Planetary Exploration Budget Dataset - The Planetary Society

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2	Introduction	Dataset Contents
3	The Planetary Exploration Budget Dataset is an ongoing project to catalog and publish key cost data for NASA's robotic planetary missions. It provides annual expenditures for every major mission, annual total program costs, up-to-date inflation-adjustments, and summary tables useful for analyzing historical trends.	The dataset includes 4 distinct data types: Summary Sheets, which support historical analysis; Mission Cost Sheets, which provide detailed cost data by individual mission or program type; Fiscal Year Sheets, which include the full cost data reported by NASA to Congress; and Reference Data Sheets, primarily used to calculate inflation.
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8		Last Update	2025-11-13	Added FY 2026 request and final FY 2024 values
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10		Sheet	Description
11	Use	Charts	Sampling of data visulations of common requests: historical funding, program breakdowns, decadal breakdowns
12	Anyone may reference and use the data included in spreadsheet for any reason, with attribution to The Planetary Society. Pre-made charts and PowerPoint slides are available at The Planetary Society's website.	Mission Costs	Annual costs for every major planetary science mission in original dollars.
13		Timeline	All missions listed by development start, launch date, launch vehicle, and mission type.
14		Planetary Science Budget History	Annual funding requested and obligated for NASA's robotic planetary program, in original dollars.
15		Budget History (Inflation adj)	Same as the 'Planetary Science Budget History' sheet but all values are adjusted for inflation to 2025 dollars.
16		Funding by Destination	Annual funding for all missions and related activities grouped by their prime destination.
17		Decadal Totals (Inflation adj)	Reports total spending for destinations and major programs binned by Decadal Survey periods (and their equivalents)
18	Conventions	Major Programs (1994 - Current)	Annual funding requested and spent on each major planetary flight program (Discovery, New Frontiers, MEP, etc) since 1994
19	Unless stated, all values represent actual contractual obligations in millions of nominal (uninflated) dollars. Values in italic are estimates.	Major Programs (1960 - 1980)	Annual funding requested and spent on each major planetary flight program (Surveyor, Mariner, Pioneer, etc) from 1960 to 1980
20		[Mission Name] (alphabetic by mission name or major program)	Detailed annual expenditures, broken out by development, launch, and operations costs for every planetary science mission
21		[FY XXXX] (in descending order)	Planetary program data as reported in the NASA budget estimates, including both requested and obligated (actual) amounts
22		NNSI	NASA's New Start Inflation Index (used for most inflation-adjustments)
23	Data Sources	NAICS	Employment Cost Index (used for inflation-adjustments of operations costs after 2000)
24	Planetary Science "Actuals", 1998-2001. Callahan, Jason. "Budgeting for Exploration: History and Political Economy in Space Science 1959-2010" Presented at the AAS 45th Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences, Denver, Colorado. October 7, 2013.	US Spending & Outlays	Reference sheet for total U.S. government spending and GDP
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26		Questions, corrections, suggestions: casey.dreier@planetary.org			Color Key
27						Summary sheet
28	All other data compiled from original NASA budget estimates and reporting documents provided to Congress from 1961 to now.					Mission cost sheet
29						Fiscal year sheet
30						Reference data
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