House budget bill denies major increases for NASA to fund ambitious Moon program

House appropriators don’t intend to substantially increase NASA’s budget, potentially jeopardizing the agency’s plans of sending astronauts back to the Moon by 2024.

Today, the House Appropriations Committee released its latest funding bill for fiscal year 2021, detailing the budgets for all commerce, justice, and science agencies in the US. The bill would give NASA a total budget of $22.63 billion for next year, the same amount the agency received for 2020. However, it’s nearly $3 billion less than the $25.2 billion the Trump administration called for in the president’s budget request — a hefty amount intended to fund an ambitious lunar return.

NASA has been very vocal about its goal to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon...

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