Bolden Says 2014 Budget Request Keeps U.S. Competitive In Space
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
By: Matthew Peddie

April 10th, 2014 | WMFE- President Obama's 2014 budget request unveiled Wednesday includes includes $17.7 Billion for NASA- about $50 million less than what the agency got in 2012. NASA administrator Charles Bolden says it's still enough money to keep the US at the forefront of space exploration.

[Astronauts could travel to an asteroid on the Orion spacecraft within the next decade- Image: NASA]

The 2014 budget request includes $821.4 million for NASA’s commercial spaceflight program.

Charles Bolden says that’s the minimum needed for NASA to help US companies develop the ability to send astronauts to the space station by 2017, reducing the dependence on Russian space craft.

“We can continue to limp along and we can facilitate the success of commercial crew for the nation, but we cannot do it in 2017 if we go below 822 million dollars," Bolden said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

The budget also includes money to continue upgrading Kennedy Space Center as a multi user space launch complex.

There’s also $78 million to jump start a plan to capture an asteroid and drag it towards the moon- where NASA says it could be explored by astronauts as early as 2021.