NASA to develop new spacecraft for the destruction of ISS

NASA’s got 7 percent more than it acquired in 2023 - making it a difference of $1.8 billion. The budget will allow NASA to continue its space explorations like the discovery of new cosmic shores, and make strides in traveling to and working in space and on the Moon, said the statement by NASA.

But the plan hangs in the balance

Firstly, the purse strings of Washington are in the hands of Congress, which will decide the fate of NASA’s massive allocation.

Not too happy with the budget allocation, Kathy Lueders, NASA's human spaceflight chief, in a press conference Monday said, "A cost estimate we had was a little short of about $1 billion. Our goal is to go out with an RFP [request for proposals], and then, obviously, when we get the proposals, then we're hoping to get a better price than that. But this gives us a healthy start in 2024 to get that critical capability onboard."

Secondly, Russia has been keen on opting out of the shared International Space Station deal with the U.S, as was announced by the country’s space chief last year amid high tensions between Washington and Moscow over the Ukraine war.

Apart from allocation for the ISS, the budget allotted $8.1 billion for the Artemis program of lunar exploration, $949 million for the Mars Sample Return mission which would return Martian rock and soil samples to earth, $500 million to reach net zero carbon emissions from the aviation sector, $2.5 billion in the earth Science program, $158 million for NASA’s Office of STeM engagement, $1.39 billion towards NASA’s Space Technology portfolio, $39 million to better understand the worsening debris environment in orbit around the planet.