Today the House and Senate came together to agree on NASA’s FY 2026 budget, and the news could not have been better. Overall, NASA is looking at basically a flat budget (compared to a threatened 24 percent cut) with only a 1 percent cut in science funding from last year’s level (compared to the threatened 47 percent cut). The only thing left on the table – or should we say on the Martian surface – is the sample return.
Of course, all of this came after the Agency gutted its personnel, threatened the remaining employees, and demoralized everyone down to the janitors. After you add to that the cancelling of science conferences, the end of student programs, and trashing of libraries and data, you can imagine the cheers are present but weak due to exhaustion.
Credit certainly goes to a House and Senate that showed bipartisan support for the maintenance of NASA and its missions. This should make the new NASA Administrator very happy as he tries to sort through the muck from earlier this year and find a path forward.
Now we just has to hope that this bill can get through the White House. Given that foreign policy is the preferred policy these days, and DOGE is MIA, it may actually happen.
Our Awesome Universe 