Reports circulating about the White House's proposed NASA budget for the 2026 fiscal year suggest the agency's funding could be slashed by nearly half.
"We would see, in this case, the majority of active science missions and in-development science missions completely wiped out," Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at The Planetary Society, told Space.com. "I have this image in my head of a perfectly functioning spacecraft designed to increase our understanding of the cosmos in which we reside turned off and left to tumble aimlessly in the black — that's where we would leave ourselves. It's symbolically grotesque."
According to the document, the proposed budget would continue to support science missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope, but assumes "no funding is provided for other telescopes." This means it'd likely get rid of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — a spacecraft that's already assembled and undergoing testing to launch as early as next fall, Dreier says.
"That has been the poster child for a mission that has remained on budget and on track with the one hiccup around COVID, which isn't the mission's fault," he said. "We've invested nearly $4 billion in building it to this point, 20 years of effort to build it."
Though these passback documents aren't a full confirmation that this budget will be finalized, Dreier says it's the last train out of the station before we get to that point — and in his expert opinion, Dreier believes this proposal certainly could move through to the end. This is especially because of the kinds of changes, including major layoffs and project cancellations, that have been implemented at other government organizations by request of the Trump administration.
"It is consistent with their willingness to impose some very profound and dramatic change," he said.
For instance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laid off over 800 workers this year and there are rumors of more cuts to come. In fact, an internal budget document seen by Science magazine suggests the Trump administration wishes to cut nearly all of NOAA's climate research endeavors. According to Science's report, the document indicates the White House intends to ask Congress to eliminate NOAA's climate research centers and cut hundreds more federal and academic climate scientists.
"This would end basically every project we support other than hurricane and atmospheric river reconnaissance, coastal mapping, and snow survey — all of which are funded by either the national weather service or national geodetic survey. All marine mammal, atmospheric science and climate projects would end," one NOAA worker who requested anonymity told Space.com.
"This is one of the reasons why you have a public sector: To do things that aren't immediately profitable, but important and beneficial to the nation," Dreier said. "There's no private mission ready to go to Mars or Jupiter. These are fundamental capabilities of a public sector space agency serving a unique need."
"We've seen wealthy individuals start to travel in space themselves and invest in rockets and infrastructure," he added. "But something we have not seen by anyone, and nor has anyone even shown much interest in, is to build these types of science missions."
"If you cut heliophysics by half, which is what funds Voyager, you probably cut Voyager," Dreier said. "Even if you made a new one, you couldn't even get to where it is now for another 50 years — and we're not going to make a new one [if] we don't have any money."
"None of these three individuals possess the slightest background or experience in space policy or government service."
Three House Democrats published an open letter addressed to NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro on Tuesday (April 8), stating that they have identified three of Elon Musk's DOGE staffers who have been given an "extraordinary and alarming degree of access to highly sensitive facilities and personnel systems at NASA."
According to the letter, the staffers have been given "unrestricted physical access, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week," to NASA facilities, including Petro's suite on the 9th floor of NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The named individuals are Scott M. Coulter, Riley J. Sennott and Alexander Simonpour. The letter's authors — Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (CA-18), Ranking Member Valerie Foushee (NC-4) of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, and Ranking Member Emilia Sykes (OH-13) of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight — found Coulter to be a Senior Advisor and the most senior member of the DOGE team, Sennott to be a Senior Advisor as well, and Simonpour to be an Advisor.
"None of these three individuals possess the slightest background or experience in space policy or government service," the letter states, also mentioning that Sennott and Simonpour previously worked for Musk's car company, Tesla. "Mr. Coulter is a failed hedge fund manager. His hedge fund, Cowbird Capital, opened in 2017 and managed hundreds of millions of dollars at its peak, but the firm's investment portfolio declined until it was forced to close in the summer of 2024."
DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, is an initiative organized by the Trump administration and run by SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. Its goal is to make huge cuts to the budgets and workforces of government organizations in order to save what the administration considers "wasted" taxpayer money.
