Biden Budget Proposes Big Boost for Artemis and SLS

The White House released the budget requests for FY 2023 and it includes an 8% increase for NASA, with a major emphasis on funding the Artemis moon-landing program. 

President Joe Biden on Monday released his budget request for the coming fiscal year, and NASA is a big winner. The administration is asking Congress to fund $25.9 billion for the space agency in 2023, an increase of nearly $2 billion over the $24 billion the agency received for fiscal year 2022.

The budget request for NASA includes a healthy increase for the Artemis Program, which seeks to carry out a series of human landings on the Moon later this decade. Notably, funding for a "Human Landing System" would increase from $1.2 billion for the current fiscal year to $1.5 billion, allowing for a second provider to begin work. Additionally, funding for lunar spacesuits would increase from $100 million to $276 million. NASA would also receive substantial funding—$48 million—to begin developing human exploration campaigns for the Moon and beyond.

All of this new funding in the proposed budget comes in addition to the billions that NASA has been spending annually to develop the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. Overall funding for Artemis, therefore, would increase from $6.8 billion in fiscal year 2022 to $7.5 billion in the coming fiscal year, which begins October 1, 2022.

That last citation ($6.8 to $7.5 billion) is a healthy 10% increase for the program.  Last year, in their first budget submission, the Biden White House announced their support for Artemis with a special message by Jen "Chucky" Psaki, but no real details.  Most importantly, they didn't announce new dates for the significant milestones of the program, although it was clear they couldn't make the announced dates when they limited NASA's budget to 1/4 of what they said they needed to make those dates.  

The current schedule for the first three Artemis missions calls for the launch of Artemis 1, an unmanned lunar flyby, this summer; Artemis 2, a crewed lunar flyby, in 2024; and Artemis 3, the landing of two astronauts on the Moon, in 2025.  Last year, that manned landing was listed as '24, not '25. 

With NASA getting the budget they asked for, should congress be holding them to producing results, or are results always out of their hands?  SLS would seem to be an argument that NASA can't be held responsible for results.  

Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, was asked about Congress and whether NASA could commit to landing humans on the Moon by 2025 if the agency received the full budget request this year and in follow-on years.

Free gave an ideal bureaucrat's answer; he didn't answer it at all, simply saying, "we're working on it,"

"I can tell you that every day we are working to get Artemis 1 off, Artemis 2 in 2024, and Artemis 3 in 2025," Free responded. "I'm not sure what commitment looks like to you, but I can tell you that a lot of people come to work every day that are working to get to 2025."

SLS on Pad 39B being prepared for Friday's Wet Dress Rehearsal.  NASA photo.

There are other interesting aspects to this budget.  Briefly, the Europa Clipper has gone over budget and is being funded through the overrun, at the cost of cutting funding to other programs.  The manned side is funding a search for another provider of the Human Landing System, as we talked about last week.  Plus, NASA requested more than twice the current funding level for their program to encourage private space stations like these.  The space agency is currently working with four different contractors on various proposals to have these private space stations either ready to go or already in orbit by the late 2020s.