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President signs NASA budget, Soyuz waiver into law |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Friday, 03 October 2008
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 Officials at NASA are breathing sighs of relief now that the pen of US President George W. Bush has left his signature on a temporary spending bill that included provisions to allow NASA to purchase Soyuz flights from Russia in spite of a nuclear nonproliferation act and extended NASA’s current 2008 funding level through the end of the year as Congress continues to wrangle a cohesive federal budget plan into place (the fiscal year for the US federal government started on October 1).
Attempts to pass a stand-alone bill exempting NASA from the nonproliferation act had been tried soon after Russia and Georgia engaged in a brief armed conflict over breakaway regions in the small former Soviet republic, but the arguably overwhelming military response by Russia stoked the fears of many a congressman and quashed any hope of such legislation passing. In 2000, Congress levied the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act against Russia, which among other things, barred the US purchase of space technology from Russia in light of its assistance of Iran in pursuing aerospace and nuclear technology. In 2005, Congress granted NASA an exemption from the act, which allowed the space agency to negotiate a $700 million deal with Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) to purchase seats aboard Soyuz flights and space on the unmanned Progress cargo ships to the International Space Station through 2011.
With the space shuttle fleet due to be retired in 2010, Russia’s Soyuz capsule would stand alone as the only manned craft visiting the space station. With no deal in place, NASA astronauts (as well as partner space agencies in Canada, Europe, and Japan) would be locked out of the $100 billion ISS until 2015 when the shuttle-replacing Orion CEV is expected to be ready. Considering the substantial investment that NASA has made in the ISS (approximately half of the total cost, including shuttle launch flights), nobody in the space agency or Congress wanted to see US astronauts stuck on the ground for four years.
The exemption extension of five years from the nonproliferation act was tucked into a continuing resolution by the House of Representatives meant to allow for funding of the federal government in lieu of an official budget. Also included in the continuing appropriations act are provisions to continue funding most federal agencies at their 2008 levels through February 2009, leaving NASA locked to a budget of $17.3 billion.
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