AUSTIN, Texas — Until Congress and the White House come to an agreement on the 2018 budget, NASA’s Earth Science Division will not know how much money it will have to spend in fiscal year 2018 or the fate of five missions the Trump Administration recommended for termination.
Even if the division’s 2018 budget mirrors the President Trump’s proposal to cut NASA’s Earth Science budget from its current level of about $1.9 billion to about $1.75 billion, “we have a broad portfolio of many missions on orbit and under development to launch between now and 2022,” Mike Freilich, NASA Earth Science Division director, said Jan. 9 at the American Meteorological Society meeting here. “There would be a measurable impact but it would not be existential.”
The Trump administration and House of Representatives have weighed in on cancelling the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem satellite, the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) 3, and Earth-viewing instruments on the Deep Space Climate Observatory, missions the Senate endorses.
While waiting for a new budget, NASA’s Earth Science Division leaders are studying the National Academies 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey published Jan. 5. Since the survey report highlights science priorities and objectives rather than specific mission architectures, NASA’s Earth Science Division will work with researchers in industry and academia to identify focused missions and approaches to soliciting the work.
“That will happen over the next 12 to 18, maybe 20 months,” Freilich said. “Don’t worry because the decadal strongly endorsed our ongoing program of record, which fills up the budget to approximately fiscal year 2021. During the period while we are getting ready, we will continue to implement and launch the missions that we are doing right now.”
Even if Congress endorses the Trump administration’s recommendation to cancel some Earth Science Division programs,”we have a portfolio of 15 or so new missions and major instruments that we will be launching from March or April of this year through 2022. So it’s a big portfolio and that work will continue.”