NASA requests $30 billion budget for return to the moon
Nasa is putting its money on the moon, preparing for what the space agency says will be the nation’s long-awaited, sustainable return to missions outside of Earth’s orbit.
Nasa revealed its $21 billion (NZ$30b) budget request for the 2020 fiscal year at an event at Kennedy Space Centre yesterday.
Setting the stage were the Orion capsule, the first crewed mission of the long-awaited spacecraft – and its heavy-lift rocket counterpart – that have long been central to the agency’s lunar plans.
But in Nasa’s 2020 budget, Orion and the rocket, called the Space Launch System, will be a smaller part of its plans, as Nasa shifts to put a greater focus on the other components that will get American footprints back on the lunar surface.
That plan will hinge on one concept: reusability.
‘‘We need to drive down cost. We need to increase access. We need to make spaceflight more available to more people,’’ Nasa Administrator Jim Bridenstine said as he presented what he called a ‘‘strong’’ budget request from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Overall, the budget proposal is about US$500 million short of what the space agency got in 2019, but it represents a $283 million, or 1.4 per cent, increase from the 2019 estimate.
The focus for 2020 follows Trump’s Space Policy Directive 1, which instructed Nasa to return astronauts to the moon – and eventually Mars.
The budget calls for US$363 million to support commercial development of a large lunar lander to carry cargo, and then astronauts, to the surface of the moon.
‘‘We are funding human-rated landers to go to the moon for the first time in over 10 years,’’ Bridenstine said.
Commercial partnerships are a major part of driving down costs for Nasa — and companies are already responding to that call. Among them are Lockheed Martin, which has drawn up plans for a lander that could transport up to four astronauts to the lunar surface, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which also has plans for a ‘‘large lunar lander’’ called ‘‘Blue Moon.’’ ‘‘We have seen what happens when we, as Nasa in low Earth orbit, become one customer of many customers in a robust commercial marketplace,’’ said Bridenstine, speaking of SpaceX’s recent success testing its astronaut capsule on a mission to the International Space Station.
Commercial partnerships will also be a major part of the development of Gateway, a lunar ISS of sorts. Lockheed Martin at KSC, for instance, has finalised its version of the astronaut module that could go on the Gateway, one of the six companies under contract by Nasa to do so.
The Gateway, which won’t begin to be launched to lunar orbit until the mid-2020s, will orbit the moon and serve as a jumping off point for missions to the surface and later to Mars.
Now, as part of Nasa’s 2020 budget plans, the Gateway will be launched on ‘‘competitively procured vehicles’’ instead of SLS, which Nasa bills as its most powerful rocket ever, but which has been behind schedule. – TNS