Obama Unveils $18.5 Billion Budget for NASA

The Obama administration unveiled a $18.5 billion budget for NASA in fiscal year 2016, up from $18 billion in 2015 - which is up $500 million from last year.  It's part of the $3.99 trillion spending plan President Barack Obama rolled out Monday.

In the budget announcement, NASA plans major science and exploration programs including a contentious plan to send astronauts to an asteroid as part of a stepping-stone approach for an eventual Mars mission.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that the space agency has made significant strides in the journey to Mars. It has conducted "near flawless" test flight of its Orion space vehicle that will eventually take humans to Mars.

NASA's Mars exploration program accounts for $8.51 billion of the 2016 budget request. Another $3.1 billion has been proposed for ISS operations, $2.86 billion for the Orion space capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) booster, $1.24 billion for commercial crew spacecraft and another $400 million for Research and Development.

Some of that funding also would be used to formulate a mission to redirect a small asteroid to the moon's orbit, where it could be explored, mined, and eventually used as a way station for a trip to Mars by the 2030s.

Another use of the funds will be the commercial crew program budget which includes contracts awarded last year to Boeing and SpaceX to develop independent spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from the space station starting in late 2017. The 2016 commercial crew funding request represents a $400 million boost over the $805 million budgeted in fiscal 2015. The funding covers milestones laid out by both companies to reach certification and operational space station flights by the end of 2017.

"If those two companies meet those milestones, we require $1.244 billion in FY 2016," NASA Chief Financial Officer David Radzanowski told reporters in an afternoon teleconference, according to CBS News. "Based on this funding level, and those companies meeting those milestones, it would support certification of commercial crew services by the end of 2017, meeting all of the NASA safety requirements."

In separate statements Monday, both Texas Republican Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, and Mississippi Republican Steven Palazzo, who chairs the panel's Space Subcommittee, called an asteroid mission nothing but a "costly distraction."

"The president has delivered a budget request that does not adequately support the programs that will take us farther into our solar system to destinations like Mars," Smith said.

Lawmakers are expected to hold hearings in the coming weeks as they decide how to reshape the president's plan on space exploration.