Last year, the Trump administration made efforts to deal NASA a devastating blow by making brutal cuts to its budget for the agency’s fiscal year 2026, something that would’ve wiped out thousands of jobs and place dozens of groundbreaking space missions on the chopping block.
Fortunately, the “extinction-level event for space science and exploration in the United States,” as Planetary Society chief of space policy Casey Dreier described it at the time, never came. Following months of deliberations, Congress passed a $24.4 billion budget for the agency in January — three months after the start of the agency’s fiscal year — that kept its existing budget largely intact.
Now, a mere two days following the launch of NASA’s historic Artemis 2 mission, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has released its proposed 2027 budget for the agency, showing the Trump administration isn’t giving up on gutting many of the agency’s operations. According to a newly-released outline for its proposed government budget, the OMB wants to slash NASA’s budget by 23 percent compared to its recently enacted 2026 budget.
While that may not sound as steep as last year’s proposal, the agency’s science directorate would still be eviscerated, with its budget reduced by 47 percent, as SpaceNews points out.
The document doesn’t single out any specific science missions, but the OMB said it’s looking to cut a whopping 40 missions. As Bloomberg reports, that could make it incredibly unpopular on Capitol Hill.
Space advocacy groups are equally taken aback.
“The Planetary Society is deeply disappointed by this budget proposal,” the Planetary Society wrote in a statement.
“The White House’s budgeting office has put forward the same budget cuts to NASA and NASA science that were rejected by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress last year,” the statement reads. “This proposal needlessly resurrects an existential threat to US leadership in space science and exploration.”
“The American public responded in record numbers to last year’s proposed cuts to space science, and we believe they will do so again,” wrote the NGO, which was founded in 1980 by beloved planetary scientist Carl Sagan.
If approved — a major if, given the likelihood of prolonged debate in Congress — the budget would also deal the International Space Station a devastating blow, reducing funding for operations that the OMB deems “unnecessary” given its “looming retirement” in 2030.
Meanwhile, space exploration programs including Artemis would remain fully funded, while repurposing the $2.6 billion budget of the Lunar Gateway, a since-scrapped stepping stone space station in the Moon’s orbit, for building out a lunar base.
That’s unsurprising, given the Trump administration’s unbridled enthusiasm for sending astronauts to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The budget also called out space agency’s Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule, which successfully launched a crew of four earlier this week, “grossly expensive and delayed.”
In short, the White House’s repeated attempts to deal NASA a devastating blow likely won’t go down easy and remain as contentious as ever.
“The Planetary Society will once again amplify the voices of the public to ensure these draconian cuts are rejected by Congress as decisively as last year,” the space interest organization’s statement reads. “We urge swift action from the Appropriations Committees to move forward with an ambitious, balanced, and science-driven agenda for space exploration.”
More on NASA’s budget: NASA Staff Horrified at Plan to Throw Out Incredibly Specialized Science Equipment Like Garbage
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