The House Appropriations Committee (HAC) on Tuesday approved via voice vote its FY ’17 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) and related agencies bill.
The vote sends the legislation to the full House for consideration. The bill provides $19.5 billion for NASA, which is $200 million more than the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) voted to provide and $500 million more than requested.
The committee passed an amendment during debate that “encourages” NASA to spend at least 15 percent of its International Space Station (ISS) research funding on space life and physical science research. The amendment also requires a report no later than 180 days after enactment.
The bill provides $1.4 billion for Orion, $100 million more than SAC provided and $347 million more than requested. HAC also proposes providing $2 billion for the Space Launch System (SLS), $150 million less than SAC provided and $770 million more than requested.
The committee, in its bill report, said it provides no funding for NASA to continue planning efforts to conduct either robotic or crewed missions to an asteroid, a key milestone in the agency’s “Journey to Mars.” The committee said it recognizes the benefits of some of the technology that is under development as part of the asteroid redirect and retrieval missions (ARM), namely advanced propulsion research, asteroid deflection and grappling technologies.
But HAC believes that neither a robotic, nor a crewed, mission to an asteroid appreciably contributes to the overarching mission to Mars. Further, the committee believes the long-term costs of launching a robotic craft to the asteroid, followed by a crewed mission, are unknown and will divert “scarce” resources away from developing technology and equipment necessary for a mission to Mars. These include deep space habitats, accessing and utilizing space resources and developing entry, descent, landing and ascent technologies.
The committee encourages NASA to develop plans to return to the moon to test capabilities that will be needed for Mars, including habitation modules, lunar prospecting and landing and ascent vehicles.
HAC believes NASA continues to allocate insufficient resources for ISS space life and physical science research. The committee believes this research is an essential transitional step for space exploration that also reduces uncertainty for research pathways that have potential life and physical science applications on earth.
The amendment also directs NASA to brief the committee within 90 days of the bill’s enactment of why its approach to Orion is acceptable. HAC says it remains concerned that NASA’s current schedule does not provide adequate time to conduct in-situ, or in its original place, tests and fully test all systems necessary to support humans on EM-1, a mission on SLS without humans.
The proposed HAC bill provides $569 million for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is the same as the president’s request and $51 million less than provided in FY ’16. JWST has a launch readiness date of October 2018 and still faces major integration and test events, according to the bill report accompanying the proposed legislation.
The committee provides $348 million for Outer Planets and Ocean Worlds, of which not less than $360 million is for the Jupiter Europa Orbiter and Lander to fulfill the requirements of the most recent Planetary Science decadal survey. HAC wants NASA to ensure future funding requests are consistent with achieving a Europa Orbiter launch no later than 2022 and a Europa Lander launch no later than 2024. NASA is encouraged to select the Lander payload during FY ’17 to support this launch window. NASA’s planned Europa mission would conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon Europa and investigate whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life.
HAC provides $120 million, as requested, to modernize and upgrade both the Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) and Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launch and range complexes. The committee supports maintaining launch sites serving ISS at both sites to ensure uninterrupted domestic cargo access to ISS.
The committee also provides $61 million in NASA’s aeronautics budget to begin development of the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. HAC anticipates that the total cost to build this flight demonstrator will be nearly $300 million and that it will be flown starting in FY ’20. NASA in February awarded a contract to a team led by Lockheed Martin [LMT] to develop a preliminary design of a low boom flight demonstration aircraft. The goal is to create a supersonic “heartbeat,” a soft thump rather than the disruptive boom currently associated with supersonic flight, according to NASA.
HAC urges NASA to use its multi-year procurement authority to the fullest extent possible to take advantage of cost savings and other efficiencies that may be achieved with long-lead purchase requirements. The Defense Department regularly uses multi-year procurements to achieve savings, including when it purchased 36 launch “cores” from United Launch Alliance (ULA) a few years ago.