‘What a waste:’ US scientists decry Trump’s 47% cuts to NASA science budget

President Donald Trump has been requesting U.S. assistance since January, when he took office for the second time. S. government agencies to carry out some rather drastic reforms. It has been, to put it mildly, tense. International college students now face the possibility of losing their legal status, research grants have been canceled in large sweeps, programs that promote diversity in the workplace have been discontinued, and thousands of federal employees have been laid off without any justification.

NASA is one of the government agencies that might be most affected.

The Trump administration has put the agency under exceptional pressure in a number of areas, including website purging, goal restructuring, and surveillance. Other federal science agencies have also been targeted, including the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The area of U. A. Because science appears to be faltering for political rather than scientific reasons, scientists are discouraged by their government and fearful of what lies ahead.

“I don’t believe that saying that morale among U.S. S. -based scientists is at a record low,” Sarah Horst, an associate professor at The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told Space . com. “People are scared for the future of the United States, their jobs, their students, and the projects they have worked on for decades. “..”.

When the Trump administration released its budget request for NASA for fiscal year 2026 on May 30, the situation only got worse. It suggests reducing agency staff by roughly one-third, from 17,391 to 11,853, and slashing agency funding for science by 47%. Although Congress must formally approve this budget before it can go into effect, the consequences could be severe.

Space . com was informed by Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit exploration and advocacy group, that “that would represent the smallest NASA workforce since mid-1960, before the first American had launched into space”.

John O’Meara, the chief scientist at the Keck Observatory, told Space . com, “If this budget is made real, I am most concerned about people.”. Missions provide vital information, but without the people to analyze it, test hypotheses, and disseminate findings, the information is useless. “.

A “extinction-level event.”.

In a statement criticizing the report, the Planetary Society said that the White House’s 2026 NASA budget proposal would eliminate 41 projects, which is perhaps the most startling feature of the plan.

Dreier stated, “We warned people about this extinction-level event.”.

Details: The Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, which was intended to bring samples of the Red Planet’s surface to Earth, would be canceled due to the drastically cut budget. These samples are being collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover over the past few years, and scientists have long emphasized that laboratory analysis is necessary to fully utilize the samples.

In fairness, MSR has had its share of issues since its inception, such as a hefty price tag and what some consider to be an overly intricate sample retrieval mechanism. However, a large portion of Perseverance’s work on the Red Planet would be wasted if the project were abruptly cancelled rather than resolved.

Additionally, the OSIRIS-APEX mission—which you might recall from its former name, OSIRIS-REx—would be terminated. This mission successfully launched a spacecraft to the asteroid Bennu, which is located several billions of miles away. The spacecraft then collected a few pieces of the asteroid before returning to Earth and safely releasing the samples. Now in its second round, this same probe is en route to investigate the notorious asteroid Apophis; however, it will not finish its journey if the FY26 NASA budget is approved.

According to McGill, “in-flight missions that already have a significant investment in both taxpayer dollars and people’s lives/careers (including my own) are what matter most to me personally.”. “Fortunately, most of my work on Mars2020 [Perseverance] and [the Curiosity Mars rover] is safe, but a lot of other things aren’t. “.

Additionally, the budget calls for shutting down the Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting the gas giant in our solar system since 2016 and consistently provides rich data about the planet and its moons. The astronomical community holds Juno in high regard because of all those swirling blue pictures of Jupiter. It took five years for the spacecraft to reach its current location and many more years for its construction.

“Only the cancellations of operating missions amount to more than $12 billion in taxpayer value, and once they are eliminated, they are gone forever. Dreier stated that replacing them would require years and additional financial resources.

Additionally, for the second time, NASA would have to end its partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the Rosalind Franklin rover, a robotic life-hunting explorer that is scheduled to launch toward Mars in 2028. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, ESA severed its ties with its other partner, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and NASA re-entered the rover program. NASA had to withdraw from the program in 2012 due to budget cuts as well. Because of this, the U. A. The next time we ask for assistance, our allies and an unreliable partner will be reluctant,” Dreier said.

It would also cancel the DaVinci and VERITAS missions, which would explore Venus, the New Horizons spacecraft, which is currently studying the outer reaches of the solar system, and two active Mars orbiters, Mars Odyssey and MAVEN. NASA also planned to cancel the Lunar Gateway, which would have served as a kind of lunar version of the International Space Station.

The extent of cuts made within specific departments of each agency was unexpected. O’Meara cited astrophysics as an example, where the budget was reduced by almost two-thirds.

That massive cut to astrophysics could result in the termination of eight spacecraft (such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory) that are devoted to studying extreme events in the universe, according to the Planetary Society’s analysis of the budget. Additionally, this analysis proposes the cancellation of roughly a dozen Earth-specific missions that assist scientists in tracking global warming and predicting natural disasters like hurricanes, as well as ten missions built to study the area around Earth and the sun.

The latter is particularly alarming, considering how quickly the planet is warming as a result of human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions, including burning coal for cheap electricity, which is encouraged by the Trump administration. According to the budget proposal, the White House also wants NASA to stop funding “green aviation,” which focuses on improving the environmental impact of aircraft, and instead focus on “protecting the development of technologies with air traffic control and defense applications.”. “.”.

It is also important to keep in mind that other Trump-mandated actions have also had a significant impact on climate initiatives: for instance, the closure of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which holds climate change records going back to the 1800s, and the layoff of over 800 NOAA employees prompted members of the agency’s largest union to express solidarity with their colleagues.

Hundreds of scientists who were working on the National Climate Assessment, a massive report that informs policymakers about the risks posed by climate change, were also fired. (That was a representation of all the report’s authors).

