WASHINGTON — Congress is nearing approval of a measure
that would allow NASA to continue buying Russian hardware for the international
space station program beyond 2011 as part of a temporary spending measure meant
to keep most U.S. government agencies funded at 2008 levels for the next six
months.
The Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance and
Continuing Appropriations Act for 2009 (H.R. 2638) would fund NASA at its 2008
level of $17.3 billion through March 6, 2009. In addition, the bill would amend
the Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-proliferation Act (INKSNA) to permit NASA to
continue buying Russian Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo vehicles for the
international space station through July 1, 2016.
The House of Representatives was voting on H.R. 2638 the
afternoon of Sept. 23.
The date change included in the so-called continuing
resolution differs markedly from the INKSNA waiver
legislation (S. 3103) approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Sept. 23. That bill, the International Space Station Payment Act of 2008, would
permit NASA to keep buying manned Soyuz flights past 2011 but did not extend to
the unmanned Progress flights.
By allowing NASA's authority to purchase Progress flights
to expire at the end of 2011, the bill's backers were hoping to keep the pressure
on NASA to buy space station re-supply flights from commercial companies such
as Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. and Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space
Exploration Technologies, both of which are developing cargo tugs with
financial assistance from NASA.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), S. 3103's primary champion in
the Senate, has warned in
recent weeks that if time ran out on passing that measure his fallback
position would be to use the continuing resolution to extend NASA's current
INKSNA waiver as is.
In addition to granting NASA permission to begin
negotiating with Russia for Soyuz flights for 2012 and beyond, the continuing
resolution would set aside $30 million for NASA to spend repairing hurricane
and other severe weather-related damage at its facilities. It would also create
firewalls between NASA's aeronautics, science, exploration and space operations
budget accounts, making it more difficult for the agency to shift funds between
its various mission directorates.
The continuing resolution would deny NASA the roughly
$300 million increase it has been seeking all year for 2009 and would force the
agency to get by for at least half of the new budget year at 2008 spending
levels.
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