Today, the NASA Administrator let the NASA family know that the Agency will submit, along with the President’s budget request for NASA, its new Strategic Plan, which will guide the work NASA will perform. How this will contrast with NASA’s appropriations and Authorization Act is yet unanswered.
Today’s Space News article, “Continuing Resolution Boosts NASA Budget by $186M“, notes that H.R. 3082, the Continuing Resolution funding, among other entities, NASA that was just voted out of the House, doesn’t necessarily agree with the 2010 NASA Authorization Act that was passed late last September. And while NASA works on charting a path that merges both appropriations and authorization legislation, it needs to be careful to not run afoul of a Congress that is very skeptical, based on December 1st hearing one could say mistrustful, of NASA leadership’s willingness to adhere to the plan Congress, not the President, has handed down to NASA. Several statements by NASA officials as recent as a couple of months ago, whether of launch vehicle designs or of human exploration destinations that NASA saw as its goals, seemed to fly in the face of the just-signed 2010 NASA Authorization Act.