Trump Administration Proposes Cutting $6 Billion From NASA’s Budget
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for next year calls for sweeping cuts to many of NASA’s programs, including a plan to phase out the agency’s Boeing Co.-made moon rocket, reduce crews and operations on the International Space Station and gut science initiatives.
Trump’s funding request would decrease NASA’s budget by more than $6 billion from what the agency received for 2025. The proposed $18.8 billion budget includes cuts across NASA’s entire portfolio, but the biggest changes would fall on the agency’s science programs, with a nearly $2.3 billion reduction in funding.
In the budget plan, the White House calls on NASA to phase out the “grossly expensive and delayed” Boeing-built Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket and the Lockheed Martin Corp. Orion crew capsule after just three flights. The budget includes a plan to replace the vehicles with “more cost-effective commercial systems” for sending humans to the moon.
Powerful members of
Congress like Texas lawmakers Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Brian Babin have fiercely defending the current architecture to go back to the moon, including the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, potentially leading to a major budget battle for the agency.
The administration also wants to cancel NASA’s Gateway, a new space station being developed for astronauts to live and work around the moon and NASA’s long-term plan to bring samples of Martian soil to Earth, known as Mars Sample Return.
In 2024, NASA said that the Mars Sample Return program had grown vastly over budget and was behind schedule, prompting the agency to seek alternative solutions for the project from commercial industry.
The cuts were detailed in a so-called “skinny budget,” which contains the top-line budget requests from the White House for agencies, along with broad information on how the money will be allocated.
The White House also proposed decreasing the amount of crews working on the International Space Station as NASA prepares to retire the orbiting laboratory by 2030.
That would also coincide with “significantly reduced” flights to send crew and cargo to the space station, the budget said. Such a proposal would reduce the amount of science experiments being done on the ISS, while the remainder would focus on “efforts critical to the moon and Mars exploration programs.”
The budget calls for a more than $7 billion increase in funding for lunar exploration, as well as a new $1 billion investment for Mars-focused exploration.
Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator who is awaiting a confirmation vote, called the proposed science cuts not
“optimal” and said that he wants to see the space agency continue the Artemis program while
simultaneously pursuing a mission to Mars.
In late May, the White House is expected to send its fully-fleshed out budget proposal to Congress, which should include a more detailed look into any policy changes for the space agency such as cancellations of existing programs or launches of new ones. The numbers and allocations for NASA could change as the budget process continues to be reviewed in Congress.
