spacetoday.net: White House seeks additional $1.6 billion for 2024 Moon landing

Posted: Sun, May 19, 2019, 11:07 AM ET (1507 GMT)
The White House will seek an additional $1.6 billion for NASA in fiscal year 2020 as a "down payment" for a 2024 human lunar landing. The budget amendment, announced late Monday, would include $1 billion to start work on lunar landers and $651 million to accelerate work on SLS and Orion, with smaller amounts for technology development work and lunar science. The budget would also cut the proposed budget for the lunar Gateway by more than $300 million, focusing it on the minimal design needed for supporting that 2024 landing. NASA officials said other agency programs would not be cut to cover the increase, although the White House will reportedly seek to offset the increased NASA funding by cuts to the Pell Grant educational program. NASA is still working on an estimate of the overall cost of the 2024 landing initiative, but officials acknowledged they would need larger increases in later years.