It should come as no surprise at this point that NASA will fall victim to massive budget cuts like so many other civilian agencies. While it will not disappear like the US Agency for International Development, it will be severely wounded as the result of a proposed 25 percent cut to its budget.
The White House’s proposed 2026 budget is setting aside $7 billion for the Moon missions and $1 billion for Mars missions, but it seems just about everything else is up for grabs. For instance, we would see the show shutdown of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft so they could become fully commercial. In addition, the orbiting lunar Gateway will be cut completely.
Specifically, the budget summary states:
The Budget phases out the grossly expensive and delayed Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule after three flights. SLS alone costs $4 billion per launch and is 140 percent over budget. The Budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions. The Budget also proposes to terminate the Gateway, a small lunar space station in development with international partners, which would have been used to support future SLS and Orion missions.
Moreover, the Mars funding would not cover the sample return mission. Hence, SpaceX might get a boost to head towards Mars while we are stranding samples that help us to understand why we might want to go to Mars. We will also see the end of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, pruning back the accomplishments we have made since the Hubble Space Telescope to make the universe more available to scientists and the public.
If we ignore the future of the Artemis mission for a moment, a NASA press release boasted about all the events over the past 100 days to prepare for the Artemis mission. This is a hopeful sign that the Moon mission is still vital and viable at the moment, even with the defunding efforts underway. However, given some of the recent failures of the private sector efforts to reach the Moon, and the continual delays in SpaceX’s Starship, the future for Moon missions after the SLS does not look too promising at the moment.
The future also looks somewhat bleak when you look at proposed cuts to NASA’s funding for space science, space technology, and STEM programs. The endless faith in the private sector forgets the benefits of a government supporting and nudging these efforts.
As Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy for The Planetary Society, clearly stated:
These cuts would cause irreparable losses, throwing away billions of dollars invested by the U.S. taxpayers in productive space hardware and infrastructure. Space science is a critical national investment that engages our cutting edge economic, scientific, and educational abilities across the country.
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