Decadal Planning Wedge for NASA’s
Planetary Science Division
The fiscal year (FY) 2011 operating budget for NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) is about $1.46 billion. The president’s FY2011 budget request was part of a 5-year budget projection covering FY2011 through FY2015. In that projection the PSD’s FY2015 planning budget reaches about $1.65 billion (real-year dollars). The committee used that projection in formulating its recommendations. Beyond FY2015 the committee assumed that the PSD budget would include only growth equal to inflation for the remainder of the 2013-2022 period covered in this decadal study (currently set at 2.4 percent per annum).
As shown in Figure E.1, a number of ongoing flight, research, and operational programs have commitments with obligations that extend into the decade. These include the Discovery program (missions through Discovery-12 as well as missions of opportunity); New Frontiers (New Horizons, Juno, and New Frontiers-3); lunar programs (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer); Mars flight programs (largely Mars Science Laboratory, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, and NASA’s contributions to the European Space Agency [ESA]-NASA Mars Trace Gas Orbiter as well as extended missions for Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Odyssey, and Mars Express); outer planets (completion of Cassini’s Solstice mission and early selection of Europa Jupiter System Mission instruments); and program core functions that include plutonium-238 investments, advanced multi-mission operations development, PSD program management, and various infrastructure activities.
The planning wedge used in this report (shown in white in Figure E.1) grows from about $500 million in FY2013 to about $1,700 million by FY2022. It must be pointed out, however, that although the integrated real-year dollar amount under the wedge is approximately $12.2 billion for the decade, this must cover continued research and analysis (R&A), Discovery, and technology programs, as well as new starts for New Frontiers and flagship missions. If R&A and Discovery were to be maintained at current levels, they would require approximately $5 billion of the wedge—in that case the total budget for new-mission starts in New Frontiers and flagship missions within the planning wedge would be roughly $7 billion over the 2013-2022 decade.