GOP Tax Package Gives NASA Billions After Donald Trump Proposed Cuts

NDTV

2 days ago

The massive GOP tax and spending package, passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday, will provide $10 billion to NASA programs that the administration had proposed to partially cut, including the space agency's marquee moon program and operations at the International Space Station.
The reconciliation package includes $4.1 billion for NASA's Boeing Co.-built Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket and $20 million directed to the Lockheed Martin Corp. Orion crew capsule to help fund the fourth and fifth missions of the agency's Artemis moon program. These missions, which Trump had suggested canceling in his original budget request, would establish a lunar space station called Gateway and utilize a contracted landing system from Blue Origin for the first time to place humans on the moon.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign the bill into law at 5 p.m. local time in Washington on Friday, according to the White House.
In May, the administration had called to phase out the "grossly expensive and delayed" SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule after the third Artemis mission and replace them with commercial options for sending humans to the moon.
The tax package also allocates $1.25 billion for maintaining the International Space Station over the next five years after the administration had instead proposed reducing crew and cargo missions to the orbiting laboratory. It further directs $700 million for a Mars communication spacecraft that could assist with bringing samples of Martian soil back to Earth, a long-term science initiative the White House had planned to outright cancel.
Congress's push to allocate billions of dollars to the space agency suggests that lawmakers may be concerned about sustaining some of NASA's most prominent programs.
The Artemis program in particular has been fiercely supported in Congress in part because the development of the SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule supports tens of thousands of jobs in Republican-controlled states like Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Lawmakers have also made the case that the current Artemis architecture is the fastest way to beat China to the moon and protect the US's national security interests.
The legislation also highlights Congress's desire for NASA to send humans back to the moon. Trump, while being advised by SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, had previously called for sending humans to Mars, signaling a potential change in direction for the space agency.
The package imposes a fee on rockets and spacecraft that launch to space and land back on Earth, a charge that is likely to most directly affect SpaceX, the world's most prolific launch provider. The provision is projected to generate around $60 million to support the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation through 2034, according to a summary of the bill.
Other last-minute adds to the legislation included a tax credit for spaceports, which would give these facilities the ability to issue tax-exempt bonds, and a provision allocating $85 million to transfer one of NASA's historic Space Shuttle vehicles to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for public exhibition.
The transfer of the shuttle, a win for the Texas delegation, narrowly made it into the legislation after being subject to a review by the Senate rules-keeper for final inclusion.