Mars prioritized by Trump administration in detailed NASA budget
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Universe’s mysteries may never be solved because of Trump’s Nasa cuts, experts say
“Is Mars habitable for life? Is Venus? How many Earth-like planets are there? Those types of questions will not be answered because we just decided not to answer them. We’re abandoning literally decades of debate and discussion and justification”“An extinction-level event is when something like an asteroid hits Earth and life that has been otherwise perfectly well-functioning, healthy ecosystems that have been balanced and functioning. That’s functionally what this budget is,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society. “What this does is turn off the spigot of discovery, the investments we’’re making now that are going to pay off in five years, 10 years, maybe 20 years, that may fundamentally reshape our understanding of our place in the cosmos, our origins.” “If the budget is approved by Congress, opponents say, longstanding Nasa labs will close, deep-space missions, including many already under way, will be abandoned, and a new generation of exploration and discovery will never reach the launchpad”
The Trump administration revealed last month its plan to slash the space agency’s overall budget by 24% to $18.8bn, the lowest figure since 2015. Space and Earth science missions would bear the brunt of the cutbacks, losing more than 53% of what was allocated to them in 2024.
If the budget is approved by Congress, opponents say, longstanding Nasa labs will close, deep-space missions, including many already under way, will be abandoned, and a new generation of exploration and discovery will never reach the launchpad.
Two of the most notable casualties will be the Mars sample return mission, which had been in doubt on cost grounds for a while, and the Davinci+ and Veritas projects. The latter two were announced during the Biden administration and planned for the early 2030s; they would have sent Nasa back to study Venus for the first time since 1989.
Advocates are highlighting the future discoveries that will not be made, as much as the loss of initiatives that were extensively planned years ago, as they ramp up their campaign to persuade Washington lawmakers to defy the president and preserve or even expand Nasa’s funding.
“An extinction-level event is when something like an asteroid hits Earth and life that has been otherwise perfectly well-functioning, healthy ecosystems that have been balanced and functioning, are wiped out in large numbers. That’s functionally what this budget is,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, which is rallying Congress members to oppose the budget.
“Projects that are functioning, that are on budget and on time, that are already paid for and returning good science, would be decimated. You’d see missions turned off mid-flight, extended missions put into hibernation or left to tumble in space. You’d see projects that could launch next year canceled summarily, and hundreds if not thousands of scientists and engineers and others laid off due to loss of research money and technology investments.
“What this does is turn off the spigot of discovery, the investments we’re making now that are going to pay off in five years, 10 years, maybe 20 years, that may fundamentally reshape our understanding of our place in the cosmos, our origins.
“Is Mars habitable for life? Is Venus? How many Earth-like planets are there? Those types of questions will not be answered because we just decided not to answer them. We’re abandoning literally decades of debate and discussion and justification.”
As well as the planetary missions, a significant number of other science projects that have been in the works for years face the axe. While the Trump administration proposes to slash Nasa’s overall budget, it also seeks to prioritize and grant extra funding to crewed spaceflight – particularly the first human missions to Mars, a stated focus of the president and his as-yet unconfirmed pick for Nasa administrator, the entrepreneur Jared Isaacman.
The advocates say a particularly acute loss to un-crewed science would be the $3.9bn Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, a successor to the James Webb and Hubble telescopes that have produced stunning images and unexpected insight into the origins of the universe.
If the telescope, which is nearing completion and set for launch before May 2027, is scrapped, 200,000 possible planets beyond our solar system may never be discovered, more than one billion galaxies might never be surveyed, and secrets of black holes, dark matter and dark energy may never be uncovered, the Planetary Society said.
Billions of dollars have already been spent on it, and killing it now would be “nuts”, astrophysicist David Spergel told Scientific American last month.
Other experts lament the distancing of the Trump administration from science, and believe it will allow other nations to catch or eclipse US leadership in space.
“What’s happening now, and that’s beyond Nasa, is this general atmosphere of: ‘No, science is not important to us as much as it used to be,’” said Ehud Behar, a high-energy astrophysicist at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and a former Nasa researcher.
“Is the US going to be left behind? It might take time, this is not going to happen tomorrow, but China has enough people, they have enough scientists. If they are going to invest much more in science and technology development, they’re going to be more competitive, and they’re going to achieve things within five to 10 years that today maybe only Nasa can achieve.”
