NASA Stuck in Limbo as New Congress Takes Over

[eppur_se_muova]

By Clara Moskowitz
SPACE.com Senior Writer
posted: 07 January 2011
07:57 am ET

With a new Congress now in charge, NASA is stuck in a political limbo, waiting for the funding needed to carry out a new objective approved by the last Congress.

Lawmakers in October passed – and President Obama signed – a NASA authorization bill that gave America's space agency the go-ahead to abandon its previous moon-oriented human spaceflight program and take aim at new targets: visiting an asteroid and Mars. That bill called for NASA to receive $19 billion in 2011 – a boost from the 2010 NASA budget of $18.3 billion.

But that promised funding was not appropriated, since the outgoing lawmakers, along with the president, could not agree on a federal budget. Instead they enacted a continuing resolution – a kind of placeholder law until a full budget can be agreed upon – that froze the federal government, including NASA, at 2010 spending levels through March 4.

"Clearly the big issue with NASA in this Congress is money," said Henry Hertzfeld, a professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "The details of the budget really hadn't been fully resolved with the old Congress, which left us with a continuing resolution and nothing more. The question is what happens when they begin to start debating NASA."

Based on claims by new House Speaker John Boehner (R–Ohio), who said his party will aim to cut non-military discretionary spending back to 2008 levels, the space agency could be in for some serious budget cutbacks.
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more: http://www.space.com/news/nasa-budget-new-congress-limbo-110107.html




NASA gets less than 2% of the Federal budget, but watch the Repugs slash NASA spending and act like they're saving the country.

[phantom power]

1. NASA hasn't had a durable mandate since Apollo.

:(