Colorado Springs – Certain NASA land science missions have been invited to prepare for dismissal plans given the major budget budget potential for the agency’s global scientific activities.
Representative George Whitesides (D-Califorth Spatial symposium which he had recently learned that the two missions of earth science in the formulation and those of prolonged operations after their first -rate missions had been invited to prepare for dismissal plans from the 2026 fiscal year.
“To be clear, it is not yet the orientation of the agency, but the fact that we are preparing these scenarios is extremely worrying, and I will work very hard to ensure that we protect our Missions of Earth Science,” he said.
After the panel, he said he did not know if missions in other divisions of the Directorate of the Scientific Mission of NASA, such as astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary sciences, had received similar instructions. Even if this was limited to earth science, he said, the fact that these missions had been advised to prepare dismissal plans “scares me”.
Comments have fueled widespread speculation that the White House can request a major reduction in the NASA scientific budget in its budget proposal for the 2026 financial year, due later this spring. Some reports have suggested reductions as significant as 50% in the scientific budget of $ 7.3 billion in NASA.
During an audience of April 1 on the space subcommittee of the Chamber Science Committee on the Commercial Program of Lunar Lunar Charging Services of NASA, Whitesides asked Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA for science, if the agency made preparations for a decrease of 50%. She replied that NASA had not seen the budget request from the administration in 2026: “So we did not execute a scenarios because we do not know what is in there.”
Asked about the impact of this reduction in rumors to 50%, she said that it would depend on the details of the proposal. “But a 50% drop will cause fairly drastic decisions.”
The chairman of the chamber’s scientific committee, representative Brian Babin (R-Texas), was also at the Congress round table and said that he later adopted an expected approach to any scientific cup. “I’m not really going to lose sleep now until we get a few briefings on what’s going on,” he said.
“Peak uncertainty”
During a meeting of the committee of April 3 during the Société des Sciences Spatiales des Académies Nationales, Karen St. Germain, director of the Division of Earth Sciences of NASA, reported questions about the budget. “I have no budgetary information and I don’t really have any knowledge to share with regard to the decree on the reorganization of the agency,” she said. “It happens above my remuneration note.”
Other NASA officials in Space Science Week said they knew little or nothing about the upcoming budget and related problems. “I really believe that we are at the point of advanced uncertainty at the moment,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysical Division of NASA, at another meeting of the Committee on April 3. This uncertainty includes the budget and the potential restructuring of agencies as well as when the White House candidate for the NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, is confirmed.
The budgetary uncertainty for 2026 affects both the most recent and oldest missions of the agency’s astrophysical fleet. Domagal-Goldman said NASA is preparing to make a call for the next small explorer, or SMEX, astrophysical mission.
“The SMEX call will depend on the budgets we get for ’26 and beyond,” he said. “Our plan is to wait until we know what the budgetary climate will be under this administration before progressing with a release.”
This also applies to NASA’s response to a senior review of extended astrophysics missions, including the Hubble space telescope and the Chandra X -ray observatory. This review is complete but unpublished, and he praised the committee that developed him to examine these missions individually and as a system.
The challenge in the implementation of its recommendations is the budget. “I think that if we had flat budgets, I would know exactly what to do and I would be ready to move forward with it,” he said. “But I don’t know if we’re going to have that.”
He and other NASA officials at Space Science have declared that they had not yet received the “reactors” of the Office of Management and Budget, the draft budget of this Budget Proposal for the Fisc anvision 2026 which offers agencies the final opportunity to request modifications before the publication of the budget.
NASA also strives to implement an operating plan for the year 2025 after the passage in March of a continuous resolution in the year which finances the government at 2024. Charles Webb, acting director of the planetary science division of NASA, told the Société des sciences de l’Espace on March 31 that the Directorate of the Scientific Mission worked to allocate the total amount between the various divisions.
He said that the total budget of planetary science for 2025 should be close to what he had asked, because what he asked for 2025 was similar to what he received in 2024.
Add to uncertainty is thHe declared a termination of $ 420 million in “useless” contracts to NASAAnnounced by the Government Ministry of Efficiency on March 21 and confirmed by the agency on March 24. NASA has provided no details on the contracts that have been reduced. Casey Dreier, head of space policy at the Planetary Society, has looked for supply databases And only found about $ 74.5 million in NASA contracts that have been terminated.
Webb said he had not seen details on the terminated contracts, including those that could affect the work of his division. “I do not know what subsidies have been canceled. It is a very fluid situation,” he said, suggesting that decisions were made by the NASA shared services center, which manages supply activities.
An canceled contract that he knew involved the withdrawal of plants at the NASA headquarters. “People have passed one day and they took all our plants,” he said. “I don’t know how much money has saved.”