Behar also fears a “brain drain” of Nasa’s top talent.
“There are a lot of good people in these agencies, and they’ve made a living of being innovative on a budget that was always limited. If somebody thinks that you walk into Nasa and you have boxes of dollars falling on your head, that’s not the case when you want to do a mission,” he said.
“Even in the best years, you never had enough money to do everything you wanted. So these people are pretty well-trained to find ways with less funding to get the job done. You can count on these people as long as you hold on to them.
“Hanging on to your best people is one of the main challenges when you have to cut the budget.”
Dreier said there had been “productive” conversations with congressional politicians on both sides of the aisle, and that a number of Republicans and Democrats were pushing for an increase to Nasa’s science budget in place of the cuts.
The argument to them, he said, is simple: why throw away so much of what has already been bought and paid for?
“It’s just like we’re giving up and turning away. Instead of looking up, we’re turning down and inwards,” he said.
“This is a budget of retrenchment, this is a budget of retreat. It’s basically the equivalent of hunching over a cellphone and swiping through pictures of the Grand Canyon while you’re sitting at the edge of it in reality and not even bothering to look.”
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission May Get Cancelled As Trump Calls It ‘Unaffordable’
The US government has reportedly proposed slashing 47 percent from NASA’s science funds in its budget blueprint for the fiscal year 2026. Overall, the agency will face about 24 percent reduction in its yearly budget – from $24.9 billion in 2025 to $18.8 billion for next year. One of these missions is the Mars Sample Return which has been labelled as “low priority” and “unaffordable” as it is “grossly over budget” China has also planned to launch a mission – Tianwen-3 – by 2028 and bring Martian rocks by 2031.
The Donald Trump administration’s budget proposal has sparked concerns at NASA as it could lead to cancellation of several major missions. One of these missions is the Mars Sample Return which has been labelled as “low priority” and “unaffordable” as it is “grossly over budget.”
The US government has reportedly proposed slashing 47 percent from NASA’s science funds in its budget blueprint for the fiscal year 2026. Overall, the agency will face about 24 percent reduction in its yearly budget – from $24.9 billion in 2025 to $18.8 billion for next year.
In the blueprint presented earlier this month, the government underscored that reducing the Mars Sample Return budget would be in line with NASA’s objectives of returning astronauts to the Moon before China as well as Mars. The sample return mission is to bring back rock samples collected by the Perseverance rover which has been looking for signs of past and present life on Mars since 2021. Investigating those rocks using technology on Earth would have revealed more secrets about the red planet’s past which the rover missed.
The blueprint also noted that the mission to bring the samples will not launch before the 2030s. Interestingly, China has also planned to launch a mission – Tianwen-3 – by 2028 and bring Martian rocks by 2031.
ALSO SEE: China Announces Tianwen-3 Mission To Bring Mars Samples By 2031
A recent estimate revealed it would cost NASA $11 billion to bring the Martian rocks by 2040. “The bottom line is, an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away,” former NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a press conference in 2024.
As a result of the rising cost, the US government believes NASA’s objectives of bringing rocks can be achieved by human missions which may be launched by the end of this decade. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that he will launch the Starship rocket to Mars with Tesla’s Optimus robot in late 2026 and if all goes well, astronaut missions would follow by 2028.
The billionaire has also called colonisation of the Moon a “distraction” saying he will go directly to Mars. Trump’s pick for NASA administrator Jared Isaacman also said during a senate hearing in April that under his watch, NASA will prioritise Mars while beating China to the Moon.
ALSO SEE: Elon Musk Sets Starships Mars Mission By The End Of 2026; The First Astronomer On Board Will Be…
(Image: NASA)
Some parts of Trump’s proposed budget for NASA are literally draconian
The White House wants to end the development of an experimental nuclear thermal rocket engine. The leftover funding for NASA’s human exploration program would go toward supporting commercial projects to land on the Moon and Mars. If the Trump administration gets its way, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, or STMD, will see its budget cut nearly in half. Both Republican-controlled houses of Congress will write their own versions of the NASA budget, which must be reconciled before going to the White House for President Trump’s signature.
