President Obama has proposed a 18.5 billion dollar budget for fiscal year 2016. The budget, if approved would keep all of NASA’s current high priority missions on track through the end of next year. Those projects include the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion Crew Capsule and the James Webb Space Telescope as well as NASA’s planned deep space projects.

“President Obama is proposing a fiscal year 2016 budget of $18.5 billion dollars for NASA, building on the significant investments the administration has made in America’s space program over the past six years,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement delivered at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Included in the budget is $1.2 billion for the Commercial Crew Program which would see astronauts launched into space for the fist time since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

NASA contracts have been awarded to SpaceX and Boeing to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) using commercial spacecraft. The US currently relies on Russia to deliver Americans to the ISS at a cost of $70 million per seat. In addition to the high cost, recent tensions between the United States and Russia have made that arrangement less desirable.

A more controversial project, the Asteroid Redirect Mission, is also funded under the budget. The mission would send a probe to capture an asteroid and draw it into orbit around the moon. According to the plan, NASA would then send a manned mission to land on the asteroid to collect samples.

Continued development of the James Webb Space Telescope is also included. The telescope, formerly called the Next Generation Space Telescope, is the planned successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. It is currently expected to launch in October 2018, to continue the exploration of the cosmos and the search for potentially habitable exoplanets.

The budget also includes $5.3 billion for space science. That umbrella category includes many of NASA’s unmanned space exploration missions. These include NASA’s next Mars mission, Rover 2020, and plans to send a robotic mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Rover 2020 is expected to include more advanced instruments, better mobility, 3D – virtual reality imaging capabilities and possibly a drone to conduct aerial surveillance.

The Jupiter mission, currently dubbed Europa Clipper would be the first detailed examination of the watery moon.

According to NASA’s website: “The mission would place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter in order to perform a detailed investigation of the giant planet’s moon Europa — a world that shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust and which could host conditions favorable for life. The mission would send a highly capable, radiation-tolerant spacecraft into a long, looping orbit around Jupiter to perform repeated close flybys of Europa.”

Europa has become a more popular topic since the discovery of possible liquid oceans and the 2013 fictional film Europa Report.

“Looking to the future, we’re planning a mission to explore Jupiter’s fascinating moon Europa, selecting instruments this spring and moving toward the next phase of our work,” said Bolden.

The budget, as it stands, would also require that the Opportunity Rover and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter be shut down next year.