By 
June 12th, 2025
Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation
This document provides a deep dive and excellent reference regarding the U.S. federal civil space budget between Fiscal Year 2023 and proposed spending in Fiscal Year 2025.
The term civil space is generally understood among the public and policymakers to refer to non-national security agencies with direct missions to space.
Increased national importance
As pointed out in this document, the growing number of civil space departments and agencies “is one way of measuring space’s increased national importance.”
Indeed, the ubiquitous use of space is also a result of capabilities becoming more accessible, “allowing department agendas to incorporate space as a tool rather than endeavor a space-centric, long-term, strategic mission,” the document adds.
“As a result, the emerging civil space enterprise resembles a complex food chain, with embedded interdependencies between agencies.”
Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation
Foundational dataset
A Comprehensive Guide to the U.S. Federal Civil Space Budget provides a foundational dataset for civil space budget analyses, developed by Lindsay DeMarchi, a policy analyst in the Center for Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corporation.
Projects that support, enable, or leverage space activities for civil purposes are found among more than 100 individual line items spread across 17 federal departments and agencies and funded by 4 different appropriations bills.
Priority areas
The second half of the report introduces a novel representation of the civil space budget by organizing the data into national priority areas:
♦ American Leadership and Manufacturing
♦ Workforce Development
♦ Fundamental Science
♦ Efficiency, Improvements, and Growth
♦ Homeland Security
♦ Infrastructure, Energy, and Resiliency
♦ Remote Sensing Applications
Credit: White House
The intent of this referential dataset is to begin a broader discussion of the direct and indirect relationships civil space budget line items have to broader national priorities.
To review the document — A Comprehensive Guide to the U.S. Federal Civil Space Budget – go to:
https://csps.aerospace.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/DeMarchi_FedSpaceBudget_20250609_4.pdf
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