Trump’s NASA budget request is rife with spending cuts. Overall, the White House proposes reducing NASA’s budget by about 24 percent, from $24.8 billion this year to $18.8 billion in fiscal year 2026. In previous stories, Ars has covered many of the programs impacted by the proposed cuts, which would cancel the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft and terminate numerous robotic science missions, including the Mars Sample Return, probes to Venus, and future space telescopes.
Instead, the leftover funding for NASA’s human exploration program would go toward supporting commercial projects to land on the Moon and Mars.
NASA’s initiatives to pioneer next-generation space technologies are also hit hard in the White House’s budget proposal. If the Trump administration gets its way, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, or STMD, will see its budget cut nearly in half, from $1.1 billion to $568 million.
Trump’s budget request isn’t final. Both Republican-controlled houses of Congress will write their own versions of the NASA budget, which must be reconciled before going to the White House for President Trump’s signature.
“The budget reduces Space Technology by approximately half, including eliminating failing space propulsion projects,” the White House wrote in an initial overview of the NASA budget request released May 2. “The reductions also scale back or eliminate technology projects that are not needed by NASA or are better suited to private sector research and development.”
Breathing fire
Last week, the White House and NASA put a finer point on these “failing space propulsion projects.”
“This budget provides no funding for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion and Nuclear Electric Propulsion projects,” officials wrote in a technical supplement released Friday detailing Trump’s NASA budget proposal. “These efforts are costly investments, would take many years to develop, and have not been identified as the propulsion mode for deep space missions. The nuclear propulsion projects are terminated to achieve cost savings and because there are other nearer-term propulsion alternatives for Mars transit.”
NASA is prepping Mars missions for next year – a shift in priorities that will likely benefit Elon Musk
NASA is preparing to prioritize launching rockets to Mars in 2026. The unexpected change comes on the heels of the White House 2026 budget proposal, which includes increased funding for Mars-related projects. The White House hinted that Mars missions would be a priority of the Trump Administration last month after the president met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Elon Musk has long pushed an outlandish plan to establish a self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet in order to save humanity from extinction. The Tesla co-founder has previously predicted an uncrewed landing could happen as soon as 2026, with humans there before 2030. He said going to Mars served as an insurance plan for humans, predicting that Earth would somehow be incinerated by the sun in “hundreds of millions of years”
NASA is preparing to prioritize launching rockets to Mars in 2026 – a drastic change in priorities that happens to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities, while also benefiting billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The unexpected change comes on the heels of the White House 2026 budget proposal, which includes increased funding for Mars-related projects by $1 billion and the promise to pay for the launches.
“We are evaluating every opportunity, including launch windows in 2026 and 2028, to test technologies that will land humans on Mars,” NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens told Politico.
The White House hinted that Mars missions would be a priority of the Trump Administration last month after the president met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, indicating in a press release after the two met that the US and Italy would partner on a Mars mission as soon as next year.
NASA employees who would typically be in the know about such plans, however, were left in the dark about a potential push to Mars, a senior official told Politico.
Though there are other companies in the running to make rockets for such missions, Musk’s SpaceX announced plans to land one of their rockets on the planet in 2026.
open image in gallery SpaceX founder Elon Musk has long advocated for Mars missions, often donning a shirt reading ‘Occupy Mars’ ( Getty Images )
NASA’s shift in priorities may also help fulfill a goal Trump expressed during his inauguration speech to land the first astronaut on Mars.
While NASA’s new plan is in line with Trump and Musk’s interests, it may face blowback from lawmakers who have legally required the space agency to maintain a long-term human presence on or near the moon.
Last fall, Musk announced that his company’s first mission to Mars would be in 2026, likely when the next Earth-Mars transfer window – meaning when the two planets are aligned in their orbits – opens in November 2026.
The Tesla co-founder has long pushed an outlandish plan to establish a self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet in order to save humanity from extinction.
He has previously predicted an uncrewed landing could happen as soon as 2026, with humans there before 2030.
“It’s not about going to Mars to visit once, but it is to make life multi-planetary so that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe and to ensure the long-term survival of civilization in the hopefully unlikely event that something terrible happens to Earth that there is a continuance of consciousness on Mars,” Musk told Fox News host Jesse Watters earlier this week.
