The US Senate appropriations Committee published a bill on the NASA budget for 2021. The Agency will be able to receive only a part of the requested amount for the implementation of the Artemis program to return people to the moon, but scientific programs and the development of new automatic devices and telescopes will be fully funded, according to the website SpaceNews.com.
The Program "Artemis» it was launched by NASA in 2019. In addition to American companies, Canada, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Australia are participating in the program.the goals of the program are to land astronauts on the moon in 2024, as well as to create an international orbital station Deep Space Gateway and a permanent base on the surface of The earth's natural satellite. Artemis is developing the Space Launch System heavy launch vehicle, spacecraft (such as Orion or Deep Space Transport ), orbital modules, spacesuits, and lunar Rovers.
On November 10, the Senate appropriations Committee released 12 spending bills for fiscal year 2021, including the Commerce, justice, and science bill that defines NASA funding. According to it, the Agency can get 23.49 billion dollars, which is less than the NASA administration required. The program to develop the human Landing System manned lunar lander, for which NASA requested $ 3.2 billion, was also cut, but the Committee allocated only $ 1 billion.
The Committee's report notes that the Agency's estimate of the total amount needed to implement Artemis ' goals over the next five years is $ 27.97 billion, with 57 percent of this amount related to the Human Landing System program. Although the work on this program is important, it seems risky, both in terms of finances and time, and it is not clear exactly how it may affect other Agency projects. On the other hand, the head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, said at a hearing on the Agency's budget, held on September 23, 2020, that receiving funds in full is extremely important for landing astronauts on the moon in 2024. Thus, the probability that NASA will postpone the return of people to the moon has increased again.
As for other decisions of the Committee regarding the NASA budget, we can note an increase in funding for scientific programs, in particular, the continuation of the Hubble space telescope, approval of the development and creation of automatic devices DART, Psyche, Dragonfly, and space telescopes " Roman» and " James Webb», as well as the Mars Sample Return project to deliver samples from Mars to Earth. The Agency is also recommended to continue working on the PACE and CLARREO Pathfinder devices and not to stop the work of the Sofia stratospheric Observatory. In addition, the Committee agrees to allocate funds to support commercial manned and cargo flights to the ISS and to implement the STEM approach in education. The Committee allocates $ 2.585 billion to continue work on the SLS launch vehicle, emphasizing that the future Europa Clipper interplanetary station should go into space with its help.
Earlier, NASA selected three private American space companies that should finalize their lunar landing module designs for the Artemis program in ten months with the support of the Agency.
Alexander Voityuk
