While President Obama is praiseworthy for adding funds to the NASA budget for the next fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010, the space agency still is sorely underfunded, including the Constellation Program developing the next-generation U.S. spaceship system.

Obama’s budget plan for NASA was praised for funding increases in the next budget year, but also received a blistering bipartisan, bicameral blast on Capitol Hill for not providing nearly enough for the largest space agency on the planet to perform its job.

In the Senate, one displeased lawmaker was Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee commerce, justice and science subcommittee that oversees NASA.

While the $902 million Obama plus-up to $18.7 billion in the upcoming fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010, is well and good, Shelby said the funding is weak for many programs, and provides meager support in later years.

The White House budget plan for NASA "does not begin to provide enough for NASA to do all of the critical missions it has been asked to do," Shelby told Acting NASA Administrator Christopher Scolese.

But much of the budget is a question mark, leaving NASA to mark time while a commission that Obama appointed mulls the future direction for the space agency, Shelby said. That panel is led by Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT]. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, May 7 and 11, 2009.)

Further, Shelby observed to Scolese, it has been four months since then-NASA Administrator Mike Griffin resigned, and Obama has yet to nominate someone to fill the vacancy.

In effect, he said, Augustine is becoming a de facto administrator.

Shelby also trashed the NASA effort to have private commercial firms develop cargo and perhaps manned flight services to the International Space Station, an effort that NASA has directed toward Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB].

"SpaceX claimed that they would be launching by 2004 and had grandiose visions of manned flights launching by early this year," Shelby said. "Unfortunately, the reality is that out of four attempts, they have only delivered a single dummy payload to space, [and] have never delivered any payload to the space station, much less a human." He termed that a record of "failed performance," at least for now.

Similarly, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, made like comments as he opened a hearing on the NASA budget. In the witness chair was Scolese, who attempted to defend the $18.69 billion Obama budget proposal.

"Resources given to NASA haven’t kept pace with the tasks that the nation has asked it to carry out," Gordon said.

Congress in its last two reauthorizations of the largest space agency on the planet repeatedly endorsed the goal of returning U.S. astronauts to the moon, and then to venturing further into the solar system, Gordon noted.

Obama did well to respond to that vision by providing money plus-ups for NASA in the economic stimulus bill, and in the Obama fiscal 2010 NASA budget plan, Gordon said.

Yet after 2010, the out years see a weak flat-lining of the budget, which remains less than $19 billion annually, and Gordon is concerned about that.

"More needs to be done if the positive steps taken by the administration [in 2010] are going to be sustained," Gordon warned. That flat funding level for the agency after 2010 "would make it very difficult to make progress on a number of important programs, including the exploration initiative" to develop a new spaceship system and have astronauts ride it beyond low Earth orbit.

On the one hand, Gordon welcomed that commission review of the space program and its needs that Obama asked Augustine, retired Lockheed chairman and CEO, to lead. Lockheed is building the Orion space capsule, while other firms separately are building various segments of the Ares I rocket to take Orion to the heavens.

On the other hand, however, Gordon said even before the Augustine commission issues its report in August, "the basic situation is already clear." There just isn’t enough money for the space agency to execute its assigned missions, period.

That means either the total NASA budget will have to be increased, at least in later years, or a funding crunch is inevitable, forcing programs to be cut or killed.

"Either the nation is going to have to give NASA enough funding to meet the dual challenges of carrying out its current and planned missions and of revitalizing the agency’s human and physical capital, or the nation is going to have to agree on what it wants NASA to cut," Gordon said.

NASA provides a great boon to society, in worthwhile endeavors, Gordon said, adding that this doesn’t mean NASA gets a blank check. He also expressed concern about cost overruns and schedule delays on some space programs.

Scolese, who became acting administrator with the resignation Jan. 20 of NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, defended the Obama budget plan for the space agency, saying it would permit the United States to return to the moon by 2020, continue operating space shuttles through the fiscal year until their retirement, and press on with operating the International Space Station as it nears completion and hosts its first six-person crews.

The budget also supports NASA science and aerospace programs, Scolese noted.

And he received some plaudits from lawmakers.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee, had high praise for the just-ending NASA mission to repair and refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope, a difficult and demanding mission that tested seven astronauts to their limits, and a mission that wouldn’t have occurred if she hadn’t pressed hard to fund it. Others who championed the Hubble mission included Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee science and space subcommittee that also oversees NASA.

Mikulski invited Nelson to her hearing on the NASA budget, which ended with seven astronauts on Space Shuttle Atlantis — still in orbit — testifying before her committee via video link, which was the first time astronauts in orbit testified before a Senate committee. They are winding up their multi-million-miles trip around Earth. (Please see separate story in this issue.)

While the testimony was a bit flawed when the sound of the astronauts’ voices faded out at points, Nelson — a former astronaut — clearly relished the experience, telling the crew he wished he were up there with them.