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SENATE COMMITTEE GIVES $5 MILLION TO BACKUP NASA

The Senate Appropriations Committee met to discuss appropriations for NASA and its planned endeavors for fiscal 2005. The Committee recommends $15,579,500,000 for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an increase of $201,252,000 above fiscal year 2004, and a decrease of $664,500,000 below the President's request.

In addition to NASA's space exploration initiatives, the Committee remains supportive of NASA's Columbia Project to upgrade its supercomputing capacity, but insists that NASA's total supercomputing capability should not reside at one location in order that the Agency avoids a potential single point of failure for mission critical and safety of flight analyses. Therefore, the Committee has provided $5,000,000 from within funds projected for the Columbia project to upgrade the Goddard Space Flight Center's Center for Computational Science [NCCS] to guarantee that it serves as NASA's backup supercomputing center with tier 1 system backup and disaster recovery functions, including full transfer capability in the event of a failure of the principal supercomputer facility.

A full listing of excerpts from S. Rpt. 108-353; S. 2825, the Senate FY 2005 VA/HUD Appropriations Bill can be found at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14032.