The United States House has passed a bill that offers a modest budget increase for the country's space program, but falls short of funding estimates for a ride service to the International Space Station.

Adopted on a 321-87 vote, the measure earmarks $17.9 billion for the National Aeronautical and Space Administration in Fiscal Year 2015, which is an estimated $250 million more than the civilian agency NASA received this year and about $400 million more than President Barack Obama asked for.

The House legislation would set aside $785 million for the Commercial Crew Program, reports Florida Today, which is more than the House has ever approved for the venture partnership venture before, but. less than what NASA says it needs to finally replace the Space Shuttle fleet, which delivered astronauts to the orbiting station until it was retired in 2011

Officials at the space agency have told Congress any amount less than $848 million for the initiative will further delay the effort to once again launch astronauts from U.S. soil, which NASA at the moment is predicts in 2017 or 2018.

Ever since the shuttle program ended, NASA has paid Russia about $70 million each time one of its own astronauts rides to the space station on a Soyuz rocket.

But, in the wake of President Obama's economic sanctions against Russia for its military actions in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, cooperation between the two countries' space programs has been strained.

Russian officials recently intimated they might altogether block their taxi service to the station, unless the White House drops its sanctions.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who heads his country's space agency, suggested in a Twitter posting last month the U.S. might want to consider delivering "its astronauts to the ISS with the help of a trampoline."

The House spending plan also would continue financing NASA's deep-space mission to take astronauts to Mars within 20 years, as well as the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled for lift-off in 2018.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, which has traditionally approved more for the program than the House, is on track to announce its own funding priorities for NASA next week.