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On 7 March, Congress passed the, giving NASA a budget of $19.5 billion for fiscal year 2017 and some instructions for how to spend it. The budget now awaits negotiation in the Appropriations Committee and presidential approval.

The bill requires NASA to start working on a “human exploration roadmap”, including “goals and objectives of a United States human space exploration program to achieve the long-term goal of human missions near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s”.

In fact, the bill mentions Mars 70 times, indicating that sending humans there will be a major priority in this administration’s vision of NASA.

Congress encourages NASA to keep working on its Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule as “the most practical approach to reaching the Moon, Mars, and beyond”.

It also supports NASA’s planned new Mars rover, which will search for signs of life on Mars after an expected 2020 launch, as well as eventual robotic exploration of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Europa’s suspected subsurface ocean makes it potentially the most hospitable place (other than Earth) for life in our solar system.

Beyond our solar system, Congress has requested a strategy for NASA’s study of extrasolar planets, indicating particular interest in the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be able to look for signs of life on other worlds.

For the first time, Congress also added “the search for life’s origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe” to NASA’s official purpose.

“American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream,” the President said in a 28 February speech to Congress. The budget reflects his focus on distant worlds – but what of our own?

The bill includes only 50 mentions of Earth, almost all of which refer to low-Earth orbit rather than our planet’s surface and atmosphere, which NASA is instrumental in studying and monitoring. Notably absent from the bill is any information about NASA’s Earth science activities, for which NASA requested just over $2 billion this year.