The U.S National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) has requested an additional budget of $900 million to support effort on commercial vehicles that would transport astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
The White House is reportedly proposing to allot $17.5 billion "base budget" for NASA's 2015 fiscal year. However, the agency wants more on top of that.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the space agency was wooing the Congress to grant them an extra $900 million for its 2015 fiscal "base budget." The addition is intended to finance the agency's commercial crew transportation, including appendages to those accounts to guarantee competition and keep companies on track to start transporting astronauts in 2017. The budget, on the other hand, does not include additional budget for private cargo flights to the space station that would speed up scientific work aboard the orbiting laboratory.
In August last year, NASA has already mentioned that it will still pursue its commercial crew transportation program despite budget concerns. During the previous years, the Congress had reduced the Obama administration's requested budget for the program by almost 50 percent.
As part of the agency's goal to further the 70 percent utilization of the orbiting laboratory, expenditures on ISS would slightly increase under the agency's latest proposal. Additionally, under the latest proposal, NASA can either choose to capture a small asteroid and tow it into the lunar orbit or send an unmanned spacecraft on a bigger asteroid and take a chunk of rock from there and place it into the lunar orbit.
But just like before, U.S President Barrack Obama and his NASA appointees have failed to provide sufficient information about the project to gather support for asteroid missions. As a result, NASA's base budget allotted for those spending categories will be chopped by at least three percent if the Congress would allow.
However, other NASA projects will get additional support. Financial support for the James Webb Telescope, a delayed project that the agency has reconfigured previously, will remain on track for its anticipated launching on 2018. Another one is the total outlay for a new heavy-lift rocket named Orion, which is a deep-space manned capsule, and the construction of its associated launch pad.