So far, for instance, DOGE has spurred layoffs of over 800 employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), about 700 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) department focused on dementia research; it has also cancelled projects such as 89 independent research contracts worth nearly $900 million at the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. DOGE is also the driving force behind a government-wide removal of programs and efforts committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA). In response, NASA has wiped its websites of many of these efforts, which the agency once championed.
"DOGE may not currently answer to the law or the best interests of America's civil space program, but we intend to do everything we can to make sure they answer to Congress," the committee's letter states.
This newly published letter also addresses some back-and-forth that has been happening between NASA and the authors; the April 8 memo was actually the third letter sent to the agency with the authors' worries about DOGE. The first letter, sent on Feb. 6, outlined many of the committee's concerns about DOGE having access to NASA's data — including conflicts of interest that may be posed due to Musk's affiliation with SpaceX, which holds many contracts with NASA — and basically asked the agency to be transparent about its relationship with the department and what kind of information is being released in the interest of security.
Marc A. Hone, NASA's acting associate administrator for the agency's Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, responded on Feb. 13, stating the following:
"I have confirmed with NASA's Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Office of Protective Services that DOGE has identified an individual who will be employed by NASA. As such, he will have all necessary access to NASA owned or managed resources as required for his duties, in compliance with all laws and regulations regarding the protection of IT resources and classified information. NASA also complies with all applicable Executive Orders and associated supplemental guidance."
Another letter was sent to the agency on Feb. 21, again reiterating and explaining several of the committee's concerns about the nature and workflow of DOGE, this time also inquiring more about who actually works for DOGE. The authors pointed out a few staffers they found questionable for the job:
"A 19-year-old DOGE employee named Edward Coristine has been linked to multiple web domains with questionable foreign associations and was previously fired by a cybersecurity firm after being accused of leaking company secrets to a competitor," the Feb. 21 letter states. "A second DOGE employee named Gavin Kliger promoted white supremacists and misogynists on his social media account as recently as the fall of 2024. A third DOGE employee named Marko Elez was linked to a social media account that 'advocated racism and eugenics' before it was deleted."
Petro responded to this letter on March 12, stating that DOGE-associated persons working at the agency are operating in the capacity of civil servants and will serve in "an advisory role to NASA leadership and will be aligned with the Office of the Administrator, reporting directly to me." Among other items, Petro also states that none of the DOGE-associated persons serve in a position that requires classified access, and she ensures that all NASA-affiliated personnel and partners comply with things like federal laws, security protocol and ethics outlined by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. But she also says that NASA doesn't have a specific vetting process for DOGE employees.
The April 8 letter addresses Petro's March 12 response as well, thanking Petro for her clarification about the general structure of DOGE at the agency and legal obligations of DOGE-associated personnel.
The authors, however, also call out a few ambiguities in Petro's response. For instance, they take issue with a change in the way DOGE staffers are addressed when compared to the previous NASA letter, question why Petro says DOGE-associated persons don't serve in any position that "requires" access to classified information at the agency without specifying whether any have been "granted" access to that information, and wonder about a lack of clear response about whether sensitive information belonging to SpaceX competitors is available to the department.
"The information we have reviewed of NASA's vulnerability to DOGE-related threats is chilling," the April 8 letter states. "The agency has allowed unvetted and untrained individuals to obtain unprecedented access, seemingly in defiance of standard agency protocols and simple common sense. If the agency has vetted these DOGE-associated persons for their questionable professional histories or apparent conflicts-of-interest, we are not aware of it."
NASA has yet to provide a response to this final letter. Space.com reached out to the agency for comment, to which a NASA spokesperson said "Any communication on these points will be directed to the Members."
Quelle: Space.com
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White House proposal would slash NASA science budget and cancel major missions
DENVER — The White House is proposing steep cuts in NASA’s science program that, if implemented, would cancel several major missions, contradicting claims by the administration’s nominee to lead the agency.
A draft of the White House’s budget proposal sent to NASA April 10 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would cut about 20% from the agency’s overall spending levels but reduce spending for the agency’s science programs by nearly 50%.
The document, known as a passback, is not publicly released but is sent to agencies like NASA to allow them to make final appeals before the formal rollout of the budget proposal. Ars Technica first reported on the passback.
