But I think we have to be brutally realistic, that history would tell us, because space development is so hard, that there could be delays to that schedule for the first demonstration flight of landing humans and returning them safely to Earth." An artist's impression of an Orion crew capsule, left, moving in for docking at NASA's planned Gateway lunar space station. Will they occur? I can't answer that question. When you go farther and farther away from the Earth with new technologies, we have seen historically, delays. "As you see the development of various space systems in the past, there have been delays. The final big thing to know about NASA's 2022 budget request is that NASA is getting serious about commercializing low earth orbit (LEO) by nurturing the development of "multiple commercially owned and operated LEO destinations." These could include everything from commercial rocket ships such as those being developed by SpaceX, Boeing ( BA -4.11%), and Virgin Galactic ( SPCE -1.52%) to entire space stations that might be built and operated (and owned) by private companies like Axiom Space.The Biden administration's $24.8 billion fiscal 2022 budget request for NASA will keep the agency on track to send the the first woman and the next man to the moon as early as 2024, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Friday, but he warned that target date is far from certain. Thing 5: Meanwhile, back on (or around) Earth There will also be a Mars sample return mission as well as delivery of a VIPER lunar rover to the moon. Under planetary science, multiple missions are envisioned to visit various asteroids (the Lucy mission, the Psyche mission) as well as the Saturnine moon Titan (the Dragonfly mission). Under earth science, NASA will emphasize using "commercial SmallSat constellations" to gather data on Earth's environment, potentially benefiting companies both private (Planet Labs for example) and soon to be public, such as the NavSight Holdings ( NSH) SPAC that is bringing constellation operator Spire Global public. The new budget particularly benefits contractors performing earth science missions, which receive a 12.5% budget boost, and planetary science missions, whose funding is up 18.5%. Indeed, the fiscal 2022 budget envisions a 9% increase to science spending - which will total $7.9 billion, or about 32% of NASA's budget. This is changing under the Biden administration. Now, you might think that anything related to NASA is "science" by definition, but particular programs, especially those concentrating on monitoring the progress of climate change, became targets for the budget ax under the previous administration. One of the big objections to the Trump Administration's NASA budgets was the fact that it cut funding for NASA science programs. NASA wants to give Lockheed Martin $1.4 billion this year to finish up its Orion crew capsule program for the moon trip, and to spend $2.5 billion more on the already- over-budget-and-behind-schedule "Space Launch System" that it plans to use to put several pieces of the Artemis program in place.Ī further $1.2 billion is budgeted for developing SpaceX's Human Landing System - about 41% of the lunar lander's total cost. Speaking of Artemis, the short trip to the moon falls under the category of what NASA calls "deep space exploration," and it's getting the second most dollars of any major NASA function in 2022 - $6.9 billion. Thing 3: "Deep" space doesn't mean what you think it does That's quite a lot of stuff your $24.8 billion a year is buying. At least five separate Artemis space launches are depicted in the budget request, along with the construction of a moon-orbiting space station, a "Human Landing System" to take astronauts from the space station down to the moon and bring them back up, a surface habitat to live in, an atomic power station, and a new "Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter" satellite to help monitor all this activity.
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