{"id":43719,"date":"2025-10-09T18:17:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T10:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/one-nasa-science-mission-saved-from-trumps-cuts-but-others-still-in-limbo\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T18:17:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T10:17:41","slug":"one-nasa-science-mission-saved-from-trumps-cuts-but-others-still-in-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/one-nasa-science-mission-saved-from-trumps-cuts-but-others-still-in-limbo\/","title":{"rendered":"One NASA science mission saved from Trump\u2019s cuts, but others still in limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA has thrown a lifeline to scientists working on a mission to visit an asteroid that will make an unusually close flyby of the Earth in 2029, reversing the Trump administration\u2019s previous plan to shut it down.<\/p>\n

This mission, named OSIRIS-APEX, was one of 19 operating NASA science missions the White House proposed canceling in a budget blueprint released earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were called for cancellation as part to the president\u2019s budget request, and we were reinstated and given a plan to move ahead in FY26 (Fiscal Year 2026) just two weeks ago,\u201d said Dani DellaGiustina, principal investigator for OSIRIS-APEX at the University of Arizona. \u201cOur spacecraft appears happy and healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-APEX repurposes the spacecraft from NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, which deposited its extraterrestrial treasure back on Earth in 2023. The spacecraft was in good shape and still had plenty of fuel, so NASA decided to send it to explore another asteroid, named Apophis, due to pass about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) from the Earth on April 13, 2029.<\/p>\n

The flyby of Apophis offers scientists a golden opportunity to see a potential killer asteroid up close. Apophis has a lumpy shape with an average diameter of about 1,100 feet (340 meters), large enough to cause regional devastation if it impacted the Earth. The asteroid has no chance of striking us in 2029 or any other time for the next century, but it routinely crosses the Earth\u2019s path as it circles the Sun, so the long-term risk is non-zero.<\/p>\n

It pays to be specific<\/h2>\n

Everything was going well with OSIRIS-APEX until May, when White House officials signaled their intention to terminate the mission. The Trump administration\u2019s proposed cancellation of 19 of NASA\u2019s operating missions was part of a nearly 50 percent cut to the agency\u2019s science budget in the White House budget request for fiscal year 2026, which began October 1.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have moved to reject nearly all of the science cuts, with the Senate bill maintaining funding for NASA\u2019s science division at $7.3 billion, the same as fiscal year 2025, while the House bill reduces it to $6 billion, still significantly more than the $3.9 billion for science in the White House budget proposal.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Planetary Society released this chart showing the 19 operating missions tagged for termination under the White House\u2019s budget proposal.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

For a time this summer, Trump\u2019s political appointees at NASA told managers to make plans for the next year assuming Trump\u2019s cuts would be enacted. Finally, last month, those officials relented and instructed agency employees to abide by the House appropriations bill.<\/p>\n

The House and Senate still have not agreed on any final budget numbers or sent an appropriations bill to the White House for President Trump\u2019s signature. That\u2019s why the federal government has been partially shut down for the last week. Despite the shutdown, ground teams are still operating NASA\u2019s science missions because suspending them could result in irreparable damage.<\/p>\n

Using the House\u2019s proposed budget should salvage much of NASA\u2019s portfolio, but it is still $1.3 billion short of the money the agency\u2019s science program got last year. That means some things will inevitably get cut. Many of the other operating missions the Trump administration tagged for termination remain on the chopping block.<\/p>\n

OSIRIS-APEX escaped this fate for a simple reason. Lawmakers earmarked $20 million for the mission in the House budget bill. Most other missions didn\u2019t receive the same special treatment. It seems OSIRIS-APEX had a friend in Congress.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Budget-writers in the House of Representatives specified NASA should commit $20 million for the OSIRIS-APEX mission in fiscal year 2026.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n US House of Representatives<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The only other operating mission the Trump administration wanted to cancel that got a similar earmark in the House budget bill was the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), a fleet of four probes in space since 2015 studying Earth\u2019s magnetosphere. Lawmakers want to provide $20 million for MMS operations in 2026. Ars was unable to confirm the status of the MMS mission Wednesday.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

The other 17 missions set to fall under Trump\u2019s budget ax remain in a state of limbo. There are troubling signs the administration might go ahead and kill the missions. Earlier this year, NASA directed managers from all 19 of the missions at risk of cancellation to develop preliminary plans to wind down their missions.<\/p>\n

