Written by Muhammad Ayman
Monday, March 13, 2023 06:00 PM
will discuss NASA agency its budget for the fiscal year 2024 during a press conference today, Monday (March 13), according to the website space.
The White House unveiled its 2024 federal budget request Thursday (March 9), revealing that it has set aside $27.2 billion for NASA in the next fiscal year, $1.8 billion more than the agency received for 2023.
The document released Thursday was a “slim budget” overview that lacks many fine details. Those details will come with the full budget release, which is expected to happen Monday, and will be discussed by NASA at the press conference.
The slim budget revealed some interesting details about the budget request. For example, NASA’s proposed budget allocates $8.1 billion toprogram Artemis to explore the moon.
The budget request also grants $949 million to NASA for the Mars Sample Return Project, a collaboration with the European Space Agency. That effort is already well under way, thanks to NASA’s Persevering Life-Catching and Sample-Collecting rover.
Interestingly, the budget request “also supports NASA’s contribution toward US cooperation with the spacecraft mission.” ExoMars of the European Space Agency, which was previously a collaborative mission with Russia,” the document reads.
The rover was to be launched ExoMarsnamed Rosalind Franklin, atop a Russian rocket and launch on the Red Planet from a Russian-made lander, but cooperation collapsed after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, leaving the European Space Agency to search for new partnerships, and the meager budget does not go into details about “NASA’s contribution” to ExoMarsPerhaps this will be revealed with the release of the full budget request.
NASA is not guaranteed to get $27.2 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, which begins on October 1 of this year: Congress has purse power in Washington, so it must approve a budget to be enacted.
