NASA administrator Charles Bolden has said that the budget proposed by the White House for NASA in 2016 includes a half-billion-dollar increase over the budget for 2015, and this would help keep the U.S. space agency on track of its Mars plans.
The budget presented by Bolden on Feb. 2 amounts to $18.5 billion, which includes funding for the development of a mission to Europa, planet Jupiter's moon, as well as the asteroid redirect mission (ARM), which officials believe could lead to manned missions to Mars by the 2030s.
"NASA is firmly on a journey to Mars," Bolden said. "Make no mistake, this journey will help guide and define our generation."
ARM is a controversial endeavor that involves the use of a robotic probe to get an asteroid out of its natural orbit around the sun and haul it around the moon. If successful, the space rocks will be visited by astronauts aboard Orion in the 2020s.
The budget will also include funding for the Orion spacecraft program, which scientists hope would bring humans to deep space destinations such as the Red Planet and the Space Launch System (SLS) mega-rocket.
Orion will be allotted about $1.1 billion for next year while the SLS will be appropriated about $1.35 billion. These two programs have lower level funding compared with the 2015 enacted budget.
A $1.2 billion funding for the Commercial Crew program is also included in the proposed budget. Last year, the space agency awarded Boeing and SpaceX with contracts to build new space taxis that will transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The program is the country's bid to stop its reliance on Russian spacecraft to bring American astronauts in low-Earth orbit after the country retired its shuttle program.
NASA, however, plans to end the 10-year-old Opportunity rover's mission on the Red Planet by 2016, citing the rover's age and other technical problems. The proposed budget will also end the operations of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been orbiting around the moon since 2009 and is providing scientists with information about lunar water and surface.
"To further advance these plans and keep on moving forward on our journey to Mars, President Obama is proposing an FY2016 budget of $18.5 billion for NASA, building on the significant investments the Administration has made in America's space program over the past six years," Bolden said.
