Matthew R. Radclif)
Four of the five Earth science programs the administration sought to cancel are specifically named for funding in the omnibus bill — the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, the CLARREO Pathfinder and Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 instruments and the Earth observation instruments on the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft. A fifth program was already cancelled by NASA earlier this year for technical reasons.
In all, the Science Mission Directorate would receive $6,221 million, an increase of $456 million. Language in the bill explicitly “reiterates the importance of the decadal survey process and rejects the cancellation of scientific priorities.”
While all this is promising and hopeful, it may well be a short-term reprieve — as reported in that earlier column.
A two-year budget deal reached earlier this year raised spending caps substantially for both defense and non-defense programs, freeing up additional funding that may or may not be available in future years. The 2019 budget needs to be passed in six months, and funds could easily be stripped out then or in subsequent years.
But most important, the administration’s plans to focus on sending astronauts to the moon and establish a colony there could and almost certainly would, in time, eat up large portions of the space science budget.
Under the omnibus bill, NASA would receive $4.79 billion for space exploration efforts, up $466 million over 2017 funding levels. This includes $2.15 million for the heavy-lift Space Launch System and $1.35 for the Orion space capsule.
The bill also provides $350 million to build a second mobile launch platform at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA considered, but did not request, funding in its 2019 proposal for a second platform. If built, it could substantially shorten the gap between the first and second launches of SLS by eliminating the delays that would inevitably come at the launch site as it is modified to handle subsequent larger rockets.
Illustration of the Space Launch System as it will appear on the launch pad. In development for almost decade, it is now scheduled for a maiden launch in 2019. (NASA)
In some of its funding, the omnibus bill seems almost too good to be true.
The planetary science program, for instance, received $300 million more than last year. The $2.2 billion total includes $595 million for work on the Europa Clipper mission and for a follow-on lander — a scientifically exciting aspect of the Europa program, but one that had earlier been cancelled.
The bill also keeps earlier plans to use the SLS to launch Europa Clipper by 2022 and the lander by 2024. An SLS launch would halve the number of years it would take to get the spacecraft to Europa, a moon of Jupiter.
But NASA’s assessment of the SLS program make it highly unlikely that the rockets will be ready for those launches, and there are competing plans to use the second SLS launch to send humans into orbit.
As a kind of added treat, the omnibus bill also provides $23 million for a proposed helicopter NASA has under consideration for the the Mars 2020 rover mission.
The Trump administration has shown great interest in manned missions and little interest in space science and especially Earth science.
Clearly, many members of Congress have very different views, informed no doubt by a highly mobilized space science community. And for now, at least, they appear to have carried the day.
