Update 2014-12-16: The President has signed the bill into law.

Update 2014-12-11: The House of Representatives has passed the CRomnibus after a close vote. It now moves on to the Senate.

The U.S. budget cycle for fiscal year 2015 is coming to an end. On Tuesday night, Congress released details of the “CRomnibus,” so-called because it contains a continuing resolution (CR) for Homeland Security but an actual omnibus package of appropriations bills for all other federal agencies. Voting will likely begin on Wednesday and finish by the end of the week if all goes well.

This bill provides funding for the entire discretionary part of government (i.e. not big social programs like Medicare, Social Security, and food assistance). There’s a lot of stuff in there, good and bad, but I’m going to focus on NASA, which falls squarely into the “good” category.

Actually, this is a great bill for NASA. And if it passes, it would provide the space agency with its best funding level in four years.

The total amount provided for NASA in this bill is a very solid $18.01 billion. That’s about $549 million above the President’s request for this year and $364 million above last year. This extra money supports increases to critical programs without raiding others.

The pie grew bigger this year. That was no small feat, and we owe this great news to the leadership of Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who chair the relevant appropriations subcommittees in the House and Senate, as well as others like John Culberson (R-TX), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Richard Shelby (R-AL). Yes, notice the “Rs” and “Ds” next to their names. This was a bipartisan effort.

Let’s take a look at some of the winners and losers within the space agency as stated in this bill, should it pass in its current state. All numbers and percentages are relative to the President’s original budget request for 2015.

Winners

Planetary Science: $1.437 billion

an increase of $157 million, or 12%