According to sources familiar with the details of the passback, the budget would reduce NASA’s topline, or overall, budget to about $20 billion. NASA received about $25 billion for fiscal year 2025 in a continuing resolution (CR) that kept it and other agencies at 2024 spending levels.
That CR sets funding for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at about $7.3 billion. However, the passback would provide just $3.9 billion for the directorate in 2026, a cut of nearly 50% from 2025.
The biggest hit would be to NASA’s astrophysics division, which received about $1.5 billion in 2024 (NASA has not completed allocations to its science divisions for 2025 based on the levels in the continuing resolution) but would get less than $500 million in 2026. It would propose canceling the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which had been on budget and schedule for a launch in late 2026.
Earth science would be cut by a little more than 50% to just over $1 billion, while heliophysics would see a nearly 50% cut to about $450 million.
The budget would provide $1.9 billion for planetary science, about a third less than what it received in 2024. It would, though, cancel the Mars Sample Return program, which has suffered cost and schedule overruns that led to an agency decision in January to study two alternative approaches to it. It would also cancel DAVINCI, a Venus mission selected as part of the Discovery program nearly four years ago.
The passback appears to confirm rumors swirling for weeks in the space community that the Trump administration would seek to make major cuts to NASA science. At an April 6 event, Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.), vice ranking member of the House Science Committee, said he had learned that NASA Earth science missions still in their early formulation phase, as well as those in extended operations, had been instructed to prepare termination plans for fiscal year 2026.
In an April 7 interview during the 40th Space Symposium, NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said she was not aware of any direction to prepare termination plans for those missions, adding that reports of major cuts were “rumors from really not credible sources.” However, an industry source later shared documents showing that those missions had indeed been given direction to prepare termination plans.
The OMB passback contradicts comments made by Jared Isaacman, the White House’s nominee for NASA administrator, at his April 9 confirmation hearing. “I’m an advocate for science,” he said, citing his public support last year for NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which had been threatened with budget cuts in NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal.
“NASA will be a force multiplier for science,” he said. “We will leverage NASA’s scientific talent and capabilities to enable academic institutions and industry to increase the rate of world-changing discoveries. We will launch more telescopes, more probes, more rovers and endeavor to understand our planet and the universe beyond.”
The passback has alarmed both advocates of science programs and some key members of Congress. “The proposed budget from within the White House — which cuts NASA science by 47% — would plunge NASA into a dark age,” The Planetary Society said in a statement. It argued the budget would result in “premature termination of dozens of active, productive spacecraft” and “halt the development of nearly every future science project at NASA.”
“The impacts of these proposed funding cuts would not only be devastating to the astronomical sciences community, but they would also have far-reaching consequences for the nation,” said Dara Norman, president of the American Astronomical Society, in a statement by the group. She noted the cuts would likely affect not just missions but also grant funding for scientists. “These cuts will certainly result in the loss of American leadership in science.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which funds NASA, raised concerns about the effect of the proposed cuts on NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which is located in Maryland.
“To gut NASA Goddard and the NASA Science Mission Directorate is not just shortsighted, it’s dangerous,” he said in a statement. He called the passback a “wholly unserious” proposal and would “fight tooth and nail against these cuts and to protect the critical work being done at NASA Goddard.”
“Donald Trump’s attack on NASA amounts to a form of national self-destruction and will have untold effects on the country’s scientific efforts, research objectives, and our standing around the globe,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), in a statement late April 11.
He cited specific concerns with the proposed cancellation of the Mars Sample Return program, which is run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “It’s a gift to China, and a slap in the face to those that have dedicated years to making the American space program the best in the world.”
“Effectuating these absurd cuts would destroy NASA’s ability to carry out its fundamental objectives, cut off their societal benefits, and spell catastrophe for the U.S. Earth and space science enterprise by throwing billions in already-made taxpayer investments into the trash heap,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Science Committee, in a statement.
Even Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX and a close adviser to President Trump, appeared dismayed by the NASA budget passback. “Troubling,” he posted on social media in response to one report on the proposed science cuts. “I am very much in favor of science, but unfortunately cannot participate in NASA budget discussions, due to SpaceX being a major contractor to NASA.”
Quelle: SN
