On the eve of the International Day of Human Space Flight, information has emerged about the Trump administration's plans to cut NASA's science budget by 50%. This is reported by SpaceNews. This concerns the budget for 2026.
According to the draft budget, NASA's overall spending is to be cut by 20% from $25 billion in 2025 to $20 billion in 2026. But the agency's science budget, which is $7.3 billion, is to be reduced to $3.9 billion, that is, by almost 50%.
The biggest losses are expected to be suffered by the astrophysics division, whose funding is being cut from $1.5 billion to $500 million, i.e. three times. This will, among other things, lead to the cancellation of the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (relatively speaking, it is a "wide-angle Hubble"), the preparation of which is already in the final stages and which was supposed to go into space in the spring of 2027 (the destination is the L2 Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system).
Earth science will be underfunded by 50%. Solar science by 50%. Planetary science by 30%, likely leading to the cancellation of the Mars soil sample return mission and the DAVINCI mission to Venus (possible launch window 2030-2033).
This is still a proposal, the budget still needs to be approved by Congress. But Republicans have a majority there, so the vote will likely not be in favor of NASA and science.
Even Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and a close advisor to President Trump, was surprised by the NASA budget cut. "This is disturbing. I am a big supporter of science, but unfortunately I cannot participate in the NASA budget discussion because SpaceX is a prime contractor for NASA," the businessman wrote on Twitter/X.