The massive GOP tax and spending package, passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday, will provide $10 billion to NASA programs that the administration had proposed to partially cut, including the space agency’s marquee moon program and operations at the International Space Station.
The reconciliation package includes $4.1 billion for NASA’s Boeing Co.-built Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket and $20 million directed to the Lockheed Martin Corp. Orion crew capsule to help fund the fourth and fifth missions of the agency’s Artemis moon program. These missions, which Trump had suggested canceling in his original budget request, would establish a lunar space station called Gateway and utilize a contracted landing system from Blue Origin for the first time to place humans on the moon.