Updated 20 H Eastern with AIA comment.
Reykjavík, Iceland – NASA published more information on its budget for the 2026 financial year proposed on May 30, describing new investments in exploration at the expense of the cancellation of dozens of scientific missions and the reduction of thousands of jobs.
The documents provide more details on the high -level budget proposal for what the White House management and budget office (OMB) revealed in its “meager” budget published four weeks earlier. NASA has published budgetary documents on its late website a Friday without fanfare and without the traditional budget briefing by leadership of the agency.
This high -level budget of $ 18.8 billion would be a decrease of approximately a quarter, compared to almost $ 24.9 billion that he received during the year 2025. It is the reduction of the strongest year proposed for NASA and would lower the agency’s budget to levels for the last time in 1961 when it was corrected for inflation.
With budget cuts, job cuts will be cuts to NASA. A table of the budgetary document notes that NASA has 17,391 civil servants financed directly during the year 2025, but this would drop to 11,853 under the proposal for the year 2026, a reduction of a third party.
The document does not fall into the details of the cuts, with only references which do not reference to the “impacts of the workforce” and to the “efforts to reshape the workforce”.
Dozens of canceled missions
Documents confirm the stiff reductions in NASA scientific programs. NASA offers $ 3.9 billion for all NASA sciences during the year 2026, a 47% reduction in what the agency received in 2025.
These reductions largely come from the cancellation of many scientific missions still in development or in prolonged operations after having completed their primary missions. Casey Dreier, head of the Planetary Society space policy, said in an interview than more than 40 scientific projects, including autonomous missions and contributions to other missions, had been zero in the budget.
“This is usually what we expected,” he said, on the basis of the previously published figures.
These cuts include the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, which the lean budget highlighted for cancellation, and Landsat Next, a future land observation program which was the other scientific mission mentioned in the lean budget. NASA will rather endeavor to restructure Landsat then in an unpertified manner thanks to a separate program, sustainable land imagery.
In Earth Sciences, the budget proposes to cancel the missions in the missions of the Terrestrial System Observatory recommended by the latest decadal survey other than Grace-Continity, the last of a series of missions to monitor the gravity of the planet. Certain prolonged missions would also be affected, such as the cygnss satellites used to study tropical cyclones, and certain smaller venture capital class missions would be done at the end.
In addition to MSR, the budget proposes to end the financing of Mars Odyssey and Maven missions in orbit in orbit. It would also cancel NASA’s support for the Rosalind Franklin Mars Rover mission from the European Space Agency, where NASA has agreed to provide propellants, radio-isotopes heating units and a launch vehicle.
The other planetary scientific missions that the proposal seeks to cancel include Davinci and Veritas, two discovery class missions in Venus selected four years ago. NASA would also end its participation in the ESA Envision Mission in Venus. The budget puts an end to several planetary scientific missions in prolonged operations, notably Juno, New Horizons and Osiris-Apex, the reused Osiris-Rex spaceship heading towards the asteroid of the Earth near Apophis.
In astrophysics, NASA will continue to develop the Roman space telescope of Nancy Grace, Unlike a Budgetary Document of the COM in “pass” in April. However, it offers $ 156.6 million for novels, less than half of the $ 376.5 mission that NASA provided the expenses for the mission in 2026 in its 2025 budget request.
“NASA actively assesses the economy strategies and identifies opportunities for optimizing schedules to allow the mission to carry out this reduced level of financing,” said the budgetary document. The Dreier of the Planetary Society noted that it is not clear if the costs could be saved at this stage, because the telescope is far in its development and currently on the right track for a launch in the fall of 2026.
The budget would end many missions in current astrophysics, in particular the Observatory of the radiography of Chandra and Fermi. It would cancel the astrophysical probe program, which studied concepts for a billion dollars space telescope, as well as smaller explorer class missions such as the Compton spectrometer and the imagery as well as the Ultraviolet Explorer.
The proposal for a heliophysics budget would also end financing for several missions in progress, such as the multi-scheme magnetospheric, and would reduce funding for others. NASA’s biological and physical sciences would see its budget reduce more than two -thirds, from $ 87 million to 25 million dollars, “to support higher priorities within the agency”.
Dreier said it was surprised that missions were included, such as Maven, Juno and New Horizons, given their scientific performance and, in the case of Maven, providing communication services at Mars. He noted that the budget would effectively finish the production of plutonium-238 necessary for missions in the external solar system as well as heating units on other spacecrafts.
New exploration initiatives
The steep cuts in NASA science, as well as in space operations, space technology and several other fields, contrast with new exploration initiatives. As indicated in the lean budget, NASA seeks to cancel the lunar gateway and end the space launching system and Orion after the Artemis 3 mission.
The budget includes $ 864 million instead for a new Moon to Mars (M2M) infrastructure and commercial transport program. “This would go to develop a trade system to replace SLS / Orion as well as early work on” an appropriate spatial combination for use by astronauts on the Martian surface “. The program will also finance satellites of Lunar and Martian relay and will be the new home of the Trade Program of Lunar Payment Services, currently organized by the Directorate of the NASA Scientific Mission.
The overall budget offers more than a billion dollars for projects associated with human exploration in March. This amount includes a mission of $ 200 million for “short -term entry, a descent and a demonstration of landing for a human Lander Mars” and an additional $ 200 million for commercial charges in March. Budget documents, however, provide few details on these new initiatives.
Reaction
Dreier said that the planetary company experienced a strong response to the cuts proposed in the lean budget and expects the detailed budget to amplify these concerns.
“There are certainly a lot of important concerns about what it does in the workforce,” he said.
This budget will go to Congress, where even Republican members should push the cuts. Dreier said he heard even Republicans on Capitol Hill that the budget was “dead on arrival”.
“No one is impatient to cut the science of NASA. Nobody defends himself openly and says that it is an excellent idea,” he said.
The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) also criticized the cuts in a statement at the end of May 30. “The proposed budget is short, making intense discounts of the critical mission programs that could compromise our space leadership,” said Eric Fanning, president and chief executive officer of AIA.
The organization recommended that NASA be funded at a global level of 25.6 billion dollars or more in 2026.