 SIM Lite is considered the flagship mission of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program (formerly known as the Navigator Program). According to the 2007 Presidential Budget for NASA, the program is, "a coherent series of increasingly challenging projects, each complementary to the others and each mission building on the results and capabilities of those that preceded it as NASA searches for habitable planets outside of the solar system." The program, in addition to the Space Interferometry Mission, includes the Keck Interferometer and the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer. When originally approved in 1996, the mission was given a $ 700 million cap (in 1996 dollars) which included launch costs and five years of operation. The first contracts, for the preliminary architecture study, were worth $ 200,000 each.
