Recession has taken its toll even on the NASA which stands to lose an additional $325 million under the omnibus spending package that will soon be voted upon in the U. S. Senate.

This budget cut was reflected in the disaster relief bill the House approved Dec. 16 along with the 2012 Final Consolidated Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2055) that includes a 1.83 percent across-the-board cut for all nondefense related discretionary spending.

This covers the NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and a number of other federal agencies previously funded in the so-called minibus spending bill that Congress enacted in November.

"The recession does apply to us," NASA spokesman Michael Cabbage. "We estimate the cut would take us to around $17.4 billion."

The minibus included $17.8 billion for NASA, or about $650 million less than the agency received for 2011.

If approved, the budget cut would reduce NASA's 2012 budget by more than $1.2 billion than what the agency requested last February when President Barack Obama submitted his budget proposal to Congress. NOAA, which stood to receive $4.9 billion from the minibus adopted in November, would get only $4.8 billion if the rescission becomes law.

The budget cut will bite into NASA's budget at a time when the agency will be working to finish theJames Webb Space Telescope, and to build the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), the flight hardware to support NASA's next manned exploration missions beyond Earth orbit.

The space agency estimates that the James Webb Space Telescope will cost $8.8 billion to build and to operate for five years, and that it will not launch until 2018. The congressionally mandated SLS Rocket, on the other hand, got $1.86 billion in the 2012 budget while its companion crew capsule, MPCV, got $1.2 billion.

The budget cut comes at a time when NASA is racing to fill a gap in its human spaceflight capabilities. By 2016, NASA, which currently pays the Russian space agency to transport astronauts to the international space station, had hoped to turn that business over to U.S. companies that are developing privately operated astronaut taxi systems with financial assistance from the agency. However, NASA officials have said that the proposed 2012 appropriation for its Commercial Crew Program is insufficient to meet the 2016 goal.

The across-the-board cut, or recession, is crafted to pay for some $8 billion in disaster relief spending, reports said.

The House approved the $1 trillion omnibus package the afternoon of Dec. 16 by a vote of 296 to 121. The disaster relief funding and 1.83 percent rescission were approved as seperate measures.