House and Senate appropriators cut NASA’s budget

House and Senate appropriators have drafted bills that would give NASA slightly less money in 2024 than it received in 2023, rather than the significant increase the administration requested. The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced a commerce, justice and science (CJS) spending bill for fiscal year 2024 on a 28–1 vote during a July 13 markup. That bill funds NASA as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Science Foundation, among other agencies. The committee had not released the text of the bill or accompanying report as of early July 14, but a bill summary by the committee stated it provided $25.0 billion for NASA. That is below the $25.384 billion the agency received in fiscal year 2023 and significantly less than the $27.185 billion the agency requested for 2024. That summary did not include a full breakout of funding for the agency in the bill, but it noted that NASA’s exploration programs would get $7.74 billion, less than the $7.97 billion requested for 2024 but more than the $7.47 billion those programs received in 2023. That amount, the summary stated, fully funded Orion, the Space Launch System and ground systems while providing “sufficient funding to continue progress on the Artemis Campaign Development,” including the Human Landing System awards to SpaceX and Blue Origin. In brief comments at the markup, senators said that exploration was their highest priority. The bill funds “the tools for NASA to return astronauts to the moon, including the first woman and person of color, and to maintain U.S. leadership in space,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), chair of the CJS appropriations subcommittee.

House and Senate spending bills prioritized funding for NASA's exploration program while cutting some science programs. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

“We were able to protect the most important national priority within NASA’s budget, at least in my view, which is to return humans to the moon and maintain our strategic advantage in space,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), ranking member of the CJS subcommittee.

The bill summary also noted that NASA’s Earth science, astrophysics and heliophysics divisions would be funded at or slightly above 2023 levels. That included restoring a $54 million cut proposed for heliophysics in the 2024 budget request.

The summary was silent on planetary science, but a draft of report language circulating online suggested strong concern by Senate appropriators about the status of Mars Sample Return (MSR). That draft allocated only $300 million for MSR, less than a third of the $949.3 million requested, citing delays and fiscal impacts on other NASA science programs. That comes amid NASA reviews that featured scenarios where the cost of MSR would be roughly double previous agency estimates.

Moreover, that report draft directed NASA to provide the committee with a cost estimate of MSR that would fit in a cap of $5.3 billion, a level recommended by the planetary science decadal survey published last year. If NASA cannot, the draft stated, MSR would be canceled and its funds reallocated to other science mission as well as Artemis.

House appropriators, meanwhile, published their CJS spending bill for fiscal year 2024 ahead of a July 14 subcommittee markup. That bill provides $25.367 billion for NASA in 2024, just under the 2023 spending level but again well below the request for 2024.

The bill would provide full funding for all exploration programs, at $7.97 billion. Science would get $7.38 billion, $880 million below the request and $415 million less than what they received in 2023. The bill did not break out science spending by division.

The funding in both the House and Senate bills are below the request in large part because of the debt ceiling deal reached at the end of May, where Congress and the White House agreed to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for capping non-defense discretionary funding, which includes NASA, at 2023 levels for 2024.

Moran said at the markup that the budget caps affected NASA among other agencies. “They will have significant challenges in continuing all of their programs. I’m disappointed by that,” he said of NASA. “These deep and painful cuts were inevitable under the deal the Speaker [of the House] and the President cut.”

“NASA will have a lot of work to do to figure out how to continue on the programs they are currently planning,” he added.

NASA officials had acknowledged since the passage of the debt ceiling deal that the agency’s funding for 2024 would fall short of its request. “It’s really challenging right now when we look at where we ended up” after the deal, said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana during a July 12 talk at the Future Space 2023 conference.

“The president recommended $27.2 billion. We’re going to end up with less than that as we move forward,” he said. “It’s going to require some hard decisions on our part. It may move things out a little bit longer. It may mean some things have to be stopped.”

