I'm happy to announce the version 1 release of the planetary exploration budget dataset—the most complete public reference of NASA's investments in robotic planetary exploration to date.

This rich dataset enables improved adjustments for inflation on major planetary missions, allows for direct comparisons of White House and congressional funding priorities, and—by tracking the flow and recipients of spending—demonstrates the shifting scientific and political priorities of planetary science over time.

The Planetary Society is making this unique dataset available to the public for free.

Take me to the Data | Download the Data (XLSX)

For a discussion of sources and methodology,

please see the Planetary Exploration Budget Dataset page.

The dataset includes the following unique features:

complete spending profiles for every planetary science mission and every major program (Mariner, Discovery, New Frontiers, etc), including breakdowns for development, operations, and launch costs, where possible;

congressionally enacted amounts for major planetary projects for all fiscal years after 2000;

total amounts requested and spent by NASA on its planetary exploration program, normalized to include launch costs and other major programs to enable direct annual comparisons;

raw planetary program budget request and spending for nearly every fiscal year since 1959;

With all of this data, it's now possible to do fun things like plotting out NASA's historical spending on planetary missions by their primary destination.