Five decades of NASA budget authority.
NASA's total budget authority, FY1976–FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables. The series begins FY1976, the first year of that table — NASA was created in 1958, and its Apollo-era peak (far larger in real terms) is before this table and is not shown here. NASA is almost entirely discretionary, so this agency-wide authority tracks the appropriations topline closely.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB estimate
Series peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
NASA total budget authority — the arc since FY1976
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2Reading the arc
NASA's post-Apollo arc is a long plateau, not a climb. After the Shuttle came online (first flight 1981) the agency settled into a steady Shuttle-and-Station era; the Vision for Space Exploration (2004), Shuttle retirement and the pivot to commercial crew (2011), and the first Artemis flight (2022) each mark the line without dramatically moving it. The FY2027 estimate reflects the proposed reduction from the FY2026 enacted level. This series is shown in nominal dollars: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 publishes no constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one — so the nominal line understates how much larger the 1960s Apollo budget was in real terms.