Astranis to deliver GEO broadband satellite for the Philippines next year

Astranis has sold a small broadband satellite launching to geostationary orbit next year to a telco in the Philippines looking for support from the country’s government, the Californian manufacturer announced July 11. Orbits Corp, the satellite services arm of Philippine internet service provider HTechCorp, plans to sell at least some of the capacity to the government to help connect up to two million people across 5,000 remote and rural communities in the archipelago. Only 11,000 of the country’s 42,000 local communities are covered by fiber, and the government has identified many of those left unconnected as Geographically Isolated and Disadvantaged Areas (GIDA). The Philippines has made connecting GIDA communities a major priority, Astranis CEO John Gedmark said, and the companies are seeking ways to help the government bring internet to areas where people make less than $5,000 a year on average. “Most of the internet penetration in the Philippines is confined to the metropolitan areas,” said Atty Augusto Baculio, a former legislator for the Philippines who now leads Orbits Corp. “Outside of that, going to the inner villages, over mountains, across islands — that’s when you have intermittent access to connectivity, or none at all.”

Astranis said its latest satellite to be announced would cover the more than 7,000 islands that form the Philippines. Credit: Astranis

The companies did not disclose government commitments or financial details about a satellite they say would be the first dedicated to providing internet services to the country.

Last year, the Philippines permitted SpaceX to provide services from its global Starlink broadband network in low Earth orbit to help bridge the country’s digital divide.

Astranis operates its satellites on behalf of customers, who lease the capacity over their eight-year lifetimes.

At around 400 kilograms, the company’s dishwasher-sized satellites are smaller than typical geostationary spacecraft that weigh thousands of kilograms and are scaled for smaller, regional coverage.

The satellite for the Philippines is one of five slated to launch together in 2024 on a dedicated rocket Astranis has not disclosed. A pair of satellites for Mexican telco Apco Networks is joining this mission, which Astranis calls Block 3, and customers for the other two remain undisclosed.

Later this year, Astranis is slated to deploy four satellites on a dedicated SpaceX Falcon 9 mission as part of Block 2. It has only revealed customers for three of these: two satellites for

U.S.-based mobile satellite connectivity specialist Anuvu and one for cellular backhaul provider Andesat of Peru.

First deal following inaugural launch

Eight-year-old Astranis launched its debut satellite April 30 as a secondary payload to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy carrying the 6,400-kilogram ViaSat-3 broadband satellite to orbit.

Called Arcturus, this inaugural satellite was sold to Alaska-based telco Pacific Dataport Inc., meaning Astranis has disclosed customers for seven of the 10 satellites it says are on order.

Gedmark said May 24 that Arcturus was performing at speeds of around 9 gigabits per second (Gbps) in early tests, despite being specced for 7.5 Gbps. The company, which had expected at the time to have completed calibration and health checks by mid-June so the satellite could enter service, declined to give an update on its roll-out.

Merger rumors swirl around Dish and EchoStar

Satellite TV broadcaster Dish Network is rumored to be considering recombining with internet-focused sister company EchoStar to strengthen its financial resources. The companies have engaged advisers to flesh out a potential deal, reported news publication Semafor July 6, citing people familiar with the matter. Dish and satellite fleet operator EchoStar — both controlled by billionaire Charlie Ergen — declined to comment on the speculation. A deal would need to navigate starkly contrasting financial standings following their split into separate companies and stocks back in 2008.Dish has been investing heavily to meet regulatory deployment deadlines for expanding a terrestrial 5G network across the United States, putting its balance sheet under strain as its core satellite TV business bleeds subscribers. Meanwhile, EchoStar is sitting on $1.7 billion in cash and is poised for subscriber and revenue growth from Jupiter 3, its long-awaited broadband satellite that Maxar recently delivered for a Falcon Heavy launch in the coming months. EchoStar sold underperforming broadcast satellite services assets to Dish in 2019, seemingly doubling down on the strategy to keep their businesses apart. Still, rumors about a potential recombination have periodically resurfaced in the market over the years, according to Raymond James analyst Ric Prentiss. Notably, EchoStar CEO Hamid Akhavan’s Feb. 17, 2022, employment offer letter includes a clause covering the possibility of Dish owning more than half of EchoStar’s voting stock.

The Jupiter 3 satellite in its launch configuration at Maxar Technologies' manufacturing plant in Palo Alto, California. Credit: Credit: Hughes Network Systems

Prentiss said he was unsurprised to see the speculation resurface again because of how challenging it is to borrow money to finance Dish’s wireless plans in the current economic climate.

A combination could also put perennial rumors to rest about another attempt to merge Dish with its satellite broadcast rival DirecTV, majority owned by U.S. telecoms giant AT&T.

