In 2015 NASA will get more funding than it requested, after the House of Representatives passed a contentious bipartisan spending bill to give the space agency $18 billion next year.
That's $500 million above what NASA had asked for in March of this year, courtesy of the $1.1 trillion "Cromnibus" bill passed just in time late Thursday to avoid a shutdown of the government.
The Cromnibus tag is what pundits are calling a mashup of a "continuing resolution" and an "omnibus" spending bill.
One part of the government, the Department of Homeland Security, will be funded only until March 2015 under a continuing resolution, while the rest of the government's agencies will receive omnibus funding until September 2015.
Republicans went for the short funding of the Department of Homeland Security in response to President Obama's announced executive actions on immigration. The ending of the department's funding in March will let Republicans raise the issue next year when they will have a majority in the Senate.
Political maneuvering aside, NASA will welcome the funding allowing to it continue with a number of its ongoing and planned projects.
The agency's planetary sciences division will get $160 million over what President Barack Obama requested earlier this year, with the passed bill calling for NASA to dedicate "no less than $100 million" to a mission to Jupiter's icy moon of Europa, which was a bone of contention between Congress and the White House.
The increase to the planetary science division did not result in cuts to any other space science divisions. Scientists said they were encouraged by the outcome.
"They added nearly $300 million to the entire science mission directorate," said Casey Dreier, advocacy director for the Planetary Society. "No one paid the price for restoration of the cuts to planetary science. That's a big deal."
NASA's human spaceflight projects, which includes the Orion spacecraft which underwent a first test launch this month, will receive $2.9 billion funding under the bill, while its astrophysics division will get $1.33 billion in funding, an increase of $70 million over what the White House had requested.
The Cromnibus bill's funding levels will also keep the James Webb Space Telescope, the planned replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, on track for a 2018 launch.
The bill now moves to the Senate, which is expected to approve it sometime this weekend, after which President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.
