NASA's fiscal year 2009 budget will include funding for International Space Station (ISS)-based research to 2020 in its projections. The US space agency's policy was to end involvement in the ISS by 2016, but NASA administrator Michael Griffin has indicated that would change (Flight International, 24-30 April).
NASA departments are now drawing up spending plans for the 2009 budget submission that Griffin will present to Congress early next year. One departmental head confirms that the budgeting for ISS operations to 2020 has been at the direction of NASA leadership.
"It is consistent across NASA budgeting," a senior NASA researcher told Flight International at the Humans in Space symposium in Beijing last week.
Funding for the ISS had been planned to be diverted from 2016 to the Constellation exploration systems programme.
Source: Flight International
