President Donald Trump has signed an appropriations bill in order to fund the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in fiscal year 2017.

Axar.az reports that the bill authorizes the US federal government to appropriate $19.5 billion for space exploration, operations, science, aeronautics, space technology, education, safety, security and mission services, construction and environmental compliance and restoration, as well as an inspector general.

NASA is expected to face cuts under Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget of approximately 1 percent, to $19.1 billion.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2017 has passed through both houses of Congress, granting NASA its largest budget to date, and includes a clear mandate to get humans ‘near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s.'

The bill reads it is the sense of Congress that expanding human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and advancing toward human missions to Mars in the 2030s, what requires early strategic planning and timely decisions to be made in the near-term on the necessary courses of action for commitments to achieve short-term and long-term goals and objectives.