

Yesterday, the White House released their 2009 NASA budget that Congress will amend, rework and hopefully pass by the end of the 2008 fiscal year. You can see some responsiveness to the science and environmental communities with increased dollars for the science directorate and two additional climate change monitoring missions added in.

In Washington DC, rather than watch the groundhog in February to see what the future holds, we watch what the President sends to Congress for NASA's budget...

Funding for the human lunar missions, the COTS program (which invests lightly in alternative commercial paths to Low Earth Orbit), and fulfilling our international commitments remained intact.

Overall the NASA Presidential request amounts to a 2.9% increase over last year.

The budget includes money for six new earth science missions. According to a post by Frank Morring of Aviation Week:

One of them, the Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission, would measure soil moisture following a planned 2012 launch. The Ice,

Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission would measure the height of ice sheets, sea ice and forests when it orbits in

2015.

According to an article by The Associate Press, the associate administrator for science was pleased:

"Think of NASA's blue logo as turning a little bit greener," NASA

sciences chief Alan Stern [said] Monday. "We are amping up our emphasis on Earth sciences."

There is also a new science mission, a top priority of the agency's

"Beyond Einstein" advisory committee, called

the Joint Dark Energy Mission that will be launched in the middle of the next decade. Further astrophysics missions will also be added in response to the results of the National Academy's "Decadal" Survey in 2010.

The 2009 budget also promises a flag ship mission to the outer planets in the next decade as well as a Mars sample return mission by 2020.

Bush wants to Beef up Earth Monitoring[Associated Press]

No Dramatic Changes in NASA Budget Request [Aviation Week]

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Image: Cool Flickr user