this week, The Trump White House, part of the process of developing the 2026 budget, has shared a draft version of NASA’s budget request with the space agency.
This early version of the administration’s budget request calls for a total agency budget to be reduced by around 20%, with $5 billion effectively cutting from the overall topline of around $25 billion. However, most of the cuts are concentrated in the Science Mission Bureau, an institution that oversees all planetary, geoscience, and astrophysics research.
The space agency’s science program will receive a nearly 50% cut in funding, according to a “passback” document given to NASA officials on Thursday. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in 2025, the Trump administration proposed a science topline budget of just $3.9 billion next year.
Cut details
Among the proposals were two-thirds cut into astrophysics (up to $487 million), over two-thirds of heliophysics (up to $455 million), over 50% of geoscience (up to $1.033 million), and 30% were cut into planetary science (up to $192.9 million).
The budget will continue to support ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope, but will kill the planned Nancy Gray Sloman Space Telescope, which is already fully assembled and seen similarly to the two world-class equipment that has a budget for launch over two years.
“Pasback supports the ongoing operation of Hubble and James Webb’s space telescopes and assumes that other telescopes are not funded,” the document says.
Other important reductions include the ending funds for Mars’ sample returns and the Da Vinci mission to Venus. The budget cuts also appear to be aimed at enforcing the closing of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Passback Process
What the cut matches ARS Technica reported only last monththe Trump administration was considering a massive 50% cut to NASA’s science program. Publicly, some officials downplayed these concerns. Just like this week, NASA’s deputy manager, Janet Petro; This report was characterized As “rumors from truly unreliable sources.”
However, science policy experts are more concerned, characterizing such a cut as an “extinction level” event for what is seen as a crown jewel of space agency. Almost all of NASA’s most important achievements over the past 25 years have been provided by the science programme, including a creative helicopter flying over Mars, a new horizon that plunges down to Pltune, and the discovery of water feathers at Cassini’s Encelado.
This passback document represents the opening salvo for the process of establishing the federal budget for fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1st this year. The budget is produced by the White House Office of Management and Budget. He clarified his anti-science budget priorities Through his center to renew America.
The Trump administration candidate will lead NASA, said private astronaut Jared Isaacman. This week’s confirmation hearing That he was a strong supporter of NASA’s science program. Isaacman has rarely been involved in drafting this document, as it has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate. Candidates are usually excluded from the policy prior to confirmation.
