The 2012 fiscal year appropriation, marked up today by the Senate, allows for continued funding of the James Webb Space Telescope, enabling its launch in 2018! Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like this bird is going to fly. 🙂

Thanks to everyone who contacted their representatives and expressed their support of the JWST, to all the sites out there that made it easy to do so, and of course to all the representatives who stood behind the program and didn’t allow it to get mothballed. The space science community thanks you, and the future generations of astronomers, physicists, cosmologists and explorers thank you. Go JWST!

“In a spending bill that has less to spend, we naturally focus on the cuts and the things we can’t do,” said CJS Subcommittee Chairwoman Mikulski. “But I’d like to focus on what we can do. The bill invests more than $12 billion in scientific research and high impact research and technology development, to create new products and new jobs for the future.”

In addition to funding for the telescope, the 2012 bill also allots the National Aeronautics and Space Administration $17.9 billion (a reduction of $509 million or 2.8 percent from the FY2011 enacted level) and preserves NASA’s portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments, including the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle, the heavy lift Space Launch System, and commercial crew development.

All of the agencies funded under the bill are called on to be better stewards of taxpayers’ dollars, and waste and overspending will be closely monitored.

Read the bill summary here.