In its federal budget request for the fiscal year 2025, the White House included $25.4 billion for NASA, which was made public on March 11. That represents a 2% increase over the $24.9 billion the agency is expected to get for the 2024 fiscal year, which was approved by Congress as recently as last Friday, March 8.

Compared to the White House’s request of $27.2 billion for the current fiscal year, that amount that was adopted is a significant reduction. Therefore, there’s no assurance that NASA will receive the entire $25.4 billion that it has requested for its fiscal 2025, which begins on October 1st, of this year.

NASA will ultimately receive a very little portion of the funding pie: The requested amount for federal spending in 2025 is almost $7.3 trillion.

NASA’s Artemis mission, which seeks to land a human presence on and around the moon by the end of the 2020s, is allotted $7.6 billion in the planned 2025 budget.

According to NASA officials, the agency would remain on course to launch the Artemis 2 mission in September 2025, circling the moon, and deploy Artemis 3 a year later, putting boots on the ground close to the lunar south pole.

The budget request also supports domestic crewed spaceflight programs. As an instance, it allots $109 million toward the creation of a vehicle that will assist in the safe deorbit of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030 or so, in collaboration with the commercial sector. The proposal also keeps funding the creation of one or more privately funded low-Earth orbit (LEO) ISS replacements.

During a budget call with reporters today, NASA Chief Financial Officer Margaret Vo Schaus stated, “Specifically, this request includes $170 million for three commercial LEO partnerships in Phase 1 that are all working through early design maturation.”

Enacted legislation would allocate $2.73 billion for robotic planetary exploration, enabling NASA to proceed with the development of new missions like Dragonfly, a rotorcraft intended to investigate Titan, Saturn’s massive moon that may support life.

Mars sample return (MSR), an ambitious project that NASA and the European Space Agency are working on together, will get a portion of the $2.73 billion. The goal of MSR is to return samples that NASA’s Perseverance rover has gathered to Earth in the 2030s.

According to a recent audit by the NASA Office of Inspector General, MSR—a top priority for NASA and the space exploration community as a whole—has had cost overruns, schedule concerns, and other problems. Because of this, the agency has decided not to set the MSR budget for 2024 or 2025 until it has more information. An independent review committee, which is anticipated to release a report by the end of March, will provide such information. Nelson and other NASA officials stated that as a result, NASA ought to have clarification over the anticipated MSR budget shortly.

Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, stated during yesterday’s budget telecon, “We’re looking forward to getting the results from the independent review team, and then we’ll have to make some pretty tough choices.”

“Obviously, we have to maintain a balanced portfolio overall,” she stated. “So, you know, that’s going to be a tough choice for us. But stay tuned, and we’ll get you the answer in April.”