Proposed budget for NASA includes money to keep ISS running through at least 2024

5 March 2014, 02:16 -- The proposed 2015 federal budget for NASA includes money to keep the International Space Station running through at least 2024, NASA said Tuesday.

Continued funding of the ISS 'is essential to sending humans to deep space destinations' and provides beneficial research and development, the US space agency said.

The budget would pay to sustain delivery of cargo to the ISS using US-developed, commercial spacecraft.

The budget, released Tuesday by the White House, allocates 17.5 billion dollars to NASA, a 200-million-dollar drop from the space agency's budget request for the current year.

The proposed budget sets aside money for the development of a potential mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, which many scientists believe is the solar system's most likely place to harbour life beyond Earth.

NASA's plan to capture an asteroid and drag it into a stable orbit around the moon is funded in the proposed budget. Once in orbit around the moon, the asteroid could be visited by astronauts.

The proposed budget keeps NASA's 8.8-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope on track for a 2018 launch, officials said. The telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The proposed budget includes money to continue missions to Mars already in the planning stages.

'Money invested in our space program is spent right here on Earth for the benefit of everyone who lives on this planet,' NASA administrator Charles Bolden wrote on Twitter.

He said that the proposed budget 'builds on strong foundation to carry out new pioneering missions, leading the world and reaching even higher.' He said it continued US global leadership in planetary exploration.

Voice of Russia, dpa

Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_05/ Proposed-budget-for-NASA-includes-money-to- keep-ISS-running-through-at-least-2024-0611/