After enduring the longest government shutdown in history, NASA stands to receive a big boost in funding for fiscal year 2019, thanks to a new budget bill signed by President Trump today. The legislation, which funds the federal government through September 30th, 2019, would give NASA $21.5 billion — an increase over last year’s budget of $20.7 billion and much more than the $19.9 billion the agency asked for.

Practically every major program within NASA will receive a boost. The agency’s science programs, which cover planetary missions and Earth science, will receive a total $6.9 billion, up from $6.2 billion from last year. The human exploration program will get $5 billion, while it got $4.79 billion in 2018.

many of the NASA missions that the president tried to get rid of still live on

And many of the NASA missions that the president tried to get rid of still live on. The most notable of these is the agency’s WFIRST mission, a new space-based telescope that NASA has been developing to look for planets outside our Solar System and search for dark energy in the Universe. The president’s request for 2019, released last February, called for the cancellation of the space telescope, citing the project’s cost overruns. Today’s bill provides $312 million for WFIRST development. However, supplemental materials for the budget warn that the project must stay within the $3.2 billion cost cap placed on it by Congress.

Another survivor in the bill is a mission to send a lander to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, an enticing place for scientists who want to search for life elsewhere in our Solar System. The mission is one of two that NASA has been working on to study the moon; the other is a spacecraft that would periodically fly by Europa, to study the moon from afar and sample the plumes of liquid that are thought to burst from the surface. Both missions were championed by former Texas congressman John Culberson, a big space buff who used to chair the House Appropriations subcommittee that funded NASA.

But Culberson was recently ousted from his House seat in the 2018 midterm elections, leading many to wonder about the fate of the lander — which was the congressman’s passion project. Trump’s past two budget requests have called for the cancellation of the lander while keeping the other Europa mission intact. For now, the lander’s development is still being funded, but it may be on borrowed time.

Meanwhile, NASA’s Earth science initiatives are staying the same. Before taking office, an advisor for President Trump said that Earth science would be a target for cancellation by the administration. And for the last two years, President Trump has called for the cancellation of five missions to study the Earth, which included turning off instruments on an already functioning satellite in space. However, no Earth science mission has been cut, and the program’s budget is staying the same. Additionally, NASA’s education department, another target for cancellation under the president’s budget requests, remains funded.

NASA’s Earth science initiatives are staying the same

The bill also provides funding for NASA’s new big lunar initiatives, as the agency is currently focused on sending humans back to the Moon. These include the development of a new station around the Moon called the Gateway, as well as investment in new robotic and human landers. Those initiatives will receive around $800 million in the coming year, however there’s language in the bill that says only 50 percent of that funding can be used until NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine submits a more detailed report to Congress about the agency’s plan to put humans on the Moon again. NASA’s lunar return has slowly taken shape over the last few years and has become more robust, but Congress wants just a little bit more detail about dates and the different rockets that will be used in the process.

But overall, the new budget promises a lot of money for NASA’s deep-space mission plans, more so than it’s received for the last decade. And it’s the sixth year in a row that NASA has received a bigger budget than it got the year before. It’s unclear if this trend will continue, but the president’s next budget request is expected to be submitted in March, after missing the deadline in February due to the shutdown. That proposal will shape the budget discussions for the year ahead, giving some idea of what NASA can expect in 2020.