NASA to Receive $25.4B Under Fiscal 2023 Omnibus Bill

An omnibus spending bill will give NASA $25.38 billion for fiscal year 2023.

The NASA funding is a 5 percent increase from fiscal 2022 but is around $62 million less than what a House bill offered and around $590 million less than what the agency requested. A report accompanying the bill stated that at least $90 million will be used for the Near Earth Object Surveyor mission, a space telescope that would identify potentially hazardous asteroids or comets.

NASA only sought $40 million for the NEO Surveyor and sought to delay its launch to 2028. Even with over double the funding, NASA will not be able to follow the original 2026 launch date.

Other funding allocations include $7.8 billion for science efforts, $20 million to cover the GeoCarb mission’s closeout costs, nearly $1.2 billion for space technology programs, $7.47 billion for exploration programs, up to $281.4 million for the Mobile Launcher 2, $4.25 billion for space operations and $414.3 million for construction and environmental compliance and restoration, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

Funding will also go towards the development of a second lunar lander for Artemis, commercial space stations that would replace the International Space Station and repairs to facilities that were damaged by hurricanes.

The separate allocations are all less than what NASA requested. Only the requests for planetary science, heliophysics, the Space Launch System and exploration ground systems received more than the request while Congress appropriators matched the space agency’s request for the Orion spacecraft.

The House and Senate are expected to vote on the full omnibus spending bill in the coming days so it can be signed into law before the current stopgap funding bill expires on Dec. 23.