General Science, Space, and Technology covers federal basic research outside health and defense — about $42 billion in FY2024. The two biggest line items are NASA (~$25B) and the National Science Foundation (~$9B), with the DOE Office of Science (~$4B) and smaller agencies (NIST, Smithsonian, USGS research) making up the rest.
NASA's spending flows through major prime contractors and a federally-funded R&D center: Caltech runs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Mars rovers, Europa Clipper, deep-space missions), Boeing builds the Space Launch System rocket, SpaceX flies Commercial Crew and Cargo to the ISS plus the Starship Human Landing System for Artemis, Lockheed Martin builds the Orion crew capsule, and Northrop Grumman runs Antares/Cygnus resupply.
NSF's grant pool flows mostly to universities — Caltech, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Johns Hopkins APL, Carnegie Mellon, and hundreds of research institutions. The DOE Office of Science funds national labs (Argonne, Oak Ridge, SLAC, Fermilab) for high-energy physics, advanced computing, and basic materials research.