Notes: Astro is the combined Astrophysics and James Webb Space Telescope budget lines. Requested amounts include the “mandatory” and discretionary spending accounts. All numbers are in millions of dollars.

The total amount of science funding proposed by the House is significantly better than what was proposed by the Senate, matching the President’s request of $5.6 billion. I don’t have the verbal dexterity to accurately describe how good the Planetary Science Division budget would be if this bill passes as-is, so let’s just say that it’s great. Planetary Science would see a $215 million increase from 2016, keeping NASA on track to launch a Europa mission in 2022, select two new Discovery-class missions, Mars 2020 would gain a helicopter (!), and every existing planetary science mission would continue. Scientists would see a much-needed 10% increase to for planetary science research.

The Earth Science Division is the loser here, which would receive a $231 million cut from 2016. But I wouldn’t panic about this—yet. We need to look at this in context of actions taken by the Senate last month.

In their budget, the Senate slashed $270 million from Planetary Science and used that money to increase Earth Science to a record $1.984 billion. I argued last month that this move could be understood as staking out an initial negotiating position before the House released their funding bill. You can read the House’s new budget proposal in the same way—it’s their counteroffer, increasing Planetary Science by roughly the same amount that the Senate cut it, and using Earth Science to support that.

Recent history has fortunately shown that both Earth Science and Planetary Science ultimately get increased budgets (as they should) in the final compromise spending bill, and we will strongly encourage this trend to continue.

Human Exploration

The SLS and Orion programs would continue to receive large funding increases, no surprises there. Commercial crew is not mentioned, which is an implicit endorsement of NASA’s request this year of $1.185 billion.