Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Puzzling out budget ballistics: Image credit: Leonard David

Last week saw the release of President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint. It is viewed as a budgetary bombshell, calling for a 24.3% reduction to NASA’s top-line funding and slashing the space agency’s science budget by 47%.

Reactions to the budget centers on it being reckless and destructive, one that undercuts American leadership in probing our solar system and the universe writ large.

Image credit: White House

Phasing out, retiring, cancelled

Among NASA projects cross-haired by the White House budget:

— Phasing out the government-backed Space Launch System (SLS) mega-booster, retired after an Artemis 3 “rebooting” of humans on the Moon

— Retiring the Orion crew capsule, and doing away with the Gateway lunar space station.

— Cancelling the NASA Mars Sample Return mission, labeled in the White House budget as “grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars.”

More details can be viewed in my new Sky and Telescope story – “Are Proposed Science Cuts a Call-to-Arms? Or Armageddon? – Deep cuts to NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other science-funding institutions are causing grave concerns in the community” at:

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/are-proposed-science-cuts-a-call-to-arms-or-armageddon/

Moon to Mars?
Image credit: NASA