A scientist on one of the projects told Ars that NASA recently asked for a more detailed \u201ctermination plan\u201d to \u201cpassivate\u201d their spacecraft by the end of this year. This goes a step beyond the closeout plans NASA requested in the summer. Passivation is a standard last rite for a spacecraft, when engineers command it to vent leftover fuel and drain its batteries, rendering it fully inert. This would make the mission unrecoverable if someone tried to contact it again.<\/p>\n

This scientist said none of the missions up for termination will be out of the woods until there\u2019s a budget that restores NASA funding close to last year\u2019s levels and includes language protecting the missions from cancellation.<\/p>\n

Damage already done<\/h2>\n

Although OSIRIS-APEX is again go for Apophis, DellaGiustina said a declining budget has forced some difficult choices. The mission\u2019s science team is \u201cbasically on hiatus\u201d until sometime in 2027, meaning they won\u2019t be able to participate in any planning for at least the next year and a half.<\/p>\n

This has an outsize effect on younger scientists who were brought on to the mission to train for what the spacecraft will find at Apophis, DellaGiustina said in a meeting Tuesday of the National Academies\u2019 Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not anticipating we will have to cut any science at Apophis,\u201d she said. But the cuts do affect things like recalibrating the science instruments on the spacecraft, which got dirty and dusty from the mission\u2019s brief landing to capture samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are definitely undermining our readiness,\u201d DellaGiustina said. \u201cNonetheless, we\u2019re happy to be reinstated, so it\u2019s about as good as can be expected, I think, for this particular point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At its closest approach, asteroid Apophis will be closer to Earth than the ring of geostationary satellites over the equator.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA\/JPL<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The other consequence of the budget reduction has been a drain in expertise with operating the spacecraft. OSIRIS-APEX (formerly OSIRIS-REx) was built by Lockheed Martin, which also commands and receives telemetry from the probe as it flies through the Solar System. The cuts have caused some engineers at Lockheed to move off of planetary science missions to other fields, such as military space programs.<\/p>\n

The other active missions waiting for word from NASA include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the New Horizons probe heading toward interstellar space, the MAVEN spacecraft studying the atmosphere of Mars, and several satellites monitoring Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n

The future of those missions remains murky. A senior official on one of the projects said they\u2019ve been given \u201cno direction at all\u201d other than \u201cto continue operating until advised otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another mission the White House wanted to cancel was THEMIS, a pair of spacecraft orbiting the Moon to map the lunar magnetic field. The lead scientist for that mission, Vassilis Angelopoulos from the University of California, Los Angeles, said his team will get \u201cpartial funding\u201d for fiscal year 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is good, but in the meantime, it means that science personnel is being defunded,\u201d Angelopoulos told Ars. \u201cThe effect is the US is not achieving the scientific return it can from its multi-billion dollar investments it has made in technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Artist\u2019s concept of NASA\u2019s MAVEN spacecraft, which has orbited Mars since 2014 studying the planet\u2019s upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

To put a number on it, the missions already in space that the Trump administration wants to cancel represent a cumulative investment of $12 billion to design and build, according to the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. An assessment by Ars concluded the operating missions slated for cancellation cost taxpayers less than $300 million per year, or between 1 and 2 percent of NASA\u2019s annual budget.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Advocates for NASA\u2019s science program met at the US Capitol this week to highlight the threat. Angelopoulos said the outcry from scientists and the public seems to be working.<\/p>\n

\u201cI take the implementation of the House budget as indication that the constituents\u2019 pressure is having an effect,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately, damage is being done already. Even if funding is reinstated, we have already lost people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some scientists worry that the Trump administration may try to withhold funding for certain programs, even if Congress provides a budget for them. That would likely trigger a fight in the courts.<\/p>\n

Bruce Jakosky, former principal investigator of the MAVEN Mars mission, raised this concern. He said it\u2019s a \u201cpositive step\u201d that NASA is now making plans under the assumption the agency will receive the budget outlined by the House. But there\u2019s a catch.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if the budget that comes out of Congress gets signed into law, the president has shown no reluctance to not spend money that has been legally obligated,\u201d Jakosky wrote in an email to Ars. \u201cThat means that having a budget isn\u2019t the end; and having the money get distributed to the MAVEN science and ops team isn\u2019t the end\u2014only when the money is actually spent can we be assured that it won\u2019t be clawed back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means that the uncertainty lives with us throughout the entire fiscal year,\u201d he said. \u201cThat uncertainty is sure to drive morale problems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA has thrown a lifeline to scientists working on a mission to visit an asteroid that will make an unusually close flyby of the Earth in 2029, reversing the Trump administration\u2019s previous plan to shut it down. This mission, named OSIRIS-APEX, was one of 19 operating NASA science missions the White House proposed canceling in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}