Earlier this year, Dish was also said to be one of a handful of U.S. companies in talks about selling wireless services through Amazon, according to reports including Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Citing people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg reported June 2 that Amazon was looking into offering a low-cost or free nationwide mobile service to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Amazon, which is working toward providing initial broadband services next year from its proposed Project Kuiper satellite constellation, said in response that it was not currently planning to add wireless service to its Prime offering.

Its package of Amazon Prime services includes online TV streaming, which has contributed to the decline of the satellite broadcast market.

Ariane 5 launches for the final time

One chapter in European access to space came to a close July 5 with the final launch of the Ariane 5, but the beginning of the next chapter faces additional delays. An Ariane 5 lifted off from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, at 6 p.m. Eastern. The launch had been scheduled for June 16 but was postponed a day in advance after Arianespace concluded that three pyrotechnical transmission lines used for the separation of the rocket’s solid rocket boosters needed to be replaced. The company rescheduled the launch for July 4, only to delay it an additional day because of strong upper-level winds. As with so many Ariane 5 missions, this launch, designated VA261, carried two communications satellites destined for geostationary transfer orbit. Nearly 30 minutes after liftoff, the rocket deployed Heinrich-Hertz-Satellit, a spacecraft built by OHB for the German Space Agency on behalf of other German government agencies. The 3,400-kilogram satellite will test advanced communications technologies. About three and a half minutes later, the rocket deployed the other payload, the Syracuse 4B satellite for the French military. The 3,570-kilogram satellite was developed by a consortium of Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia Space, using an Airbus Eurostar 3000 bus.

An Ariane 5 lifts off for the final time July 5 carrying two European government communications satellites. Credit: ESA-CNES-Arianespace/Optique video du CSG/P. Piron

“It is a success for ‘Team Europe’ tonight with this last and final Ariane 5,” Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, said on the company’s webcast of the launch after confirmation of successful payload deployment.

“Thanks for ArianeGroup, Arianespace and CNES. It was a wonderful launch, even if it is the last one,” said Gen. Michel Sayegh, director of space programs for the French armaments agency DGA during the launch webcast.

The launch was the 117th and final flight of the Ariane 5 over 27 years. The vehicle made its first, unsuccessful launch in June 1996, and suffered a partial failure on its second launch in October 1997 before an unqualified success on its third launch in October 1998. The rocket’s ability to carry two large geostationary communications satellites at once made it a key vehicle for many years in the commercial space industry during an era when geostationary communications satellites dominated the market.

The European Space Agency also regularly used the rocket for several science missions as well as the launch of five Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station between 2008 and 2014. In perhaps the rocket’s highest-profile launch, it successfully launched the James Webb Space Telescope for NASA on Christmas Day 2021, delivering it on a trajectory so accurate it had the effect of significantly increasing the spacecraft’s lifetime by reducing the amount of propellant needed for trajectory correction maneuvers.

“Ariane 5 is now over, and Ariane 5 has perfectly finished its work and really is now a legendary launcher,” Israël said. “But Ariane 6 is coming.”

Waiting on Ariane 6

In the lead up to the final Ariane 5 launch, Arianespace has advertised a “spaceflight continuum,” of past and future rockets, but that continuum is not necessarily continuous. The Ariane 5 overlapped with the end of the Ariane 4 rocket, which made its last launch in 2003. ESA had originally planned for a similar overlap between the end of the Ariane 5 and the introduction of its successor, the Ariane 6.

However, the development of Ariane 6 has been plagued by delays that have pushed out its first launch, once planned for 2020, by several years. In October 2022, ESA said it projected the first launch to take place in the fourth quarter of 2023, but it is increasingly likely the launch will slip into 2024.

Executives with OHB, a supplier on the Ariane 6 program, said in an earnings call in May that they expected the first Ariane 6 launch to take place in early 2024, and no later than May 2024. “I am getting more and more confident we will see the first launch of Ariane 6 early next year,” Marco Fuchs, chief executive of OHB, said during the call.

ESA and Arianespace have declined to provide an updated launch date for that inaugural mission. “Today it would be speculative to mention a launch date,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said during a press briefing June 29 after an ESA Council meeting in Stockholm. “We have to go through a number of technical milestones over the summer period but I promise, after the summer in September, we will indicate a period which is the target period for the Ariane 6.”

