NASA / Kim Shiflett

The Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, Dragon spacecraft with solar array fairings attached, stands inside a processing hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Sequestration could put SpaceX launches at risk.

By Dan LeoneSpace.com

WASHINGTON To deal with the nearly $900 million budget hit NASA will absorb if automatic spending cuts known as sequestration are allowed to take effect March 1, the U.S. space agency would slow development work on commercially operated astronaut taxis, delay or cancel space technology programs and postpone the launch of some small science missions.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden outlined the space agencys sequestration plansin a Feb. 5 letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who released it following a Feb. 14 hearing.

NASAs overall budget would drop to $16.9 billion, down from the $17.8 billion Congress approved last year.

Spending on the commercial crew program NASA is using to subsidize development by Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Sierra Nevada of competing human spaceflight systems would be reduced to $388 million $18 million less than it is currently spending and $441.6 million less than the agency had been planning to spend in 2013. [What NASA's 2013 Budget Pays For (Video)]

NASA, like all federal agencies, has had its funding frozen at 2012 levels under a stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution that expires March 28. NASAs sequestration plan assumes that the continuing resolution will be extended through Sept. 30, the end of the U.S. governments 2013 fiscal year.

Bolden said NASAs commercial crew partners would feel a funding pinch as soon as July.

Among the commercial crew activities planned for later this year that NASA would not be able to fund after sequestration are:

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NASA would take a hit with sequestration