Update 3/23/18 2:24pm ET: After an initial veto threat, the President signed the bill into law. NASA's funding for fiscal year 2018 is officially wrapped up.



Update 3/23/18 12:39am ET: The Senate votes in favor of the omnibus, 65-32. It now goes to the White House for the President's signature.



Update 3/22/18: The House of Representatives just passed the omnibus, 256-to-167.

Last month, Congress reached a broad budget deal that lifted self-imposed spending caps—the "sequester"—for the next two years. Yesterday, we saw the fruit of that deal with the release of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, a bill that would fund nearly all government agencies through the remainder of this fiscal year (which ends September 30). NASA—and science in general—did very well in this legislation. Congress thoroughly rejected every major cut proposed to NASA and other science agencies by the Trump Administration, often providing them with funding increases instead. This is arguably the best budget for national science investment in a decade.

Should this legislation pass, NASA would receive a $1.1 billion increase to $20.7 billion in fiscal year 2018. This is a far better outcome than the White House's original proposal, which would have cut NASA by 1 percent to $19.1 billion. Adjusting for inflation, this is NASA's best budget since 2009, when it received a temporary $1 billion boost from the economic stimulus bill.

And it wasn't just NASA. As Science Magazine points out, every federal science program maintained or grew its budget. The National Science Foundation, NOAA, the Department of Energy's Office of Science—all will receive budget increases. Basically, Congress grew the size of the pie, so nearly everyone was able to take a bigger slice.

Several Planetary Society funding priorities were contained in this bill. First and foremost, the robotic Mars Exploration Program receives a $75 million increase with specific directions to "support the Mars Sample return mission and orbiter", in line with our recommendations and as a consequence of our Mars in Retrograde report released last year.

Planetary defense has been another major area of work for our Advocacy team this year, and we were very pleased to see NEOCam—a proposed space telescope for detecting near-Earth objects—funded at $35 million. While not ideal, this amount will help maintain critical production lines for sensors needed by this mission.

And then there's Europa, the mission The Planetary Society and its members have worked so hard to support over the years. It stands to receive $595 million in 2018, not just for the Clipper spacecraft, but for work on a lander as well. The legislation reiterates that the mission launch in 2022 on a Space Launch System rocket. NASA has stated it wants to launch the Clipper in 2025 on a commercial rocket.

The Planetary Society and its members worked hard for these goals in addition to larger budgets for NASA and science in general. Congress listened, and key members of the appropriations committees really came through for these important priorities. They also explicitly supported the priorities recommended by the scientific community through the decadal survey process—another commendable action and important to a stable future of space science and exploration.

Okay, let's break things down.