The U.S. Senate Passes Huge Funding for NASA’s Space Mission

The U.S. Senate passed a bill for tentative expenditure on June 8, 2021, which will allocate about USD 250 billion to American scientific and technical research.This amount will further include the USD 10 billion given to developing the private crewed moon landers for NASA.

The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act won the Senate with a 68-32 vote. The bill is passed majorly to raise the Industrial and technological competitiveness of the U.S., especially with China.Previously, the bill was called as the known as the Endless Frontiers Act, which consists of an amendment that has been added recently by the Senate Maria Cantwell (D-Wash).

The amendment is to grant USD 10 billion to the NASA for the development of crewed moon landers which the Artemis program could later use by the agency.This program aims to build a sustainable presence of humans around the moon by the end of 2020.In April 2021, NASA declared that it had been awarded an amount of USD 2.9 billion contracts to complete the work on its Starship vehicle and then use it as the Artemis lander.

The agency chose Startship over the other private lenders, such as the one led by Jeff Bezo’s company Blue Origin and another one by Dynetics.Both of these companies filed a protest against the U.S. Government Accountability Office, stating that the process of selection has been flawed.