spacetoday.net: White House proposes $17.5-billion NASA budget for 2015

Posted: Wed, Mar 5, 2014, 6:23 AM ET (1123 GMT)
NASA

A proposed fiscal year 2015 budget released by the Obama Administration would provide NASA with $17.5 billion but could force the agency to mothball an airborne observatory. The budget provides NASA with $185 million less than what it received in 2014, although a proposed supplementary funding program, called the Opportunity, Growth, and Security Initiative, would provide an additional $885 million for NASA. The budget includes continued support for key programs, including the SLS heavy-lift rocket, Orion spacecraft, commercial crew, and the James Webb Space Telescope, and also includes $15 million to start "pre-formulation" work on a Europa mission to launch in the mid-2020s. However, the budget sharply cuts funding for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a 747 aircraft equipped with an infrared telescope that NASA operates as a joint project with the German space agency DLR. NASA said that unless DLR or other partners find ways to fund SOFIA operations, the observatory would be put into storage in 2015.