Those milestones include a hot-fire test of the Ariane 6 upper stage scheduled for July at a test facility in Lampoldshausen, Germany, which will be followed by a second test in the fall to test its performance in what ESA calls “degraded cases.” Assembly of the first flight model of the Ariane 6 is planned to begin in November in French Guiana, according to an ESA update published June 8.

Falcon 9 launches ESA’s Euclid space telescope

A European mission to unravel some of the biggest mysteries in the universe is underway thanks to a launch from an American rocket. A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:12 a.m. Eastern July 1 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The rocket deployed its payload, the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft, 41 minutes later after placing it on a trajectory to the Earth-sun L-2 Lagrange point. The rocket’s booster, on its second flight after launching the Ax-2 private astronaut mission in May, landed on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. “It was really a fantastic launch,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher at a post-launch briefing. “This is a very important mission for the European Space Agency.” The two-ton Euclid spacecraft, built by Thales Alenia Space, will spend a month traveling to the L-2 point, 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth in the direction opposite the sun. Once there, it will undergo a two-month commissioning period before beginning its science mission. Carole Mundell, ESA’s director of science, said that commissioning work includes turning on the two main instruments on the spacecraft and calibrating the data, while also confirming the thermal stability of the system. “The optics are so precise we should have diffraction-limited images, so we want to make sure we are getting that quality of images and that our spectra are as we expect.” The 1.4-billion-euro ($1.5 billion) mission will spend six years conducting a detailed survey of one third of the sky using a visible camera and near-infrared spectrometer and photometer. Astronomers will use those observations of millions of galaxies to test the validity of various models for dark matter and dark energy, which together comprise 95% of the universe.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off July 1 carrying ESA’s Euclid cosmology spacecraft. Credit: SpaceNews/Jeff Foust

Scientists involved with the mission are optimistic that Euclid’s observations will help them understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy. “It’s a really great time to be a cosmologist,” said Henk Hoekstra, a member of the 2,000-person Euclid Consortium of scientists and engineers who have worked on the mission, during a pre-launch briefing June 30. “The launch of Euclid really changes cosmology into the future.”

Euclid will collect a massive amount of data: an estimated 170 petabytes (one petabyte is 1,000 terabytes) over its planned six-year mission. That will be augmented by complementary surveys by several ground-based telescopes. Nine data centers, eight in Europe and one in the United States, will archive the data.

Although Euclid was developed for cosmology, project scientists say the data should be useful for a wide range of other studies, from objects in our solar system to the evolution of galaxies. “This dataset will be transformational across a huge range of astrophysics projects,” said Jason Rhodes, chair of the Euclid Consortium Board. “This is data that is going to be mined by astrophysicists for decades to come.”

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, under development for launch in 2027, will perform dark energy studies similar to Euclid. “It will be doing similar science but in a different way,” said Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, after the launch. She said the two missions should be complementary in much the same was as NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter missions to study the sun. “The partnership with Euclid and Roman is going to unlock so much of our dark universe.”

While NASA is a partner with ESA on Euclid, providing infrared detectors for one of its instruments, the launch took place from Florida because of a contract ESA signed with SpaceX. ESA turned to the Falcon 9 after losing access to the Soyuz rocket, originally selected to launch the mission, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

“We owe them a huge thanks. Without them our satellite would be sitting on the ground for two years,” Mike Healy, head of science projects at ESA, said of SpaceX before the launch.

The first discussions with SpaceX were in May of 2022, he said, followed by feasibility studies and testing to ensure Euclid was compatible with the Falcon 9. While ESA announced in October its intent to launch Euclid and another mission, Hera, on the Falcon 9, the agency did not sign a final contract with SpaceX until the end of January.

“We had to squash what we normally do in three years into five months,” he said of the switch to the Falcon 9. That required dealing with a number of challenges ranging from technical issues of integrating the spacecraft with the rocket to dealing with U.S. export control policies.

“I’m very happy with the relationship we have with SpaceX,” said Giuseppe Racca, Euclid project manager at ESA, before the launch. “They are incredibly skilled in problem solving. It’s a most valuable experience.”