According to O’Meara, “the entire field has been severely disrupted by this budget request and its implications.”. “We are compelled to concentrate on ‘what-if’ planning, which is subject to quick scope changes. That diverts attention from our primary task, which is conducting science and disseminating it globally. “..”.

Heading for Mars?

Additionally, a shift toward human missions to the Red Planet is at the heart of the White House’s FY26 NASA budget proposal—a rare area that received a budget boost in the President’s request.

In order to enable a crewed mission to Mars, NASA should invest “more than $1 billion in new technology investments,” according to one slide in the budget summary. According to another, the agency should set aside “$80M to begin deploying communications relay capabilities for Mars, and $200M for Commercial Mars Payload Services (CMPS) to begin launching robotic precursor missions to the Martian surface.”. “.

Kevin McGill, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, the agency’s lead center for robotic planetary exploration, told Space . com, “It just bothers me that they are changing almost the entirety of NASA’s mission to this pipe dream of a human mission to Mars in any reasonable time frame and cost.”.

Inquiring about the potential effects of these budget cuts, Space Dot Com contacted NASA and was referred to acting administrator Janet Petro’s statement in the proposal’s Technical Supplement. This statement, which highlights things like a renewed push for human spaceflight to the moon and Mars, supports the budget request overall.

The President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for NASA is a reflection of the Trump-Vance Administration’s fiscal responsibility and commitment to enhancing American leadership in space exploration. It states, “We hope to create a Golden Age of invention and discovery with this budget.”.

With Trump’s ties to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, this move toward Mars crewed missions may have been expected. Perhaps previous affiliation, considering the intense online feud between the two that is currently taking place. ).

Musk worked closely with Trump during the last four months and was a major supporter of his campaign. The Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), for instance, was led by the CEO of SpaceX and was primarily in charge of cutting government funding in the name of “saving wasted taxpayer money.”. On his own, Musk has established himself as perhaps the most vocal supporter of settling Mars, even stating that he hopes to “die on Mars.”. SpaceX and its supporters are totally committed to reaching that objective.

“On its own, a serious human-to-Mars campaign should be exciting — Mars exploration is a worthy goal, and The Planetary Society has advocated for that for years,” Dreier stated. However, the price is too high here. “,”.

The White House’s expectation of accomplishing this significant objective while simultaneously cutting NASA’s workforce at an unprecedented rate is another worry Dreier has. Adding, “This isn’t just poor policy,”. “It is essentially inefficient and wasteful, which is precisely what this administration claims it does not desire. “.”.

Furthermore, the layoffs might be even more widespread than expected.

According to McGill, JPL’s recent return-to-office order further harmed the already low morale that existed there following the agency’s massive layoffs last year. For background, JPL told nearly 5,500 employees who had been working remotely since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that they needed to go back to face-to-face work. August was when that return was due. 25 for general staff in California and October. 27 for those who work remotely and are not in the state.

In an email obtained by Space . com, JPL officials stated that “employees who do not return by their required date will be considered to have resigned.”.

A NASA employee at JPL who was not given permission to speak on behalf of the agency previously told Space . com, “It’s evident that it’s a silent layoff of the over 1,000 remote employees who they don’t want to pay severance to.”.

The order “threatens to decimate the workforce and a lot of critical institutional knowledge,” according to McGill. “,”.

He remarked, “I love JPL and its mission, but it’s been a rough time as of late,”.

The bill is “dead on arrival.”.

There are both positive and negative news regarding the budget proposal’s likelihood of passing, Dreier said. The good news is that, as he explains, the proposal appears to be unpopular with both parties.

Several congressional offices, both Democratic and Republican, have told us directly that this budget is “dead on arrival,” he stated.

Significantly, U. A. Sen. On Friday, June 6, Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, issued his legislative directives for the Senate Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill. The senator suggests allocating an additional $10 billion to NASA’s science programs. While the majority of this funding is aligned with the agency’s Mars initiatives in the FY26 budget request, some of it would be allocated to other projects, such as the Lunar Gateway and the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket intended for moon exploration.

It is not surprising that everyone is opposed to the budget proposal. The United States, which is bipartisan. S. For example, the Planetary Science Caucus previously issued a statement against the proposal’s initial drafts, which proposed the massive cuts that are currently being proposed.

“Reports of a draft White House budget that would cut NASA Science funding by nearly half and end dozens of programs that are already well underway, such as the Roman Space Telescope and the Mars Sample Return mission, are extremely alarming,” co-chairs Rep. California Democrat Judy Chu and Rep. The author is Don Bacon (R-Nebraska).

The length of time it takes for space missions to come to fruition makes such cross-party agreement logical. Cooperation is not only essential, but also inevitable.

“Hand-off from one administration to another is necessary for spaceflight, and human spaceflight in particular,” Dreier stated. For a single presidential administration, the timelines are simply too lengthy. “,”.

Unfortunately, the White House might have a solution.

According to Dreier, “it is unlikely that appropriations will be in place by October 1st of this year, even if Congress ultimately rejects this budget, given the slow pace of legislation and gridlock we’ve seen in recent years.”. “The White House budget office will cut spending to match their budget, which is the lowest of all potential budget scenarios, if there is another continuing resolution. Therefore, we must consider the possibility that these cuts will be implemented automatically. Considering how deep and wide these cuts are, recovery might be extremely difficult. “.

He went on to say, “This budget proposal threatens to tear down that carefully crafted coalition in favor of a narrow vision that lacks the political durability necessary for long-term success.”.

How wasteful. “..”.