Updated 22 H Eastern with additional comments.
DENVER – The White House offers steep cuts in the NASA scientific program which, if implemented, would cancel several major missions, contradicting the administration candidate’s complaints to lead the agency.
A project of the White House budget proposal sent to NASA on April 10 by the Management and Budget Office (OMB) would reduce around 20% of the agency’s overall expenditure levels, but would reduce the expenses of the agency’s scientific programs by almost 50%.
The document, known as Passback, is not published publicly but is sent to agencies like NASA to allow them to make final calls before the official deployment of the budget proposal. Ars Technica reported for the first time On the pass.
According to familiar sources with the details of the drafting, the budget would reduce the budget of the NASA base, or overall, to around $ 20 billion. NASA received around $ 25 billion for the 2025 financial year in a continuous resolution (CR) which kept the agencies and other agencies at 2024.
This CR is funding for the NASA scientific mission management at around $ 7.3 billion. However, the Passback would only provide $ 3.9 billion for management in 2026, a drop of almost 50% compared to 2025.
The greatest success would be in the astrophysical division of NASA, which received approximately 1.5 billion dollars in 2024 (NASA did not finish the allowances to its scientific divisions for 2025 according to continuous resolution levels), but would obtain less than $ 500 million in 2026. It would propose the cancellation of the Nancy Grace Space Telescope, Launch in late 2026.
Earth science would be reduced by just over 50% to just over a billion dollars, while heliophysics would see a drop of almost 50% to around $ 450 million.
The budget would provide $ 1.9 billion for planetary science, about a third less than it received in 2024. However, it would cancel the Mars sample return program, which has undergone cost and planning overruns that led to An agency decision in January to study two alternative approaches. He would also cancel Davinci, A Venus mission selected as part of the discovery program almost four years ago.
The Passback seems to confirm rumors swirling for weeks in the space community that the Trump administration would seek to make major discounts of the science of NASA. During a event of April 6, representative George Whitesides (D-Calif.), A median of the Chamber Sciences Committee, said that he had learned that the scientific missions of the NASA land are still in their early formulation phase, as well as those of prolonged operations, had been invited to prepare dismissal plans for the year 2026.
In an interview of April 7 during 40th Spatial symposium, the interim administrator of NASA, Janet Petro, said She did not know any direction to prepare for dismissal plans for these missionsAdding that major cuts reports were “truly unbearable rumors of sources”. However, a source of the industry then shared documents showing that these missions had indeed learned to prepare dismissal plans.
The OMB passback contradicts the comments made by Jared Isaamman, the White House candidate for the NASA administrator, During her confirmation hearing on April 9. “I am a defender of science,” he said, quoting his public support last year for the NASA X-ray observatory, who had been threatened with budget reductions in the budget proposal for NASA 2025.
“NASA will be a multiplier of strength for science,” he said. “We take advantage of the talents and scientific capacities of NASA to allow university institutions and the industry to increase the rate of discoveries in the world. We will launch more telescopes, more probes, more Rovers and we will endeavor to understand our planet and the universe beyond. ”
The Passback has both alarmed defenders of scientific programs and certain key members of the Congress. “The proposed budget of the White House – which reduces the science of NASA by 47% – would plunge NASA at a dark age,” the planetary company said in a press release. He argued that the budget would lead to a “premature termination of dozens of active and productive space vessels” and “hated the development of almost all future scientific projects at NASA”.
“The impacts of these proposed financing reductions would not only be devastating for the community of astronomical sciences, but they would also have a large scale for the nation,” said Dara Norman, president of the American Astronomical Society, in a group declaration. She noted that the cuts would probably affect not only the missions, but also the granting of the financing of scientists. “These cuts will certainly lead to the loss of American leadership in science.”
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD.), Classification member of the Sub-Committee on Commerce, Justice and Sciences of the Senate Credit Committee, which finances NASA, has raised concerns about the effect of the discounts proposed on the NASA Space Flight Center Goddard, which is located in Maryland.
“To interact NASA Goddard and the Directorate of the Scientific Mission of NASA is not only short-sighted, it is dangerous,” he said in a statement. He described the Passback a proposal “completely not unbalanced” and “would fight against these cuts and to protect the critical work in progress at NASA Goddard”.
“Donald Trump’s attack on NASA is equivalent to a form of national self-destruction and will have unspeakable effects on the country’s scientific efforts, research objectives and our position in the world,” said senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), In a statement at the end of April.
He has cited specific concerns about the proposed cancellation of the Mars samples return program, which is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “It is a gift for China and a slap in front of those who have devoted years to the best American space program.”
“Performing these absurd cuts would destroy NASA’s ability to achieve its fundamental objectives, to cut their societal advantages and to spell the disaster for the Earth and American Espace Company by launching billions of investments already made in taxpayers in the pile of trash,” said representative Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Member of the Chamber Scientific Committee statement.
Even Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and advisor close to President Trump, seemed dismayed by the NASA budget passback. “Disturbing”, he poster On social networks in response to a report on the proposed scientific cuts. “I am very favorable to science, but unfortunately I cannot participate in the budgetary discussions of NASA, because SpaceX is a major entrepreneur of NASA.”