NASA's FY 2025 Budget

The President's Budget Request for NASA for fiscal year 2025 is $25.4 billion, a 2% increase over 2024 and the same as 2023. The budget proposes flat or modest cuts to most directorates within the agency, a noted departure from previous plans, which originally called for billions of additional dollars over the coming years.

This discrepancy is a consequence of spending caps passed by Congress in 2023, which functionally froze U.S. discretionary spending for two years. These arbitrary caps create a zero-sum game between federal agencies, and NASA, while respected and admired among lawmakers, is rarely a top priority.

On July 9th, 2024, the House of Representatives's Appropriations Committee approved their budget for NASA. It would provide $25.2 billion, a 1% increase over the prior year and approximately $200 million below the President's request. The Senate has yet to take action. Any final legislation must be voted on by both houses of Congress and approved by the President before the start of the fiscal year on October 1st, 2024.

Given NASA's ambitious slate of projects, including returning humans to the Moon, building up a commercial space industry, returning samples from Mars, creating a next-generation space telescope, and flying through the skies of Titan (to name only a few), this budget presents a serious programmatic challenge. If this budget trend continues, there is simply not enough funding to pursue the full slate of projects that the nation has asked its space agency to pursue.

Furthermore, these cuts are coming at a time of significant inflation in the aerospace sector. Using NASA's own inflation data, the agency has already lost $1.7 billion in buying power between 2020 and 2024, with over a billion of that loss hitting its Science Mission Directorate. Advancing the top priority decadal flagship missions will be nearly impossible in this budget environment. Indeed, the Planetary Science Division's Mars Sample Return project is not funded in this budget, the Heliophysics' Geospace Dynamics Constellation is cancelled, and Astrophysics' Habitable Worlds Observatory gets a modest $50 million in technology development funds.

The President's FY 2025 Budget Request for NASA

Explore this data. View historical NASA budget data, including breakdowns by fiscal year, and comparisons to total U.S. spending and GDP, on this Google Spreadsheet.

Highlights from the President's Budget Request include:
 

• NASA's Planetary Science Division remains flat at $2.7 billion — a $500 million cut from 2023
  Congress cut the division's budget to $2.7 billion in FY2024 in response to MSR's troubles. The Biden Administration would extend that cut into 2025.
• Mars Sample Return remains in programmatic limbo and endures another $100 million cut
  Pending a decision on a reimagined project, 
• The VERITAS mission to Venus is restored with a 2031 launch date
  VERITAS had been indefinitely delayed in 2023. It is now replanned to launch in 2031.
• DAVINCI is delayed to the same 2031 launch window
• The Geospace Dynamics Constellation is cancelled
  This high-priority Heliophysics flagship mission was already delayed and is now formally cancelled. However, this mission has support within Congress, which may take action to restore it.
• Overall Artemis funding is flat, but money is shifted from Orion and SLS into space suits and other new lunar development projects
  At 7.6 billion, the request is similar to FY2024's congressional appropriation. Savings from moving Orion and SLS into production are used to supplement new activities, like new space suits, Gateway, and the Human Landing System.

President's Budget Request Source Documents

• FY 2025 Agency Fact Sheet
• FY 2025 Congressional Justification
• FY 2025 Summary Budget Brief

Congressional Activity

On June 26th, 2024, the House of Representatives' Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee of Appropriations released its draft NASA budget for FY 2025. The full appropriations committee subsequently approved it on July 9th.

The House provides a 1% increase to NASA's budget relative to 2024, which is less than the 2% proposed by the White House. Funding for the Science Directorate is kept flat, with the increases primarily benefitting NASA's Space Operations and Space Technology directorates.

Within the limited Science budget, the House did provide a $200 million increase to the Planetary Science Division, primarily at the expense of Earth Science. The House would appropriate $650 million for the troubled Mars Sample Return program, which is undergoing significant re-evaluation including the consideration of commercial partnerships. NASA had requested $200 million for 2025. The difference — $450 million — is partially offset by the PSD top-line increase. However, neither the legislative text nor the associated committee report addresses how the Planetary Science Division will absorb the $250 million shortfall. Given committee direction supporting NEO Surveyor and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, there are only a handful of programs that could be cut (and cut severely) to accommodate this additional spending: Dragonfly to Titan, the two Venus Discovery missions in early development, fundamental scientific research, and Radioisotope Power Systems would all be targets should this bill pass as-is.

The House created a similar math problem in the Artemis program. The overall topline of $7.6 billion is maintained, but the House reallocates approximately half a billion dollars of funding away from the Lunar Gateway and advanced mission planning projects and reapplies them to the SLS and Orion programs. NASA had originally proposed to reduce expenditures on both programs by a modest amount after the successful launch of Artemis 1, to reflect their maturation into production systems. As with Mars Sample Return, the legislation makes no comment on how NASA is to apply the cuts on future Artemis efforts.

House CJS Source Documents

• FY 2025 HAC-CJS Appropriations (NASA Section)
• FY 2025 HAC-CJS Committee Report (NASA Section)

Additional Resources and Analysis