The White House is seeking to trim NASA's overall budget by a modest 1.5% in the next fiscal year, but the package is bound to spark stiff congressional opposition primarily due to double-digit cuts proposed for human deep-space exploration.

Proponents described the $19 billion request—down from the current $19.3 billion total—as a stay-the-course spending plan for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. But by targeting many of the deepest cuts for long-term manned exploration programs, including a new family of heavy-lift rockets, the White House appears headed for a replay of bruising Capitol Hill fights it lost in previous years.

Despite strong bipartisan support in the past that ended up significantly increasing deep-space exploration accounts over White House requests, the latest proposal aims to reduce spending on them by roughly $800 million. Indeed, President Barack Obama and NASA's leadership envision rolling back such expenditures to levels lower than those in place at the start of his second term.

Even before NASA Chief Charles Bolden addressed reporters Tuesday, those details prompted an outcry from some industry groups, veteran lawmakers and other champions of manned missions beyond Earth's orbit and eventually to Mars.

In a statement, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, blasted the spending request as an "imbalanced proposal" that would continue "to tie our astronauts' feet to the ground and make a Mars mission all but impossible." The priorities, Mr. Smith said, are "not the proposal of an administration that is serious about maintaining America's leadership in space."

Mr. Bolden and other NASA officials countered that budget flexibility, combined with a cushion from earlier spending blueprints, will permit steady progress toward deep-space exploration missions crewed by astronauts. In addition to providing "continuity and stability" for manned exploration forays ultimately intended to reach Mars, the latest budget document emphasizes that the White House plan "improves life on Earth and protects our home planet."

The White House plan seeks a hefty boost for continued operation of the international space station, incorporating steady spending on commercial cargo deliveries and emerging private space taxis serving the orbiting laboratory.

Through the end of the decade, the Obama administration projects overall NASA spending to climb to roughly $20 billion, some $250 million more than agency budget documents envisioned only a year ago.

The proposal comes months after NASA officials and congressional leaders—including Rep. Smith and his supporters—appeared to be moving toward a compromise setting the future course of the agency. The agreement, among other details, featured steeper overall spending increases than the White House preferred, balanced by broad bipartisan support for NASA's drive to rely on commercial rockets and spacecraft to get to low-earth orbit.

But within that framework, disagreements remained over how many dollars to devote to missions, such as taking samples from an asteroid, work intended to pave the way for fine-tuning technologies essential to protect astronauts during long and dangerous trip to Mars.

Tuesday's budget request appears to reprise some of those festering arguments and may spark new ones.

The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, an industry association, said the White House package "falls well short of the investment needed to support NASA's exploration mission," adding that it portends "detrimental impacts on cornerstone, game-changing programs."

The extent of the White House's legislative challenge is highlighted by large differences from spending levels NASA projected when it unveiled its last multiyear budget trends just a year ago.

Spending on aeronautics in fiscal 2017, for example, is now requested to be about $200 million higher than it was projected in 2015 to be for 2017. The boost includes a major initiative featuring experimental aircraft flights "to demonstrate and validate new technologies that dramatically reduce fuel consumption, emissions and noise."

Also, the White House now wants the agency to spend nearly $300 million more on earth science programs than lawmakers appropriated in 2015, including an extra $80 million or so above the request in President Obama's previous budget submission.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 09, 2016 23:15 ET (04:15 GMT)