{"id":44405,"date":"2025-03-08T01:41:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T17:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/white-house-may-seek-to-slash-nasas-science-budget-by-50-percent\/"},"modified":"2025-03-08T01:41:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T17:41:18","slug":"white-house-may-seek-to-slash-nasas-science-budget-by-50-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/white-house-may-seek-to-slash-nasas-science-budget-by-50-percent\/","title":{"rendered":"White House may seek to slash NASA\u2019s science budget by 50 percent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although the Trump administration will not publicly release its budget request for at least a few more weeks, senior agency officials are starting to be briefed on the president\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n

This includes NASA. As expected, the president\u2019s plan for the space agency includes some significant shakeups, including a desire to move elements of NASA headquarters to field centers around the country. However, in perhaps the most drastic change, the White House seeks to massively cut funding for science programs at the space agency.<\/p>\n

Multiple people familiar with the White House proposal said cuts to NASA\u2019s \u201cScience Mission Directorate\u201d could be as high as 50 percent. These sources emphasized that no decisions are final, and there are some scenarios in which the cuts to NASA\u2019s science programs would be less. But the intent is to slash science.<\/p>\n

The associate administrator who runs NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate, Nicola Fox, appeared in Houston on Thursday for a news conference about a lunar landing. Afterward, Ars asked her about the implications of cutting science funding in half.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t had any information yet about the budget, and I hate planning something on rumors and speculation,\u201d Fox said. \u201cYou know, we will continue to do great science. We\u2019ll continue to have a balanced science portfolio, for sure. And you know, we\u2019ll be grateful for what we get, and we\u2019ll do great stuff with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

An \u201cextinction-level\u201d event<\/h2>\n

However, as word of these potential cuts spread through the scientific community this week, they have set off alarm bells and generated a response that indicated otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this is implemented, it would be nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science and exploration in the United States,\u201d said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society. \u201cLosing this much money, this fast, has no precedence in NASA\u2019s history. It would force terrible decisions, including turning off scores of active, productive, irreplaceable missions, halting nearly all new mission development, and decimating the country\u2019s space science workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

In many ways, NASA\u2019s science directorate is the crown jewel of the space agency. Nearly all of the most significant achievements over the last 25 years have been delivered by the science programs: Ingenuity<\/em> flying on Mars, New Horizons swooping by Pluto, images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, the return of samples from asteroids and comets, Cassini\u2019s discovery of water plumes on Enceladus, a continuous robotic presence on Mars, and so much more. Even the recent lunar landings by Firefly and Intuitive Machines were funded by NASA\u2019s science directorate.<\/p>\n

Of NASA\u2019s roughly $25 billion budget, however, only about 30 percent is allocated to science. For fiscal year 2024, this amounted to $7.4 billion. This spending was broken down into approximately $2.7 billion for planetary science, $2.2 billion for Earth science, $1.5 billion for astrophysics, and $800 million for heliophysics.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

NASA science funding since 1980.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Casey Dreier\/The Planetary Society<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The proposed cuts are being driven by Russell Vought, the recently confirmed director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which sets budget and policy priorities for a presidential administration. In some sense, the budgetary decisions should not come as a surprise, as they are consistent with what Vought proposed in a \u201cshadow\u201d budget for fiscal-year 2023 as part of his Center for Renewing America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe budget also proposes a 50 percent reduction in NASA Science programs and spending, reducing their misguided Carbon Reduction System spending and Global Climate Change programs,\u201d Vought\u2019s organization wrote in its report published in December 2022.<\/p>\n

Zeroing out Earth science?<\/h2>\n

Despite Vought\u2019s desire, however, NASA is expressly charged with studying our planet.<\/p>\n

The congressional act that created NASA in 1958 calls for the space agency to expand human knowledge about Earth\u2019s atmosphere and space, and the agency\u2019s Earth observation satellites have substantially increased our understanding of this planet\u2019s weather, changing climate, and land use.<\/p>\n

Even if NASA\u2019s Earth science budget were taken to zero, cutting the overall science budget in half would still dramatically reduce funding in planetary science as well as other research areas. Scientists told Ars that NASA would be forced to make difficult decisions, likely including shutting off extended missions such as the Voyager and Curiosity probes on Mars, and possibly even the Hubble Space Telescope. It might be possible to save missions in later stages of development, such as the Dragonfly probe to Saturn\u2019s moon Titan, and the NEO Surveyor mission to search for hazardous asteroids. But it would be impossible to start meaningful new missions to explore the Solar System, potentially setting back planetary exploration a decade.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

The cuts also seem at odds with the administration\u2019s stated goal of commercializing space, that is, allowing the agency to buy more services where they are available from the private sector. Instead, the heaviest cuts\u2014sources said that NASA may face an approximately 25 percent budget cut, overall\u2014would fall on the agency directorate, Science, least able to buy commercial services.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no commercial or private options for exploratory space science,\u201d Dreier said. \u201cNo private individuals or companies are currently able or willing to independently pursue boundary-pushing, breakthrough science missions like Europa Clipper, James Webb Space Telescope, or the Parker Solar Probe. This is a unique capability and responsibility of our public space agency. There is no private space science sector of our economy waiting to fill the gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a budget, scientists fear, would cede the future of exploration in our Solar System to China, which last year revealed a long-term exploration plan to compete with and potentially surpass its competitors, including NASA and the United States.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s proposal for NASA\u2019s budget is just a starting point for negotiations with Congress, of course. The president establishes budget priorities, but Congress actually sets funding levels and authorizes spending. However, to date, the US Congress has shown little appetite to oppose President Trump\u2019s policy priorities. Moreover, a lot of NASA\u2019s key science centers are located in Democratic-leaning states such as California, Maryland, and New York, which do not have a lot of power in the current Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the Trump administration will not publicly release its budget request for at least a few more weeks, senior agency officials are starting to be briefed on the president\u2019s priorities. This includes NASA. As expected, the president\u2019s plan for the space agency includes some significant shakeups, including a desire to move elements of NASA headquarters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44406,"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":[1883,9501,21],"class_list":["post-44405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nasa-budget","tag-science-2","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44405"}],"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=44405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}