Congress Is Squaring Up To The Trump Administration Over The Fate Of NASA

The proposed budget was released on April 3. Among many deep cuts to medical and scientific agencies, the White House has proposed to cut NASA’s budget by 23 percent compared to last year. The main focus is on massively reducing the science budget, cutting it by 46 percent, from $7.25 billion to $3.9 billion.

The budget proposal last year was similarly devastating for NASA, with many missions expected to be canceled. Most of it was reversed by Congress when the budget was eventually approved months later, but it has been revealed over the last several months that some of the cuts were illegally implemented anyway during that time. Back in November, journalist Josh Dinner reported for Space.com that the non-approved budget cuts were acted upon at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the agency’s flagship center for space science.

"Goddard, amongst all of the NASA centers, was hit especially hard last year due to the president's proposed budget cuts before Congress enacted anything into law,” Dinner, who is Space.com's Spaceflight Staff Writer, told IFLScience. “They began cutting programs, encouraging employees to take the deferred resignation offers from the federal government and from within the agency.”

The illegal implementation of the cuts was also highlighted by the Science Committee's Democratic staff in a recent report. This has affected several missions, including the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS), which was set to be one of NASA's biggest astrophysics science missions of the coming decades.

NASA’s Role As Leader Of Space Science At Risk 

If the new budget passes as currently proposed, it would be devastating for space science in general and would completely undermine NASA’s role as a leader in the field, a surprising move mere weeks after the space agency's accomplishment of sending humans to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. Speaking to The Planetary Society, IFLScience was told that this is one of the least transparent budgets ever put forward, and they had to dig deep to work out exactly what was at risk of being cut.

They estimate 53 missions would be canceled and over 80 would be affected. On the canceled list are currently extremely successful missions such as Juno and New Horizons, as is OSIRIS-APEX, which successfully brought the largest haul of asteroid material ever to Earth, and is due to meet dangerous asteroid Apophis in 2029, after the European and Japanese mission RAMSES.

There are many missions already in space studying our planet and its changing climate. The cuts would also cancel both VERITAS and DAVINCI, NASA’s two flagship missions to Venus that were set to revolutionize our understanding of the planet, how we can avoid its fate, and the evolution of Earth-sized worlds.

“These missions were already selected back in 2021. NASA has never cancelled, to my knowledge, a planetary-focused, principal investigator-led, competitively selected mission,” a senior planetary scientist, who we are keeping anonymous, told IFLScience.

“If NASA were to cancel one (or both), the agency would be ending a mission it itself had selected for no reason to do with the mission team(s). Doing so would send a dreadful signal to the planetary community: that you could propose a mission, have it selected against incredibly stiff competition, and still have it cancelled through no fault of your own. Why would the community then invest their time and energy in any future competition?”

Artemis III Is Getting Delayed Again

It appears that there is no level of ground-breaking science that a mission can deliver to not be affected. Mars rover Perseverance has found the best evidence so far of a potential biological signature on the Red Planet, in the Cheyava fall rock. It is slated to lose about 50 percent of its budget. JWST has been pushing the envelope on what is possible to achieve with an infrared space telescope, including finding the most distant galaxy yet, and it would lose one-third of its funding. Hubble, still going strong at 36 years old, would lose one-quarter.

Long-term plans for science are also in jeopardy, such as the proposed cancelation of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a space telescope designed to look for life signatures on Earth-like planets from the 2040s. On Monday, April 27, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman was on Capitol Hill for a budget hearing by the House Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee. Speaking on HWO, he stated that he’d already discussed whether the mission could be sent to space in phases to be cheaper, which has brought plenty of scorn online, with people wondering how he plans to send a single telescope into space in phases.

When the budget proposal first came out, it was during the Artemis II mission. Many were shocked at the timing, commenting on how the White House was happy to share the mission photos from beyond the Moon and brag about its success while at the same time pushing for huge cuts at the agency. The budget actually increases the funding for the Artemis program, the proposed plans for a lunar base, and more lunar infrastructure by $1.015 billion, although possibly not as much as will actually be needed for those to succeed.

“NASA is one of the best brands the US has. Artemis II showed just the immense pride people have in having a world-class space program and really showed what we're capable of as a nation. And to have that happening while they're proposing these massive cuts was just such a shift in tone for the administration. It clearly showed that the people that wrote the budget, the Office of Management and Budget, are so out of touch with reality: people love NASA.” Jack Kiraly, director of government relations for The Planetary Society, told IFLScience.

There are other issues looming for the Artemis program, mainly the very optimistic timeline of having two Moon landings in 2028. NASA has no Moon landing vehicle, so during the first Trump administration, the agency was directed to look to private companies to provide a human landing system (HLS). The two selected – resulting from a legal battle – were SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon. 

During the hearing this week, Isaacman stated that both Blue Origin and SpaceX have confirmed that the two HLS will be ready to be tested in low-Earth orbit in late 2027 for Artemis III. This is at odds with the plan released last month with multiple press conferences, which has the mission launch in mid-2027. Whether the landers will be ready, as well as the profile and timeline of Artemis IV and Artemis V, remains to be seen.

Congress Is Poised To Fight NASA’s Cuts 

Senators and representatives on both sides seem to be ready to fight tooth and nail for NASA this time around. That includes Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. When it comes to NASA, the White House appears to be hemorrhaging support from Congress.

“Obviously, we are not big fans of this budget proposal, nor is basically anybody in Congress or even elsewhere in the administration. This is a very unpopular proposal,” Kiraly told IFLScience. “I think the American public has made clear how unpopular these cuts are.”

NASA’s support among US citizens is incredibly high, according to a recent IPSO survey. An incredible 80 percent of people have favorable opinions of NASA, with 90 percent stating the importance of NASA’s work in monitoring the Earth’s climate, weather, and natural disasters, and 83 percent favorable on exploring the Solar System with tools like telescopes and robots – all things that the White House wants to cut. Despite most of the proposed cuts ultimately being reversed, last year’s budget proposal had major effects, and Congress doesn’t seem keen on taking a chance this year.

“NASA lost, I think, over 4,000 employees then. It was a huge cut to the workforce. It was a huge loss to a lot of the science programs. And we're still seeing the repercussions of that,” Dinner told IFLScience.

“Part of the problem last year, why so much damage had been done, was because Congress took a long time to respond to the proposed cuts,” Kiraly explained.

Members of Congress in both the House and Senate have been very vocal that they will make sure that the budget proposal for NASA doesn’t become law. Things also appear to be moving a lot quicker this time around, months ahead of how it was playing out last year.

“We could have substantial action taken on the NASA budget by the middle of June… that's huge,” Kiraly told IFLScience. “They seem very focused this year, at least in terms of the NASA budget in rejecting the cuts and providing the appropriate funding for the agency.”

While these facts all seem positive, the Planetary Society still urges members of the public to get in touch with their elected representatives.

“People want NASA; they showed up in force last year and have already started showing up this year. And so just keep the letters coming,” Kiraly continued. “Keep the phone calls coming. Keep the visits coming, because it really does make a difference, and it really gives the confidence to our elected representatives and senators to make the right decision.”