He said going to Mars served as an insurance plan for humans, predicting that Earth would somehow be incinerated by the sun in “hundreds of millions of years.” While the star may swallow the Earth it won’t be for billions of years.
Musk has long triumphed the idea of colonization of the Red Planet, and since 2000 has pushed for Mars missions while donning “Occupy Mars” T-shirts.
Scientists, however, have said Musk’s Mars vacations will not happen any time soon due to the complicated design and mission for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, among other concerns. Previous test flights have resulted in fiery explosions.
Trump’s proposed 2026 NASA budget cuts will cede our space ‘position of leadership to other nations’, top scientists say
The chairs of analysis/assessment groups (AGs), linked to the space agency’s Planetary Science Division, issued a statement on May 12. The statement has been stirred up by the President’s top-level recommendations on discretionary funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2026. The extent of the proposed cuts to, or cancellation of, missions and programs, including research and analysis, will not be known until the full budget is released, the AG chairs’ statement observes. The letter explains that by abandoning our most ambitious efforts, such as Mars Sample Return, “will cede this position of leadership to other nations,such as China” The statement concludes that science at NASA deserves “full-throated support from our community and the public,” and urges the public to “make your voice heard, and the more powerful the impact will be””Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn,” noted space scientist Carl Sagan.
Call it an SOSS message – a Save Our Solar System planetary science community communiqué. It is unquestionably a “wait-a-minute” concern running through the space science research groups.
Given the considerable uncertainty about the future NASA Science budget given projected Trump Administration funding considerations, the chairs of analysis/assessment groups (AGs), linked to the space agency’s Planetary Science Division, issued a statement on May 12 titled “To members of the planetary science community.”
The letter explains that by abandoning our most ambitious efforts, such as Mars Sample Return, which already have substantial investment, “will cede this position of leadership to other nations, such as China.” Lastly, the communiqué concludes that science at NASA deserves “full-throated support from our community and the public.”
Budget specificity
The statement has been stirred up by the President’s top-level recommendations on discretionary funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2026, or so-called “skinny budget.” The term skinny budget means that the document contains brief descriptions of programs and recommended financial reductions or increases. Still to come is the “Full Monty” of budget specificity that’s expected shortly.
That skinny budget was released on May 2 and noted major cuts to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate budget, such as cancelling the top Decadal priority flagship mission, Mars Sample Return.
“The extent of the proposed cuts to, or cancellation of, missions and programs, including research and analysis, will not be known until the full budget is released,” the AG chairs’ statement observes. “That budget will make its way through Congress, where changes of unknown magnitude are likely to be made and we won’t know the final FY26 budget for some time to come.”
Impacts of NASA science
As reiterated in the statement, the positive impact of science at NASA and crucial role it plays in broad societal terms include:
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Exploration and research in planetary science enables us to better understand the history of the solar system, as well as our planet and origins;
Deep space exploration is a tremendous source of innovation in science and technology having applications well beyond space science research, including in the commercial sector, where over 60 years of investment and development have placed the US at the forefront of research and technological advancements in general;
Planetary and space science research has served as an inspiration for generations of present and future scientists and engineers. NASA’s science and exploration contribute to our national posture, where US leadership in planetary science is a source of geopolitical soft power;
NASA’s spaceflight missions and associated scientific research are thoughtfully developed and carefully prioritized, being guided by reports from the independent National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; these reports are written by top scientists and engineers and represent the consensus view of their respective communities as to the activities that will be of greatest value to science and the American taxpayer over decadal timespans;
Science at NASA engages some of the brightest minds of the nation to develop solutions to problems of human survival and growth based on fact-based inquiry and analysis – although life and civilization are robust, the geologic record shows the Earth’s and the Solar System’s history of catastrophe and global change, from extinction-level impacts to solar storms to ice ages and hot-houses and science enables us to understand these better; and
At the broadest level, science everywhere represents fundamental human curiosity, helping us to understand the world around us and develop innovative solutions to problems, enabling us to become more productive, and make informed decisions about societal concerns.
Eating the seed corn
In closing, the statement signed by AG officials reminds the reader of an observation of noted space scientist, Carl Sagan:
“Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn,” Sagan advised. “We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?”
For their part, the AG chairs are working diligently to represent the PSD community in this time of change, “but we encourage you to make your voice heard, and the more voices, the more powerful the impact will be.”