​The White House has released the budget it is requesting from the US Congress for the US space agency (NASA), giving us details on NASA’s plans for future space missions in the coming years.

The White House is asking Congress for nearly $27.2 billion in funding for NASA in fiscal year 2024, but there is no certainty that the U.S. space agency will receive the full amount requested from the federal budget. Even if the full amount is approved, the news is not good for future space missions. This year’s budget also includes details of activities for future years, as complex space missions cover a longer period of time, and information on activities several years into the future is provided to justify next year’s budget.

The Artemis-III mission, which will return American astronauts to the surface of the moon again, remains scheduled for 2025, but NASA specifies that December 2025, which means that it will not surprise anyone if the mission takes place earlier. in 2026 (if everything goes according to plan by then).

One surprise is the delay of the Artemis-IV mission to September 2028, which could mean we have to get used to the idea of ​​seeing an SLS rocket launch once every 3 years, diluting the initial pace that called for a launch every 1-2 years. A variant of the SLS Block-1B rocket (with a more efficient secondary stage) will also debut alongside Artemis-IV, along with a new launch tower that can host the new SLS variant.

Obviously, the following question remains legitimate: If Starship is functional in 2025 to carry out a crew landing, what is the point of using the SLS rocket three years from now, when missions to the Moon can be carried out with the already mature Starship rocket at a much lower cost (at least according to forecasts now)? And parenthetically, under these conditions, with a working Starship in 2025 or 2026 for Artemis III, it would be possible to see a Dear Moon mission before an Artemis IV mission.

The good news is the allocation of $1.88 billion for the development of a lander to bring astronauts to the surface of the moon, which could mean that SpaceX will have competition and NASA will not use Starship exclusively to land astronauts, but will look for an expected backup option.

As for the International Space Station (ISS), the first phase will allocate $180 million to develop a vehicle capable of safely deorbiting the ISS in 2031. NASA hopes that the entire deorbit operation will not exceed $1 billion and has said that the vehicle to Construction is only a backup plan for now, as it is in discussions with partners in the Russian Federation about deorbiting the ISS using Progress vehicles and the module’s engine “Zvezda” station.

It is possible that private partners in the US will offer cheaper solutions that will significantly reduce the cost of this operation if the Progress ships are not used for this descent from orbit. The plan, agreed by NASA with the rest of the ISS program partners, involves withdrawing crews from the space station in late 2030 and deorbiting the station somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, far from populated areas. This maneuver will not be easy given the complexity and size of the International Space Station, an orbital outpost where humans have been continuously for more than 23 years.

NASA will allocate $30 million to Europe’s ExoMars mission, which is seeking international partners, after the end of cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia (Roscosmos), and this amount may be supplemented in the future. The bad news is that NASA is concerned that this will increase the cost of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, also being carried out in cooperation with ESA, which aims to deliver soil samples from Mars to Earth, and provided that the budget exceeded, mission objectives will be reduced.

NASA officials did not explain exactly what this means or which of the targets will be eliminated, but it is likely that instead of two Ingenuity-class helicopters, only one Ingenuity-class helicopter will be sent to the MSR mission. This will deliver soil samples to a stationary platform that will load them into a capsule for shipment to Earth, in case the Perseverance rover is unable to deliver those samples.

Another bit of bad news is that even though the MSR mission is set to launch in 2028, NASA hasn’t mentioned anything about a new Mars orbiter. Mars missions to the surface of the planet require orbiting probes to act as a communication relay between the probe and the Deep Space Network antennas on Earth, since probes on the ground do not have enough power to transmit large amounts of data directly to Earth.

And the network of American Mars probes is aging: Mars Odyssey, which is still active, was launched in 2001, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2005, and MAVEN in 2013. There are also two European probes orbiting Mars: Mars Express, launched in 2003 (which ESA has extended its mission to at least 2026) and the Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in 2016. And the lifespan of these probes is limited not only by the fuel on board, but also by potential technical problems, which occur more and more often. probably because the on-board equipment is aging.

And if the White House’s requested budget for NASA for 2024 is $27.2 billion, it might be worth remembering that the Pentagon’s budget for space activities in the same year is $33.3 billion. In other words, the US military will spend far more on space activities than the entire US space agency.

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