United States Government Space Budget

For all of FY 2011, the U.S. government operated under a series of budget measures known as Continuing Resolutions (CRs), culminating in the passage of Public Law 112-10, the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011. A CR is a type of appropriations legislation passed by Congress to fund the government when a formal appropriations bill for the next fiscal year has not been passed and signed into law by the close of the preceding government fiscal year. Generally, a CR provides funding for existing government programs at the prior year’s funding level or at a reduction.

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U.S. government agency space budgets in 2010 totaled $## billion, a ##% increase from 2009. The combined U.S. defense-related space activities, including the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, totaled $## billion, or ##% of U.S. government spending. This figure, when combined with NASA’s budget, accounts for ##% of all U.S. government agency space budgets. The remaining ##% is comprised of space-related spending within a set of other U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Energy, the FAA, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Science Foundation, which collectively budgeted $## billion on space.

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The total U.S. government budget for space activities in 2009, including civilian and military agencies, totaled $## billion as shown in Exhibit 2m. This was $## billion more than the budget for 2008, an increase of ##%. Spending on defense-related space activities, including the Department of Defense, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, totaled $## billion, or ##% of overall U.S. space spending. The budgets for the Department of Defense and the National Reconnaissance Office account for the majority of the growth. Civil space spending in the United States totaled $## billion in 2009, an increase of approximately 10% over the 2008 total of $## billion.

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NASA and the DoD, the two largest space agencies in the world, dominate the U.S. space budget. The budgets for these two represent ##% of estimated U.S. government space funding. When estimates of all U.S. defense-related space activities are combined, the total is $## billion, or ##% of total U.S. government space funding. This figure includes space budget estimates for DoD, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the Missile Defense Agency. DoD space spending, combined with the budgets of these additional defense agencies, plus NASA make up ##% of the U.S. government space budget. In addition to NASA, civil space programs of the Department of Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provide an additional $## billion of U.S. government space funding.

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