WASHINGTON — As NASA’s planetary science programs face reduced budgets this year and uncertain prospects for next year, advocates in Congress are banding together to build up support for them.
Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) announced March 6 that they were restarting a Planetary Science Caucus in Congress, serving as its co-chairs, with more than a dozen other members. The goal of the caucus is to educate other members and the public on the benefits of space exploration, in particular planetary science missions and related research.
“We are launching this caucus at a critical moment for the future of American planetary science,” Chu said at a March 5 event organized by The Planetary Society about the caucus, noting the cuts in NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) program proposed by Senate appropriators in their fiscal year 2024 spending bill. That started a chain of events that led to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Chu’s district, laying off 8% of its workforce in February.
A final 2024 spending bill, expected to be approved by the House and Senate by March 8, gives NASA some flexibility in determining funding for MSR between the Senate bill’s $300 million and the House version’s $949.3 million, also the amount NASA requested, pending the results of an ongoing reassessment of MSR’s architecture.
“I am so thankful that we made tremendous progress in the bipartisan, bicameral appropriations legislation,” Chu said, citing provisions that reiterated the importance of MSR as a top priority in planetary science decadal surveys, as well as prohibiting NASA from laying off other people working on MSR without congressional notification.
“However, the fight isn’t over, and we must work together to fund Mars Sample Return at the necessary level to rehire workers and promote the kind of discoveries that JPL has been on the frontline for decades,” she said. “So that’s one big reason why it’s so…
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