New NASA Budget Will Feature a Number of Changes in Space Exploration by 2015

NASA released its 2015 budget proposal back in March, but perhaps many didn't scan the details of the $17.5 billion monstrosity. Their goal is to drive advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration with its requests.

The main goals associated with the budget include acquiring the knowledge and capabilities to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars by 2030, extending the life of the International Space Station until 2024 (which was already approved), and retrieving commercial cargo supply missions to the ISS and returning such human spaceflight launches to the U.S. by 2017.

Additionally, the proposal will also cut funding for some projects, including the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the Spitzer Space Telescope, and either the Curiosity Mars rover or the Cassini Saturn orbiter might be forced to cease operations. If others don't step in to contribute to these projects, they will likely be shut down.

Instead, NASA's Astrophysics division would receive $607 million, which will be used for work on the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope. Planetary Science is likely to receive $1.3 billion and scientists will work to develop a new Mars rover set to deploy in 2020 as well as a robotic mission slated to visit Jupiter's moon Europa within the next ten years. And still NASA is nudging Congress to give them more money for other projects.

NASA needs $150 million extra to fund competition between private space companies to develop a commercially designed spacecraft that will take astronauts to and from the ISS by late 2017. They are also requesting $2.8 billion for the Space Launch System (SLS), which is a heavy-lift rocket and companion Orion deep-space capsule that would deploy a crewed mission in 2021.

"Finding other sentient life in the universe would be the most significant discovery in human history," said Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas who's chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, at the May 21 astrobiology hearing, in this National Geographic article. "The unknown and unexplored areas of space spark human curiosity."

And that seems to be the direction NASA wants to head in. But nothing will be official until the budget proposal is amended and approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.