WASHINGTON — Congressional appropriators have released a final fiscal year 2024 spending bill that cuts NASA funding from what the agency received in 2023 while deferring a decision on spending for Mars Sample Return (MSR).
House and Senate appropriators released March 3 the bill text and report language for 6 of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024, including the commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill that funds NASA. Congress is expected to pass the bills before the continuing resolution funding the agencies covered by the bill expires March 8.
The bill provides $24.875 billion for NASA, 2% less than what the agency received in 2023 and 8.5% less than the $27.185 billion NASA requested for 2024. The final figure is also below the levels in the separate House and Senate bills of $25.367 billion and $25 billion, respectively.
On MSR, where the House and Senate offered vastly different figures, the final bill instead gives NASA flexibility. Uncertainty about spending on the program prompted NASA to reduce spending on MSR in November while under a continuing resolution, and that extended uncertainty led the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the lead center for MSR, to lay off 8% of its staff in February.
In the report accompanying the bill, appropriators noted NASA is reassessing the architecture of MSR through a group called the MSR Independent Review Board Response Team, or MIRT. “The agreement directs NASA to report no later than 60 days following completion of the MIRT report on the recommended path forward for MSR, within a balanced Science portfolio,” the report stated, including a year-by-year funding profile for MSR.
The report directs NASA to spend no less than $300 million, the amount in the Senate bill, on MSR, and up to the request of $949.3 million, the amount in the House bill. It also directs NASA to not lay off any more people in the MSR program until the agency provides Congress with the report on the…
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