Items listed in reverse time order (oldest at bottom). January 23, 2003 - The Senate has passed a version of an Omnibus legislation bill and called for a conference with the House appropriators. Policy people everywhere are struggling to understand the exact implications of this heavily ammended bill. As soon as the fiscal impacts to astronomy are determined, we will post the information here. The link to the bill status and summary information (House Joing Resolution 2, as ammended) is provided here. November 10 - Still no end in sight for FY 2003 appropriations process. Nothing will occur until the new Congress convenes in January, 2003. October 10 - House VA-HUD-IA Appropriations Subcommittee Report S. 107-740 released. July 25 - Senate VA-HUD-IA Appropriations Subcommittee Report S. 107-222 released. March 13 - House Science Committee Minority Budget Views and Estimates released. February 6 - Budget status/update pages for NSF and NASA are now available.
2:10 pm, February 4 - OSTP summary now available. 2:10 pm, February 4 - NSF Astronomical Sciences would see a decrease of 2.8% from a level of $165.86 M to $161.25 under the President's budget. ALMA is funded at $30 Million. The National Astronomy Centers budgets would decrease from $87 M to $ 84 M, Gemini Observatories would grow from $12 M to $13 M. Note that the Mathematical Sciences sees a growth this year of 20.1% from $151.5 M to $181.87 M. 2:10 pm, February 4 - NSF Budget now available. 1:10 pm, February 4 - NSF would see an increase of $240 M to a total budget of $5.035 Billion for FY 2003 under the President's budget. R&RA grows to $3.783 B (up 5%), Education and Human Resources grows to $908 M (up 4%). Significantly (and thankfully!) NSF's salaries and expenses grows to $210 M (up 19%). This represents the recongnition that management at the agency has not grown at the same pace as the agency budget. About 1/3 of the growth in R&RA is due to the transfer of existing programs at NOAA, EPA and USGS (see the NSF budget appendix below). 12:40 pm, February 4 - Note that the large proposed increase in Space Science Mission Operations noted below is due in part to a proposed transfer of the funding for the Deep Space Network and Mission Services (for Space Science Missions) to Space Science from the Office of Space Flight. 12:15 pm, February 4 - NASA details now available, a quick summary follows. It appears that Space Science would see a growth of $547.2 million (up 19% overall) to a total budget of $3.4143 Billion under the President's proposed budget. There are many roposed increases in the Space Science budget including; the Research Program ( up $63.1 M to $709.6 M), the Technology Program ( up $263.7 M to $703.9 M), Mission Operations (up $210.40 M to $385.2 M), Mars Exploration (up $38.9 M to $453.6 M) and the Explorers line (up $9.9 M to $135.1 M ). Some missions would see expected decreases (SIRTF, HST, GP-B, TIMED), while others (SOFIA, STEREO, GLAST) would see increases. The revamping of the Outer Planets missions program is called "New Frontiers" and is proposed to be funded at the $15 M level. Detailed Space Science FY 2003 Budget Space Science Performance Plan FY 2003 10:00 am, February 4 - The following are PDF files of the NASA and NSF portions of the President's budget document. 10:00 am, February 4 - President's budget released! This link gives the overall Administration budget for FY 2003 at the OMB site while this link is to the FULL (24 MB) FY 2003 Budget Document stored on the AAS web site.
Check out NASAWATCH for up-to-date information on NASA throughout the budget season. Often it provides good information. |
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